KORVA COLEMAN, HOST:
We are saddened to report that Los Angeles restaurant critic Jonathan Gold died yesterday, succumbing to pancreatic cancer. Gold once described mole negro, a Mexican dish, as so dark that it seems to suck the light out of the airspace around it, spicy as a novella and bitter as tears. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007, the first food critic to do so. He relentlessly traversed greater Los Angeles to find food that would surprise his readers. Here he is speaking with NPR's Renee Montagne in 2016.
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JONATHAN GOLD: As much as you would from a novel or a painting or an opera or a movie, you can go to a restaurant, and eat a meal, and look at the people around you, and smell the smells, and taste the flavors and learn something about the world that has a lot to do with what's on your plate.
COLEMAN: Restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, who died yesterday at the age of 57.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEQUERBOARD SONG, "LIKE A BELL TO A SOUTHERLY WIND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.