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Jonathan Gold Lands Column in Smithsonian, Writes About L.A. Food Trucks (Woot)
Jonathan Gold at his Union Station Cocktail Party last year (Elise Thompson/LAist)
Food critic Jonathan Gold recently made waves when it was announced that he was leaving his longtime home at the LA Weekly to write for the LA Times' new "Saturday" section. But it turns out that's not all Mr. Gold had up his sleeve with his new career trajectory -- Kevin Roderick of LA Observed reports that Gold is also debuting a new column in Smithsonian Magazine. Well played, Jonathan Gold.
The first installment of the column takes on the ever-relevant topic of food trucks, tracing their origins in America (most cities now have some version of the meals of wheels) back to their roots in Los Angeles. He writes:
The intersection between food and wheels has driven culture in L.A. since at least the 1930s, when the city was already famous for its drive-ins and roadside hash houses designed to look like coffee pots. Food trucks may be nothing new in the U.S.—every Hawaiian can tell you her favorite plate-lunch wagon, and Portland, Oregon, can seem like a locavore food-truck plantation—but in L.A., where on some afternoons they can be as thick on the freeway as taxicabs are on New York’s Sixth Avenue, they define the landscape.
It's always nice to see stories about L.A.'s quirks and trademarks on the national stage -- although they're not news to those of us who live here, one occasionally gets the feeling that some of our fair city's less Hollywood-related characteristics are lost on the rest of the nation.
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