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Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Zagat - a paperback compilation of restaurant ratings submitted by pithy patrons. Though widely believed to be founded by two New Yorkers, it is actually the result of a government initiative to increase the use of quotation marks.
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
Rumors of Zagat's death are greatly exaggerated. Lots and lots of people buy, use, and obsess over the printed guide. Zagat can make money. And I think it's a great deal - about the price of a few Sunday Times. Most importantly, I find the ratings to be pretty accurate reflections of the experience. Zagat has earned trust.
Yelp is nice for locating eats by location or genre, but no, your clever haiku about the Red Hook Ball Fields is neither helpful nor humorous. Most of the reviewers are insipid hipsters, and the really sharp reviewers often get drowned out in the noise.
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
Fresh, wonderful ramen.
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Thai Pizza Co in St. Louis: Testing the Universality of Pizza
The best dishes at Thai Pizza Co are the noodle dishes - one of the few places in STL that can go crazy spicy and still have lots of flavor. For some real STL-style pizza goodness, the conversation begins and ends with Fortel's.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Zagat - a paperback compilation of restaurant ratings submitted by pithy patrons. Though widely believed to be founded by two New Yorkers, it is actually the result of a government initiative to increase the use of quotation marks.
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
Rumors of Zagat's death are greatly exaggerated. Lots and lots of people buy, use, and obsess over the printed guide. Zagat can make money. And I think it's a great deal - about the price of a few Sunday Times. Most importantly, I find the ratings to be pretty accurate reflections of the experience. Zagat has earned trust.
Yelp is nice for locating eats by location or genre, but no, your clever haiku about the Red Hook Ball Fields is neither helpful nor humorous. Most of the reviewers are insipid hipsters, and the really sharp reviewers often get drowned out in the noise.
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
Fresh, wonderful ramen.
In Videos: Chefs Taste Test Military 'Meals, Ready to Eat'
I had an MRE a couple years ago - it was filling, satisfactory, and kind of fun. It reminded me of camping meals: not at all gourmet, but completely satisfying. I really liked the mini Tabasco bottle, too. Even when mess halls get built, military chefs lack the luxury of farmers market ingredients and do not cook for an audience whose interests would be served by "small plates."
Everyone involved in the Tribune article understands that this food is made for special conditions, but it doesn't exactly come off as being particularly nice to the soldiers who are eating this. I know if a chef came into my kitchen and made such faces, I would feel a little hurt.
school lunches, now and back when i went in the 60's & 70's
School lunches at my HS in NYC (mid-late 90s) were most definitely not homemade, but were relatively wholesome and complete. Not as nutritious as fresh food, but not as bad as fast food. Unlike fast food, it was served in reasonable portions. Also, lunch for a dollar was an exceptional value - same goes for 35c breakfast.
Traitor Joe's?
It's no secret that TJs sells private label items made by other companies. They happen to have a high quality standard to match the more reasonable price point. Unlike most shops doing this and placing them alongside brand names, they'll only carry limited varieties of an item. If you want a taste of this on a more budget level, check out ALDI. Yes, the place where you have to pay 25c deposit to use a shopping cart. They're about the most fantastic low end supermarket ever. No frills, mostly private label, and unbeatable prices. Same great satisfaction guarantee as TJs. I miss their $1.69 monster box of Frosted Mini Wheats dearly. And guess what - ALDI owns TJs.
Win Tickets to the 'Village Voice' Choice Eats Event in NYC
Bedoin Tent on Atlantic Ave. - Best. Falafel. Ever. It takes the place of my dearly departed former fav, Win Hop at 51 Bayard.
Imo's Pizza in St. Louis
Even nine years in St. Louis didn't turn me into an Imo's convert. The cheese is just too gooey and Velveeta-like. But a few places there know the trick for making STL style delicious - ditch the provel for mozzarella, and drown you in toppings. Best of the bunch is Fortel's, by far.
Zen Burger: A New (Meatless) Concept in Fast Food
I love a beefy burger, but would be far more inclined to order veggie fast food if it's fresh like a beef burger - and not the same Boca-star patty that I have in the freezer.
Thai Pizza Co in St. Louis: Testing the Universality of Pizza
@bogusrogus: Good point regarding the bread. I still the cheese issue is relevant, but you're definitely right to point out that people not particularly concerned with making bread would have trouble producing a quality crust.
@foolishpoolish: I'm with you on saag paneer pizza 100%. In fact, it was thinking of that that stopped me from condemning all of Asia. And back to my cheese point and bogusrogus's bread point - neither of those apply to India, a country that does use cheese and puts out nan, a classic flatbread.
@finewinendine: Thanks for the editing help. I've fixed the text to reflect my original sentence. I must have messed up cutting and pasting in the editing process.
@Lyra Ngalia and esseelig: I feel bad writing a place off after one visit so I'll have to give the chicken satay pizza a try next time I'm in U City. Could be a while before that happens though.
Imo's Pizza in St. Louis
Imo's is ok if you really need a St. Louis style pizza fix, but the best is Joe Bacardi's in Eureka, Mo. It's the best there is.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
OK, OK. We finally all had some time to go over these together. (Sorry for the delay.) We voted in secret, tallied our ballots, and the winners are:
obersts001
dbcurrie
dcoates
jamesl8n
wookie
Winners have been notified by email and also appear on our Contest Winners page.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Santa always wants everybody to be good.
Otherwise you won't get any goodies.
And you know what goodies are?
Stay away from the sweets as much as possible
It's no good
And God bless our troops
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Mushroom - Mother Nature's mold. Grown in dirt, smell like dirt, taste like heaven. May induce satisfaction, hallucination or increase in height or speed (a concept highly marketed by the Nintendo Corporation). Also deadly.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
rolls: a mixture of water and wheat flour leavened with yeast and seasoned with salt formed into small balls and baked. A smaller form of loaf bread. Not to be confused with rolls referring to flabby deposits of fat around the abdomen from eating way to much baked yeast dough slathered with butter.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Banana: A milky-white dense fruit grown in its very own fruit carrying receptacle. However, even though it is both a healthy and delicious treat, take note, that it can also double as a deadly weapon in such arenas like Mario Kart, or Looney Toons chase scenes. Further adding to this "bad boy" appeal is its extremely taboo phallic-esque shape, which has resulted in it being touted as the "ladies man" of the fruit world; joining the ranks of such other famous studs such as the cucumber. Is also prone to be spelled out repeatedly in overplayed Gwen Stefani songs.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
To*fur*key: n /tO-'fer-kE/ pl -fur*kies : a cunning invention of the poultry farming industry intended to demonstrate the ultimate superiority of real meat.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Slice: Surely Loving Italian Cuisine Everyday.
Weekend Book Giveaway: 'The Devil's Food Dictionary'
Bacon: (n) Once worshiped as part of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Bacon), this delicious pork offering was replaced by the Holy Spirit after allegedly seducing believers to worship it above all. It is a widely held belief that the fruit offered to Eve in the Garden was bacon-wrapped.
see also: satan's strips; tempter's bait.
Imo's Pizza in St. Louis
WAIT ONE MINUTE!!!!!
I have to come to Imo's defense. As a native St. Louisian, I have had the pleasure of being raised on imo's pizza and wouldn't have it any other way. I am a big fan of the simplicity that the pizza offers. The soft "gooey"cheese (which is a nice change from mozzarella), the slightly sweet tomato paste based sauce, and the ultra thin cracker like crust topped with whatever you like. I do agree that this style of pizza may not be the typical "NY style" pizza or any other pizza that is common. If you are looking for that kind of pizza, go for it, but if if you want the cheezy soft, paper thin, tomato goodness it brings, you really need to give it a try. The best pizza EVER!
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
We are naturally a progressive society which means the internet will progressively steal market share wherever it can compete with an offline product. Every business owner will need an internet marketing plan.
Jippidy.com - Video Yellow Pages
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
Zagat seems totally obsolete to me at this point. I second mepm231's recommendation of using a combination. I rely on Yelp and Chowhound for reviews. You do have to take the good and the bad with a grain of salt because some people get a bit enthusiastic when posting either exaggerating the positive or the negative, but if there are at least 4-5 reviews and some comments, I think using the user-generated reviews from Yelp and Chowhound yields better dining satisfaction than Zagat.
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
If you want to get your free Zagat, just register and vote.
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
I usually use a combination of Yelp, Chowhound, menupages.com and Zagat. Yelp and Zagat gives you good ideas to start with, their search by neighborhood feature is pretty good. I agree that most of the descriptions are written by people who don't take the time to write a good review. Yelp is especially good around non-metropolitan areas where Zagat/Chow/menupages have no coverage. I then do a Chowhound search with my findings from yelp to see if anything intelligent has been written on the restaurant. Lastly I use menupages to look up the menu and the price range of the restaurant. The only downside to menupages (at least in new york) is that they don't have a vast selection of outerborough menus.
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
with all that said, i used to use citysearch. whatever Zaget is, it's nowhere near as bad as citysearch.
Zagat vs. Yelp: A Restaurant Review 2.0 Showdown?
The beauty of the web is that you can play catch-up. It's premature to say a company is "done for" unless they really are too stubborn to make more money. Pay-walls just don't work this day in age.
Last time I saw Zagat's site behind the pay wall, they seemed to have done a good job with the site. If they would unleash that to the web and utilize web advertising...
Really, I'm surprised other sites like urban spoon hasn't taken off more. True, their site sucks a lot more than Yelp. And at this very moment, Michael Jordan's Steakhouse is ranked #1. Seriously?!?
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
Congrats to our winner, yrrab! We'll be emailing you shortly with all the details. Thanks to everyone for playing along.
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
Slow poached, massaged octopus. So tender. Wow.
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
This question is like asking to choose between children!
If I had to choose just one dish as my favorite in all Japanese cuisine, it would be the pairing of hot, steamy salted edamame with a cold quality sake. That would be perfection.
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
a tie between mochi and mochi
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
moochi with angko (red bean) inside... yum.
Ticket Giveaway: Japanese Food and Drink Demo and Tasting
does the dynamite from Ave A Sushi count as Japanese?
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The best dishes at Thai Pizza Co are the noodle dishes - one of the few places in STL that can go crazy spicy and still have lots of flavor. For some real STL-style pizza goodness, the conversation begins and ends with Fortel's.