Foodie for Thought

June 5, 2006

It's no secret that I love me some good food, and as Will knows, I definitely love me new restaurants and the San Francisco dining scene.

For the last month or so, the foodie blog "Between Meals" by SF Chronicle's Executive Food and Wine Editor Michael Bauer has been vastly entertaining, and the comments that readers post on that blog are interesting too.

I've also recently discovered a blog site called "Tablehopper", that's written by a freelance journalist named Marcia Gagliardi, a woman with her finger on the pulse of everything that's going on in the SF food scene. She often scoops the major papers on new restaurant openings, chef gossip, great food reviews. She also has a weekly newsletter that you can sign up for that's a sweet piece of culinary reading. And the piece-de-resistance of her offerings is a feature called "Tip Please", where you can ask for a restaurant recommendation when you're parents are in town and you have no idea where to take them. She takes into consideration the occasion, date and timing, vibe/atmosphere, budget, and preferences for the recommendation. What's impressive about Marcia's Tablehopper is that she is able to cover as much ground as the entire Food staff at the Chronicle and it's not even her full-time job.

Also, while Will's college buddy Kareem was in town last week, he introduced us to his girlfriend's food blog (Geneve's Kitchen). Geneve's day job is in pharmaceutical sales, but she definitely has a passion and talent for food, which is evident in her blog. Geneve experiments with fantastic ingredients to create healthy recipes, and documents her experience in her blog, complete with the full recipe and a mouth-watering picture to make you insanely jealous of Kareem reaping all the benefits of having a girlfriend skilled in the culinary arts.

In seeing Geneve's food pictures, I confirm to myself that I need how to learn to take better digipics! And maybe get a new digicam...

This is where I draw the line at calling myself a true foodie, as I like to eat, but I'm not so creative in the kitchen. After all, we have a kitchen the size of a closet and by the time I get home, I default to my standby 30-minute recipes. So, I guess I could call myself an "Indulgent Foodie"...?

If you're interested in checking out these sites, I've added them to the "Foodie Links" sidebar on my blog. I also added the link to OpenTable, the online reservation system that I've been using since 2004 to book reservations to a bulk of the restaurants in the city. It's great now that the majority of restaurants in the city use this system and it's a great way to find new places to try as well. There's an OpenTable for almost every major city in North America (Calgary too!).

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Where In The World Is Robert Update

"Back in hanoi, Vietnam after 3 days of trekking around Sapa (very close to the china border). Trekked through hilltribe villages with amazing views and even spent the night at a tay villagers hut. They cooked amazing food including a duck they killed on the spot. Wonderful time. I just got back to Hanoi after a 10 hr overnight train ride. Spending one more day in Hanoi before finally starting to head south. 12-14 hr bus ride to hue tomorrow. Couple of days there and then onto China Beach for several days of beach relaxation and then to hoi an for further chilling and to have some clothes made and shipped back to the states.

Oh ya, I ate snake the other week. They kill the sucker right in front of you and then drain its blood into rice wine. You drink the bloody rice wine. They then take out the still beating heart and add some rice wine and you drink it down. After that they cook up every part of the snake into about 10 different dishes. Some are good and some tasted like dirt (i.e. the fried up ribs). Interesting experience. I have photos and video of all."