City of Gold

Fried grasshoppers, deer penis, slime eels…well, somebody's got to eat that stuff and report to the rest of us. Jonathan Gold, a Pulitzer Prize-winning culture journalist and food writer for the Los Angeles Times, enthusiastically digs into such unusual cuisine in filmmaker Laura Gabbert's engaging documentary. Gold prefers to write about small mom-and-pop places that have fewer than a dozen tables but serve wonderful-looking foods from distant lands—meals based on recipes handed down over multiple generations. It's not that the bearish, moon-faced Gold—sporting cascades of bristly blonde hair—merely has a thing for ethnic foods. He also views these out-of-the-way family restaurants as representative of the extraordinary cultural diversity that is a sometimes-underappreciated feature of the city. Here, Gold zips along L.A.'s streets in his green truck, stopping for lunch at everything from a hot dog joint to Thai, Chinese, Korean, and Mexican places to sample regional cooking. Also appearing are some of Gold's editor-bosses at the Times (including his wife, entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa), along with chefs and restaurateurs who respect and appreciate his work. Recommended. (T. Keogh)