When I watched the documentary City of Gold, I saw in Jonathan Gold a man very much like myself. He was driving down the street and pointing out the best dish at each restaurant, no matter the type of food or price point. I am always in the search for delicious food. Sometimes this comes with hefty price points and other times I find my happy food at chain diners.
Ever since I can remember food has been a place of comfort for me. And this was sometimes connected with shame. A lot of times it was just connected with desire. I think we are a society that has been trained to become disconnected from desire. Maybe that is shifting more and more now. The pleasure center seems to be the only driving force in most human interactions. People are no longer willing to be uncomfortable. But this is a relatively new transition.
At some point I just decided I didn't care how much I ate in front of other people or if I dropped food on my shirt. I realized that I saw all these constructions in the world that had nothing to do with the important parts of realty. These constructs were an overlay that we often mistake for reality.
I think Jonathan Gold lives in the tension between those constructs and his own desires and veracious curiosity. He manages to write about food in a way that makes it real. It is only with his deep understanding of history and culture that he can perfectly describe the context of a single bite of food.
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