J. Gold apologizes to Paula Deen

The announcement of a Tournament of Roses grand marshal often gets worldwide attention, even if it's not a particularly newsworthy event (person chosen to ride in car and wave at people). Tuesday, the announcement became newsworthy when Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold let fly with his unvarnished opinion of Paula Deen, the 2011 marshal, for her embrace of Twinkie-pie cuisine.

Today, Gold, apparently feeling somewhat badly about his reaction, penned an apology letter to Deen, saying he treated her as a brand rather than a person. From the letter:

But our mutual friends say that you are delightful. You clearly love food. And I know that if we were to sit down together, we would probably get along just fine - I suspect that you, like me, could talk for an hour about the finer points of grits, or country ham, or pie crust without beginning to exhaust the topic. I realize that your recipes reflect the way people actually do cook in the South, rather than the way they think they should cook; that they skew toward getting dinner on the table as opposed to an Olympian ideal.

Deen is as charming and good-natured as any Southerner could be. But having grown up myself in a home with Southern-influenced cooking that often relied on the horrible, refined ingredients offered by chain supermarkets, and having since been converted to be more adventurous with ethnic foods and fresher ingredients, I think Gold had a good point that he shouldn't let go of - even if he's sorry about the way he framed it. He'll be on tonight's "Which Way, LA?" to expand on his thoughts. Listen here starting at 7 p.m.