Jonathan Gold

Marvin Galputos, Filipino Food Blogger Extraordinaire, Publishes Filipino Cookbook!

Those who know Marvin Galputos as Burnt Lumpia, the voice behind the world's preeminent Filipino food blog, are aware of his story arc. In post after post spanning years, he chronicled his education on the food of his culture with humor, wit, and most importantly, recipes. Then he surprised everyon ... More >>

Palsaik Samgyupssal, Korean Restaurant Famed For Its '8 Flavors Of Pork Belly,' Comes To OC

The Korean BBQ can be a blissful, albiet predictable, experience. We've come to expect the trusty usual suspects--kalbi, bulgogi, brisket--along with dipping sauces and banchan galore.   But the newest Korean BBQ restaurant on the block has a divine specialty: pork belly. Palsaik Samgyupss ... More >>

Umami Burger Brings Something Savory This Way

Adam Fleischman's phenomenon finally opens in OC

Cheri Sicard's New Cookbook Will Turn You Into a Cannabis Kitchen Magician!

Cheri Sicard has been a seasoned food writer and lover of good recipes long before she became a medical marijuana patient and activist. She created and launched the popular cooking website FabulousFoods.com and has authored books on the subject including last year's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eas ... More >>

San Gabriel Noodle House Lauded by Jonathan Gold To Open in Irvine

​Irvine's Culver Plaza is already going to be the first OC site of Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot, a San Gabriel Valley staple which is supposed to open any day soon. And now it looks like there will be another SGV import coming our way, slated to do business around the corner from the 99 Ranch.

Another Lauded LA Ramenya Coming to Costa Mesa

​Did you hear about the ramenya that Jonathan Gold dubbed one of LA's 99 Essential Restaurants coming to Costa Mesa? No, not Ramen Yamadaya, which has been open for months. I'm talking about Jinya, the other slurp peddler that has restaurants in Studio City and the Miracle Mile of which Gold said ... More >>

The Orange County Bartenders Cabinet Shake It Up

The group of county libation crafters is teaching you to drink as you've never drunk before

LA Weekly's Gold Standard is Back on March 4

​Gold Standard is an annual event put on by our sister paper LA Weekly featuring restaurants handpicked by food critic extraordinaire Jonathan Gold. It's a chance to sample some of the most exciting dishes our neighboring county to the north has to offer, all in one swoop, so you can later restaur ... More >>

Bigmista's BBQ Coming to Long Beach!

Photo by Gary Walkup​You may not know it, but Bigmista's Barbecue is kind of a big deal. Listed on Jonathan Gold's 99 Things To Eat Before You Die 2010, the BBQ competitor-turned-caterer sells at farmers markets across far-flung parts of L.A. They've been geographically inconvenient for us behind ... More >>

Gourmet Grill Masters Opens in Irvine

Edwin Goei​Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold described the chicken at the previously mobile-only Gourmet Grill Masters this way:"The chicken at Grill Masters stands a cluck or two above the rest: extravagantly seasoned fowl cooked on rotating spits, perfumed with smoke, slow-roasted ... More >>

"Food and the Art of Consumption" Exhibit to Debut This Weekend at Cal State Fullerton

​We usually don't talk about art here at SaFII, unless it involves Star Wars-themed food and other foodie nuttiness. But Cal State Fullerton is about to launch an exhibit with food as its subject: "Acquired Tate: Food and the Art of Consumption," which opens this Saturday. It's a collection of art ... More >>

OC Register Food Review Simultaneously Slams and Ignores Little Arabia

​The Orange County Register's food coverage has been strangely trifurcated for a couple of years now, and that's not a good thing. Us Forkers totally love Jeff and Claudia over at Food Frenzy, giggle at Nancy Luna's Fast Food Maven blog, and howl at the carousel of news reporters that the Register ... More >>

Santa Monica Farmers Celebrates 30th Anniversary with Good Food Festival & Conference

​In the world of farmers markets in Southern California, none is more legendary than the system that runs the Santa Monica Farmers Market. KCRW-FM 89.9's Good Food with Evan Kleiman offers their updates from the Wednesday version, head Laura Avery is a Southern California food legend, and more tha ... More >>

The Kimchi Chronicles With Hugh Jackman Premieres This Week on KCET

Remember The Kimchi Chronicles? The PBS documentary on Korean food featuring Roller Gi--I mean Heather Graham, Wolve--I mean Hugh Jackman, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and his wife Marja (who is half Korean) as host? It will finally start to air tomorrow, July 7 at 7 p.m. on KLCS and July 8 at 2 p.m. ... More >>

Jonathan Gold's Choice for Best Roast Chicken to Roost in Irvine

Image from www.grillmasters-chicken.com​ LA Weekly's Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold describes it this way: "The chicken at Grill Masters stands a cluck or two above the rest: extravagantly seasoned fowl cooked on rotating spits, perfumed with smoke, slow-roasted and glistening w ... More >>

101 Noodle Express Teaches You Chinese 101

It replaces Irvine's Nice Time Deli, but is it worthy of the legend?

New Dumpling Restaurant Replaces Nice Time Deli in Irvine

Edwin Goei​Well that was fast. Two weeks ago, Nice Time Deli, Irvine's decades-old Taiwanese stalwart for pork chop rice and other comfort food standards closed. Now, its replacement is already packing them in. Good-luck plants crowd one corner and red paper lanterns dangle outside as a hastily hu ... More >>

KCRW Global Street Food Fest SOLD OUT--But Win a Pair of Tickets NOW

Piaggio on Wheels will be there this Sunday, and so can you!​SOOOOO...remember that panel I'm going be on this Sunday in Santa Monica, alongside KCRW-FM 89.9's Evan Kleiman, celebrity chef Jet Tila, and Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold? If you're interested, tough tamales--event is ... More >>

There's Something About 320 Main

Cameron Diaz eats at this Seal Beach stalwart, and so should you!

2-Year-Old Gets Served Alcohol at Olive Garden

Last week's Jonathan Gold article notwithstanding, Olive Garden's got a more serious problem on its hands as news broke in Florida that the restaurant served a 2-year-old sangria instead of orange juice.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Food Critic Jonathan Gold Reviews...The Olive Garden

​Sometimes an April Fools prank can backfire on the prankster. It happened to Jonathan Gold, our esteemed colleague and Pulitzer Prize winning food critic at the LA Weekly. His planned joke on his longtime food photographer Anne Fishbein to meet him at Olive Garden didn't go exactly as planned. ... More >>

320 Main Makes Jonathan Gold's List of LA's 55 Best Cocktails!

Seal Beach: Not LA, but who cares?​LA Weekly's Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold's list of Los Angeles' 55 best cocktails is essential reading, not so much for the drunk aspect but to hear him drop history bits after history bits on cocktails, restaurants, and so much more. But noth ... More >>

Announcing Stick a Fork in It's First-Ever Intern: Javier Cabral, aka The Glutster!

It's rare that any publication ever gets celebrity interns, but we at SaFII are blessed with that scenario: Today is the first day that Javier Cabral joins our ranks!Cabral is better-known in food-blogging circles as the Glutster, and has already scored mentions in Jonathan Gold's column and the New ... More >>

Why Orange County Is the Capital of Bolivian Cuisine in the Western United States

Order of salteñas from Rollie's--SO good...​I was surprised to read last week's installment of "Ask Mr. Gold" in our sister paper LA Weekly. In it, someone asked the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic of he knew where to buy salteñas, the legendary empanada originally from Argentina but long cla ... More >>

Rick Bayless Blocks Mexican-Food Blogger Bill Esparza from Following His Twitter Account

​Any of the more than 108,000 followers that celebrity chef Rick Bayless has on Twitter knows that the U.S.'s most-famous cook of Mexican food has spent the weekend in Baja California scoping the scene for his PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time. "Super-busy scouting n Baja morn2nite 4 season 8 ... More >>

2011 LA Weekly Gold Standard Final Restaurant List

​In case you missed our announcement to get a discounted ticket for the 2011 Gold Standard, it's not too late to get yourself in. Tickets are still available, but they are expected to sell out. Clear your calendar for Sunday, March 6, and get your tickets now.Restaurant list after the jump!

Tickets for LA Weekly Gold Standard On Sale This Week

​[UPDATED Monday January 17 5:30pm] $10 discount for early bird tickets,  now through January 20 at 10am! Details after the jump!The third-annual LA Weekly Gold Standard food-and-wine event happens on March 6 at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Curated by Jonathan Gold, the rest ... More >>

Grab Bag o' Goodies

Nine great posts from our Stick a Fork In It blog you might've missed

Cupcakes Out, Pies In: Someone Gets Paid To Predict Food Trends

Flickr user vpickeringWhere food trend predictions come from...​We're coming up to the end of the year, which means it's time for would-be tastemakers to make all sorts of bold and useless predictions about what the new trends are. That people pay to hear this nonsense is hysterical (though the fa ... More >>

An Open Letter To Jean-Luc Naret of the Michelin Guide

Flickr user lwrNo longer to be seen in Los Angeles...​Last week, John Mariani of Esquire magazine interviewed the just-retired director of the Michelin Guide, Jean-Luc Naret. The 2011 New York guide is heading for press, and there will be a Chicago guide next year as well, and Mariani caught Naret ... More >>

Five Authentic Mexican Dishes That Would Make Rick Bayless Scream, Or: For an Aztlanista Approach to the Question of "Authenticity" in Mexican Cuisine

Chico's Tacos in El Paso: The Most Mexican Restaurant in America​Rick Bayless came to and left Orange County last week, and none of Weeklings were able to attend, busy as we are with our normal lives (Dave, Edwin, and Shuji, their 9-to-5s; me, skinheads and pedo-priests). Sucks, because the battle ... More >>

Rick Bayless to Appear at Macy's South Coast Plaza This Thursday

​Of course. The one time Rick Bayless, one of the most influential people in the history of Mexican food in the United States and one thin-skinned man, I will be on assignment and unable to attend. FUCK.  He'll be at Macy's at South Coast Plaza this Thursday, starting at 6:30 p.m. From the pr ... More >>

This Week in Food

Flickr user Thomas Leplus​ Five ways to prevent cooking catastrophes and more of what you missed this week in Stick a Fork In It after the jump!

Jonathan Gold Lectures at Marche Moderne About Mexican Food "Authenticity," Laughs at Rick Bayless

Frontera Grill is sabroso, though...​Updated after the jump: Rick Bayless responds! And isn't happy...and one of the kings of LA food blogging has even funnier things to say about Bayless... Last Thursday, the CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California (formerly the California Chicano News Media Asso ... More >>

Letters From OC Weekly Readers

Paletas: Beyond Fudgesicles and Grape Popsicles

Willy BlackmoreVanilla with Quince Candy​Thanks to Jonathan Gold's tweeted enticments and the return to clear skies and heat, I've had paletas on the mind today. After walking around the block a few times hoping to hear the peddling sounds and ringing bells that are the siren song of the bicycling ... More >>

One Blogger's Quest To Eat Every Nasi Bungkus In LA

Edwin Goei​A fellow food blogger named burumun has entitled her most recent post "The Nasi Bungkus Roundup: 5 Banana-leaf Wraps, 60 miles."  In it, our intrepid author scoured Southern California eating the Indonesian dish of rice, meat and veggies wrapped inside a banana leaf and wrote ... More >>

Valhalla Table's Sausage House Concept Comes From LA, but the Most Inspired Items Hail From Indonesia

Ruth Reichl, Jonathan Gold & Laurie Ochoa Talk With Evan Kleinman At The Skirball

Photo Courtesy of Zocalo Public Square​An event held Tuesday night at the Skirball in L.A. brought together some giants in food writing. First and foremost, there was former editor of Gourmet Ruth Reichl who was joined by Pulitzer prize-winning L.A. Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold and forme ... More >>

Good Food's Map of Holes-in-the-Wall Includes OC Dives

For local foodies, Good Food needs no intro; for everyone else, it's a long-running show on KCRW-FM 89.9 hosted by famed L.A.-area chef Evan Kleiman on everything food--books, recipes, trends, articles, and holes-in-the-wall. The main voice in the latter field, of course, is LA Weekly's Jonathan Gol ... More >>

L.A. Weekly Starts Their Own Food Blog

Our sister paper, L.A. Weekly, debuted their very own food blog last week. Called Squid Ink, it features the return on Ask Mr. Gold, where resident Pulitzer-prize winning critic, Jonathan Gold, reprises his popular food advice column.We welcome the esteemed Mr. Gold and crew to the food bloggin ... More >>

Eating Food with a James Beard Award Winner

One of the pleasures of belonging to Village Voice Media is that the company hosts the best roster of food critics in the country--but you don't have to believe my boosterism? Who's the only food critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize? Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly. Who's going to be releasing a memoir of ... More >>

The Pastrami Sandwiches at Tommy's Are Massive, Glorious Gut Bombs

[This Hole-In-the-Wall Life] Thai This Now: Siam Taste of Asia

Kyochon Chicken Opens in Stanton

Of all the trendy foods to hit L.A. recently, nothing has intrigued me more than Kyochon Chicken, fried chicken as done by Koreans. Jonathan Gold's Pulitzer-prize winning taste-buds swears by it ("Current fried chicken mecca", he writes), while food bloggers, Chowhounds, and Yelpers alike have gon ... More >>

Score Some Awesome Pot (Roast) at Suzanne Tracht's Long Beach Satellite Restaurant

Beneath the Batter

A synergy of cultures at Mario's Peruvian Seafood

Stupidest Accusation of Plagiarism Ever

We here at the OC Weekly have been accused of many things over the years: libel, slander (whenever one of us appear on radio), lies, Commie-sympathizing, Reconquista cheerleading, selling ours souls to New Times, and—most memorably—"Satan instrument,"what Congressman Robert K. Dornan called the ... More >>

Weekly Writer Wins Pulitzer Prize

Food critic Jonathan Gold of our sister paper LA Weekly has won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, it was announced today. The Pulitzer Board noted Gold's "zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater." The two other excellent nominees were both from the L ... More >>

The Curtain Strikes Back

Meson G Shows LA How We Do it in the Culinary OC