Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Hmmm... some interesting food for thought (pun, of course, intended.)

Here are a few disparate thoughts:

-- As mentioned in the comment above, a gradation of stars allows for a list of ratings to be scanned easily. Yes, a list of letter grades can be scanned as well, but not as easily.

-- You talk about docking the perfect hot dog a perfect grade because there's no theoretical seat. The Ny Times and NY Mag do this as well. NY Mag even says as much at the end of the review -- "3 star food minus one star for the loud room." Hmmm... maybe this is where Zagat actually got it right? They break out the rating of food from service from setting. For those who REALLY care about the food -- those, dare I say it, who are SERIOUS about food, the pure food rating is what matters, no?

Ed, losing weight, as you know is a pretty basic math equation. Calories in minus the calories burned.

You seem, understandably, to have trouble controlling the total number of calories in. Again, considering your line of work, totally understandable.

So why not tackle the other side of the equation -- burn more calories. How? More exercise. If you could truly dedicate an hour a day to some hard-core fitness I bet you'd see a dramatic change. (Just be sure not to splurge on the calories after the workout!)

Peter

Not bad, not bad at all.

I'll give you the aforementioned Marco Polo exemption on the salt and what the heck, on the olive oil too.

But you blew it on the yogurt. And buying that other yogurt made in Queens may not have helped -- it depends on where they get their milk. It doesn't help to get yogurt made in Queens if the milk is trucked in from another time zone. ;)

A cook who dabbles in ugly-but-yummy baking.

Ithaca? No problem!

Burger? Glenwood Pines -- about 5 miles up the west coast of the lake -- check it out here: http://www.glenwoodpines.com/

Pizza - The Nines in Collegetown is not to be missed.

As a burger and pizza guy, you might also want to check out Louie's Lunchtruck on campus.

Stay warm!

Would you believe it? Chinese food... and lobster. Clearly two of the most important food groups on the planet, both of which I now absolutely love.

Ok, I'll play the contrarian. I think whipped cream is just fine on a milkshake.

Why? It gives you a less flavorful starting off point that makes the rest of the milkshake taste that much more rich once you're past the whipped cream. :)

Agreed with Myszka on letting users have avatars/thumbnail photos. It's SO much easier to notice the same personalities in conversation when you can pick up on them visually as well as by their chosen name. It's one of the great lackings in Chowhound's redesign.

Congrats on the launch -- now get The Hungry Cabbie on board! ;)

Ed, while I love your blog I was disappointed to see your comment on the Tim Zagat and Telepan.

I briefly worked at Zagat in 2000, and in fact reported directly to Tim and Nina. I can say many disparaging things about Zagat but I'll tell you this: Tim takes those ratings as serious as a heart attack.

I'm confident that Telepan ended up the #1 newcomer just as Tim describes in his post above: a simple mathematical averaging of the ratings submitted.

In the future, rather than accusing Tim of falsifying information, why not ask him for an interview and hit him with a lot of hard questions? I'm sure the resulting post would be much more interesting to your readers.

It sounds a little... exclusionary.

Be that as it may, it's also not the first such chain. In L.A. there's La Pizza Loca. Some of the stores have a little outside seating or a couple plastic chairs inside, but it's mainly oriented towards take-out.