Metacritic reviews

City of Gold transcends its modest methods, largely because it connects Mr. Gold’s appealing personality with a passionate argument about the civic culture of Los Angeles and the place of food within it.

The film affectively defends food critic Jonathan Gold's assertion that it's ultimately cooking that makes us human.

City of Gold is simultaneously a vibrant, colorful love letter to the unsung parts of Los Angeles, a populist philosophy of food and culture, and a thesis on what criticism should be.

Gold is merely the conduit for the film's real focus: Like his own reviews, City of Gold is a love letter to L.A.

What it lacks in cohesion, City of Gold makes up for in its subject’s wit and wisdom.

[An] accessible and informative close-up documentary.

At a moment when public discourse seems so often focused on exacerbating hostile divisions, this docu’s joyful embrace of human (as well as edible) variety as “the spice of life” seems particularly, well, filling.

Plain-spoken and unpretentious, he’s a fount of surprising information and informed opinion.

The film is an agreeable document of cultural processing that should especially appeal to the niche crowd at its center — it's more or less mandatory viewing for L.A. foodies.

Director Laura Gabbert pairs her wide-ranging, blithely fawning approach to Gold with a vision of Los Angeles as blinkered as it is tempting.