Jonathan Gold Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic, James Beard winner, food critic for Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine & Gourmet. He also wrote frequently about music and popular culture for Spin, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.
Gold famously praised the original West Coast outpost of Joe's Pizza in Santa Monica, declaring its basic cheese slice "as authentically New York City as the smell of the West Fourth subway station in mid-August" and described the pizzeria as looking "as if it has been holding down the location since the film Taxi Driver was in its first run".
While he originally expressed skepticism about the Bleecker Street icon surviving a 2,500-mile transition, he ultimately embraced it, describing the slices as the "breadth of truck tires but almost microscopically thin" and highlighted the swift, "balletic" movement of the pies.
Gold's latest glowing endorsement on famed national public radio KCRW cemented Joe's Pizza in Santa Monica as one of the best places in Southern California to grab a classic New York super slice.
https://www.kcrw.com/shows/good-food/stories/slice-pizza
"Joe’s Pizza in downtown Santa Monica
Looking as if it has been holding down the
location since Taxi Driver was in first run.
A half a dozen sliced pizzas are on display,
the breadth of truck tires but almost microscopically thin, the movement from the oven is a smooth one, a balletic display of grace.
Their pizza ballasted with sweetish tomato sauce and annealed with a micro thin cincture of cheese, is as authentically New York City as the smell of the West Fourth subway station in mid-August."
- Pulitzer-winning food critic
Jonathan Gold