Los Angeles Honors Native Son, Food Critic Jonathan Gold With Plaque, Food Trucks, Hip-Hop In DTLA

STUDIO CITY (CBSLA) — Los Angeles' resident food critic and native son was remembered with his own landmark in the heart of Downtown Sunday.

The City of L.A. held a public memorial for late, Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold outside Grand Central Market, where a plaque with his iconic, Hitchcockesque silhouette was dedicated to him — a physical representation of Gold's permanence in the history and culture of L.A.

Gold's widow L.A. Times Arts and Entertainment Editor Laurie Ochoa and their two children were present at the ceremony.

Gold's profile also graced the side of a light pole outside Grand Central Market along what L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti called the "golden path" to the historic open-air food court.

Naturally, food trucks, praised above almost any other type of L.A. food venue by Gold, were on hand at City Hall to feed the crowd gathered to honor the erstwhile music critic who died last month after a battle with pancreatic cancer. The last of Gold's legendary "Five Rules for Dining In Los Angeles" was "THE TACO HONORS THE TRUCK".

Gold was lauded for writing about L.A.'s so-called "hole in the wall" restaurants, mom-and-pop stands and strip mall shacks without the pretension usually ascribed to culinary criticism. In 2007, he was the first restaurant critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism while he was writing for the L.A. Weekly. He later wrote for the L.A. Times.

Gold was also the subject of the 2015 documentary "City of Gold."