Webster Hall Landmarked; Bruni Bestows Honor on BostonRest easy, as Webster Hall is safe at last, highly desirable restaurants exist in both Boston and Philadelphia, and food companies finally learned to court bloggers. Especially weird niche ones.
Mediavore
Ilan Hall to Open Tapas Truck in L.A.; Chefs Keep on BloggingTop Chef champ Ilan Hall’s rumored L.A project is now a restaurant truck that serves tapas and has a foldout bar. [MSNBC]
Related: For Ilan Hall, a Taco Shack of One’s Own
The president of Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., the California beef company responsible for the largest meat recall in American history, acknowledged yesterday the illegal slaughter of sick cows at his plant after a congressional panel forced him to watch the undercover video depicting the abuse. [WSJ]
Chefs’ blogs keep getting better and better, and there are increasingly more and more of them. At what point are they all just going to leave the kitchen and become full-time bloggers? [LAT]
Back of the House
Tony Bourdain Is His Own Forum TrollA new post is up on the Bourdain blog, but there’s no need to comment yet. Bourdain, in looking back at having wrapped up the latest season of No Reservations, decided to anticipate the response by giving “a few helpful advance reviews — to save food nerds time when the shows actually air.” These prereviews (“I found the civitos at San Marco, a tiny place next to the mercado, far superior to the place Bourdain went. And the morcillas he ate are nowhere near as good as the ones at…….”) are the work of someone who has read quite a few forum posts. And, we suspect, even written a few.
Past Imperfect/Future Shock [Anthony Bourdain’s Blog/Travel Channel]
NewsFeed
Sixth Borough Gets a New ‘Phood’ BlogAnthony Bourdain may have dismissed Philly as a “two-horse town” (Starr and Perrier), but since it is after all the “sixth borough” (a term coined by our own Jessica Pressler) and since scenesters may soon embrace the mid-Atlantic, we thought we’d turn you on to Philebrity’s just-launched food blog, Phoodie.info: So far, its coverage is delightfully snide, and we’ve learned that the town’s burrito scene, at least, is thriving! But with all due respect to the “Reaper” pretzel at Trax Food Market, what we really love is this hamburger dress created by a Messiah College grad. We’ve already bought one for our future wife.
Phoodie.info [Philebrity]
NewsFeed
New Food Site Wants Restaurant-Types to BlogDon’t say we don’t hook you up — first the chance to cook with Rocco DiSpirito, then a free Thai dinner, and, now, assuming you’re a chef, sommelier, or waiter, here’s your chance to blog! A “soon-to-launch new culinary Website” is looking for an industry-type to “blog about your daily exploits and opinions” for $25-$50 per post. That’s almost as much as the tip you’d get for pushing a 2002 Opus One!
Seeking Culinary Bloggers [Ed 2010]
Mediavore
Boston Mayor Makes Good on Super Bowl Bet; Diet Sodas Linked to MetabolicRemember that little food bet Hizzoner made with Boston’s mayor over who’d win the Super Bowl? Well, pay-up time has come, and our northern neighbors will be donating 100 cups of New England clam chowder, 42 lbs. of coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, twelve dozen Boston cream pies and twelve dozen Parker house rolls, 100 Old Tyme hot dogs and 100 Al Fresco chicken sausages, twenty pizzas, five cases of Brigham’s Boston You’re My Home ice cream, five cases of Cherry on the Top frozen-yogurt bars from Elan, and 100 servings of Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt to City Harvest. Happily, no one has to eat it. [Zagat Buzz]
Drop that Diet Coke! Researchers have found a correlation between the consumption of diet soda and incidences of metabolic syndrome, a series of unhealthful factors that can lead to diabetes and heart disease. [NYT]
More bad news for fish: The FDA confirmed that several outbreaks of ciguatera fish poisoning have taken place across the country due to consumption of fish harvested in the northern Gulf of Mexico. [AP]
Beef
The ‘Wall Street Journal’ Tweaks Food Bloggers, UnjustlyThe Wall Street Journal, having discovered the existence of food bloggers, raises the usual question about them over the weekend, namely: Given that chefs know who they are, and frequently feed them for free, how can their posts be trusted? (The article’s other point, about restaurants shilling themselves in online forums, is valid and then some.) But from our point of view, straddling the line between old media and new, we think the bloggers are getting a bad rap.
