Two Gold standards

Mark first ripped Jonathan's column in a letter to the Weekly, saying, "Bro -- now you've crossed the line. For far too long, you have been chowing down on every marine critter I've spent my life protecting, from shark's fin soup to live prawns to bluefin to wild-caught sturgeon (largely freshwater). What did I do to you in our childhood to justify this ichthyocide?"

He then blogged about it Tuesday on the Heal the Bay website. Jonathan responded by ridiculing Mark's gustatorily challenged taste buds: "The purity of my diet cannot be said to approach your daily menu of beef, diet root beer and pre-shredded cheese."

It's like a Cain-and-Abel comedy for the environmentally minded Westside set -- the only people who would actually know what Jonathan is talking about when he says in his defense: "After all, I'm not eating an omelet of least tern eggs garnished with Palos Verdes blue butterflies."

Jonathan, Mark and their middle brother Josh have been jousting since they were boys growing up in a $280-a-month rental in the humble southeast corner of Beverly Hills. Their dad was a probation officer, their mom a librarian at Dorsey High School.

"Everything was fair game at the dinner table," said Mark. "It was a very verbal household."

Verbal, but hardly gourmet. Hamburger Helper was a staple.

"Mark's palate was so tender that he insisted, when he had the Kraft macaroni dinner, on having it without the cheese," Jonathan said, mocking him. "The cheese was too zesty."

Jonathan was a music geek in high school, all-state in cello and bass. He went to UCLA, joined a punk band and reveled in the punk scene that thrived in L.A. in the late 1970s and early '80s. Taking the bus to his job as a copy editor downtown, he got the foodie bug when he attempted to eat at every single restaurant on Pico Boulevard. He became a music critic for the Weekly, then a food critic famous for celebrating hole-in-the-wall ethnic joints all over town. He did stints at Los Angeles and Gourmet magazines, writing about some of the most expensive restaurants in the country.

He maintains the look of a shipwrecked baron, with scraggly red hair and the stately girth of someone who can speak with authority about the variegated joys of pork fat.

Mark would fit better in a Dockers commercial. He was always the studious one. He also went to UCLA, and got a bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate before he left. He joined Heal the Bay in 1988 and became executive director in 1994.