‘City of Gold’ is a Toothsome Film on the Criticism of Culture and the Culture of Criticism

Midway through the film about him, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold compares eating another culture’s cuisine to watching a documentary. “It gives you the illusion of understanding things,” he says, “and maybe you have different context to put things in, and maybe that’s all you can ask for. And sometimes that’s enough.” We don’t need su…