JOAN GOLOMB GOODWIN

GOODWIN, JOAN GOLOMB Joan Golomb Goodwin, who wrote professionally under the moniker Naomi Wise, died on December 15, 2011, of complications from a C. dificile infection. Ms. Goodwin was born on October 25, 1943 in Queens. She grew up next to Carnegie Hall and later attended the University of Michigan. She knew her way around Greenwich Village like the back of her hand at the time folk music was in its fullest bloom when she first used "Naomi Wise" as a teenager when she signed up on a list of performers to avoid paying a cover charge. She married Michael Goodwin in 1963. The Goodwins moved to San Francisco and later drove from San Francisco to Chile, where they witnessed the coup of Salvador Allende. The Goodwins divorced in 1993. However, the trip forever influenced her politics, love for travel and love for food. She traveled to Nepal, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago and numerous other countries, where she always eagerly discovered new cuisines. Ms. Goodwin worked as a film critic for 20 years, interviewed famous directors and wrote an unauthorized biography of Francis Coppola. She also worked as a social worker and as a freelance writer, reviewing restaurants for local Bay Area publications. Despite her mother being an uninspired cook, Ms. Goodwin became a great cook and has four published cookbooks. In 2000, she left her beloved San Francisco to become the Food Editor and lead restaurant critic for the San Diego Reader, where she reviewed anonymously and where a number of restaurants who received a positive review from her, prominently display her review. She never remarried, but lived with her long-term boyfriend, T.J. Byers, until his death in 2007.