The first food critic to be award a Pulitzer Prize, Jonathan Gold is esteemed for his perception as a cultural observer as well as a culinary expert. Laura Gabbert’s “City of Gold” neatly echoes that appeal by amplifying its native Los Angeleno subject’s love of both gastronomic diversity and his wildly diverse hometown itself. You needn’t be previously knowledgable about either to be charmed by this ebullient documentary.

Gold is a “failed cellist,” a former L.A. Weekly proofreader and a music writer/editor who first seriously investigated his love of food with an epic quest to sample every eatery along 15-mile Pico Boulevard from downtown to Santa Monica. That alerted him to the intricacies of the sprawling megalopolis’ populations, where immigrant pockets can create a miniature “Tehrangeles” or a locus for specialties from a particular Mexican region.

Jonathan Gold is a genius and one of the best writers of modern america. This is a documentary no one should miss.