Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Getting rid of Flash should be step 1 for any restaurant site. Often myself, and others I know, go to their phones for the menu of a restaurant to see if it will work, but can't even access it due to the use of Flash. Restaurant websites don't need to be animated, or have music or movies, or anything else that would require Flash.

Preferably, your website should detect that it's a mobile phone and launch a smaller, more customized version of the site with just the hours, address, contact info, and menu. Mobile people are probably looking to eat now, not browse photos of all the dishes you might want to put up.

When I went on a serious diet and health kick and dropped 50 lbs (it's still gone), I gave up burgers and many other things for over half a year. Now I have 1 a month or so typically, maybe more if I'm in a new place and want to try a few, but that low number also has to do with the fact that burgers in North Carolina suck. Put me someplace that can cook ground beef something other than well done and my eating is going to go up.

Picking the best is incredibly easy: There's a Ritz Carlton just outside of Las Vegas. My wife (then girlfriend) and I did the tasting menu there on Valentine's Day six years ago, and we were unbelievably stuffed by the end when they bring out a French press pot of Ethiopian coffee for us. That was, far and away, the best coffee I'd ever had. Back then I was a cream and sugar person (just cream now), but it was so fantastic we could drink it straight. Despite knowing that we were already too full, we did out best to drink as much of it as we could. Unfortunately when we ordered coffee from room service for breakfast the next morning, it wasn't even close to what we had after dinner. We still talk about that as being the best coffee we've ever had.

The worst coffee I've ever had is at a Shari's Diner in Oregon. Once we had that, we stopped going there anymore. I expect some iffy coffee from a place like that, but this was flat out undrinkable, no matter how much cream or sugar we added to it.

Now I'm going to spend all day fantasizing about the coffee at the Ritz Carlton again.

We did two last year, meat and produce, that we split with the same group of people. The issue was a lack of diversity in the produce that we received (tons of tomatoes and peppers, and you can only freeze so much pasta sauce), and cuts of meat that no one wanted (jowl bacon, for example). My wife is a pickier eater than I, so it didn't work that well for us.

Perhaps had the meat CSA given people more choice in what they wanted (I'm sure some people prefer pork chops or lamb chops over ground sausage or ground beef, which we would prefer) it would have worked better for us, but we might try again in a few years when we're feeding more than two people for dinner. Until then, we'll buy from the same farms at the Farmer's Market on the weekend.

Though I was glad she's gone, part of me was wondering what in the world Robin would have presented in this challenge if Eli had been eliminated last week. Oh, that would not have been pretty.

Apizza Scholls is fantastic, but the current location opened well before 2007. I ate there numerous times before leaving Portland in 2005, including a going away dinner. I don't think the store had a sign up with it's name before 2007 or so, but it was open.

I usually get the Trader Joe's Honey since it's convenient, and far cheaper than most of the other brands out there. I like the FAGE Total, but it costs 2-3x as much as Trader Joe's and has 2-3 times the calories and fat as well (at least the honey version).

If we can find a way to tax junk food that lets us subsidize healthier food for people, then I would be all for that. Trying to determine what qualifies as junk food would take far more work, but I'm sure that given enough effort we can come up with something (perhaps based on if the calories are all from fat and sugar, if it's refined grains or whole grains, use of high fructose corn syrup, etc...).

If the formula/rules that are used to determine if something is subject to the tax starts to lead to even small changes, like using whole grain buns instead of white buns on a burger, regular sugar over corn syrup in products, and so on to get products healthy enough to not be taxed (though not subsidized), that would be great. And if subsidies lead to the point that McDonalds can offer some healthy, more local alternatives for the same price as a Big Mac on their menu, then I think everyone would be happy.

Sure, people are going to still eat more Big Mac's than they should (and I love nothing more than a good cheeseburger, which the Big Mac isn't, but still), at least people will have a good, healthy alternative that's affordable at the same locations. It's still better if people were able to cook at home and prepare food that way, but healthy options are a good start.

My CSA has been including these in the box for the past month or so. I've eaten pretty much all of them this way so far, and have yet to get one that blisters my mouth or anything close to it. However, I can eat 15 of them in a sitting without any problem.

I got a little annoyed with the comments from the judges last night that while they think Stefan might be the best technical chef, they never got a feeling for who he was from his food, or any soul behind it. I thought the squab dish, and his duck breast and dumplings at the family style dinner, were very good examples of who he was. I was just surprised his dessert came out so poorly after his dessert was the only thing that saved his team at all during restaurant wars.

They do need to find a way to take past performance into consideration for the final. Even if it's only something like you earn (or lose) points for winning quickfires and making the Top 3 during the season, losing points for the Bottom 3. Then in the finale you get either extra money to shop for ingredients, or extra time to prepare, compared to everyone else. I also loved that Carla, unlike everyone else, didn't go straight for Foie Gras or Caviar for her meal. I hated that everything on Iron Chef always wound up with Foie Gras on it somehow.

The main reason I would buy the card is that I can get 10% off whole bean coffee as well, which adds up pretty fast in my household (3 bags a month probably, at $14 a bag). If you really want to try to make your trips to Starbucks cheaper, you can get $100 in gift cards at Costco for only $80, then combine that with the Gold Card, and you're getting 30% off all your drinks. Sure, you might go more often, but getting my Eggnog Latte down to $2.80 from around $4 would be great.

I have not been, but my wife and I are going for a week for our honeymoon over Christmas this year, so the book would be very useful to us then.