Happy New Year!!!!!

A happiest of new years' to all of you! I hope all of you are feeling better after a long night of over-consumption of, well, everything! You had a day of recovery. Today is a new day. There is football to be watched, (Go Badgers!) tasty bar food to be eaten, drinks to be drunk, toasts to be proposed, and a good time to be had by all, yet again.




To update all of you as to the recent goings on of this gourmet, gourmand, and glutton, I haven't written in awhile. Sorry about that. Finals at school and then the holidays got in the way of anything even remotely linked to passion within me and writing about anything other than neoliberalism and the current state of capitalism around the world was impossible. I am back, however, and things are going well. I was recently mentioned in an article on Eating Madison A to Z, having tried a new restaurant, Limon, with JM and Nichole. The food was pretty tasty and the conversation we were having about several of the restaurants in town was lively and a whole lot of fun. If you're interested on an honest opinion about just about every freakin' restaurant in Madison, (Limon is restaurant #758 for them) give Eating Madison A to Z a try.

The last time I posted here, I started on about my Great Madison Burger Challenge. I will compose a list of places I'm going to try later this week or next week. I have already been to two bars on my list, (Paradise Lounge and  Dexter's Pub) and I will write about those soon. Again, if you have any suggestions of a good burger within the city limits of Madison, feel free to comment here and I will add it to the list.

Until next time, cheers!

The critic within us all.

I love to eat out at restaurants. The food is, of course, the main motivation for my visit, but I do enjoy the full experience of dining out. However, if the food is REALLY good, I have no qualms about overlooking the more negative aspects of my meal. I have dined within houses of ill repute with nothing but fond memories. Sketchy kitchens, war zone-like neighborhoods, bad service, and restaurants with the personality and charm of a maximum security prison will not deter me from a great meal. Food is king in my dining experiences. Everything else is just filler.


During the time I have spent so far putting this blog together, I have thought about what direction I wanted to take it and I, ultimately, asked myself this question: do I want to write as a food writer, or do I want to write as a food critic?


I have my favorite food critics. The one I turn to for restaurant reviews, first and foremost, is Raphael Kadushin. He is a regular contributor to Bon Appétit, National Geographic Traveler, Condé Nast Traveler, Epicurious.com and Concierge.com.  He also writes restaurant reviews for a local alternative newspaper here in Madison called the Isthmus. (He's based out of New York, but he's also an editor at the University of Wisconsin Press.) His word is law when it comes to my choosing of restaurants to frequent. His tastes and his opinions have been spot on with my own since the very first article of his I read back in 2006. He's honest, first and foremost; sometimes to the point of brutality. There are restaurants here in Madison, (as, I'm sure, in other places,) that hate his guts. But, he will honestly try to find some good in a bad restaurant, as well as criticize individual dishes in restaurants he likes. These are the qualities I look for in a restaurant critic. There are other critics that write for the Isthmus that I don't like so much. Either they are nothing more than free advertising, not seeming too willing to criticize anything, or they exude a snobby, "too-good-to-eat-here" attitude that rubs me the wrong way. I'll stick with Raphael, thank you.


A new favorite of mine here in the blogosphere is Eating Madison A to Z. Some years ago, I was involved with a few friends of mine in a group we called Saturday Lunch Group. Almost every Saturday afternoon for more than two years, we would get together to eat lunch at a different restaurant. We had a simple rule that at least two people in the group, (there were three of us most of the time,) had to have not ever eaten at that restaurant. We complied a list of nearly one hundred restaurants. I was impressed with this number for a long time...until I ran into the Eating Madison A to Z folks here on the internet. As I'm writing this, they just posted their 734th restaurant review!!!! I feel like a slouch by comparison! They use the "Eats" list of the Isthmus as their guide to choosing restaurants to review, put them in alphabetical order, and off they go. 734...that boggles my mind!


So, then the question becomes, "Do I want to write restaurant reviews?" The short answer is: yes. But, I won't do them very often. As I have said before, I'm a student and I live on a students' salary. (Thank goodness I like ramen noodles!) I think, for our purposes here, I'll do one restaurant review per month and incorporate the format into the blog, along with the rest of it. As an amateur food writer and as an anthropology student, I think a holistic approach works best; a little bit of everything will work well with what I envision this blog to be. Food writer or food critic? The answer is...yes.


Next time, we'll talk about chili. I even have a recipe for ya! Until then...cheers!

This next bit of pabulum comes to you, free from commercial interuption, in three parts: Part 1, An Introduction to the Ideas That Will Make Up Parts Two and Three.

Yeah...I know.

It's been nearly a month since I last wrote something here. I have been, let's just say, less than inspired to write lately. I've spent the last month catching up on bills and things, typical of today's economic realities. As a result, my eating has been boring and cheap, even going the route of spiced up ramen noodles. But the light at the end of that tunnel is ever closer and I will find inspiration to write regularly again. I need a swift kick in the ass once in awhile, (even if the ass-kicker didn't intend it to be one) and I have reason to write again. It's all because of this.

The link I just provided, tweeted by a food blog I started reading not too long ago, Eating Madison A to Z, is one of those silly top 10 lists that are often not very representative of reality, or they try to create a list that is so subjective that normal, even-tempered people will foam at the mouth and wish death upon all those who even attempt to justify the rankings on said list. As it happens, the top 10 list here involves the "10 best American restaurants" in Madison, Wisconsin. #1...The Weary Traveler. Yes, that's what I said...The Weary Traveler, according to this website, has the best American fare in town.

OK...do me a favor...breathe. Sit down, take a few deep breaths, and relax.

There, feel better? Let's continue.

Obviously, this site isn't local, nor does it seem to have any real local connections. I'm not entirely sure how this list came to be and how the restaurants on that list got there. I say this because, for me personally, none of the restaurants mentioned would make my top 10 list here in Madison. I like most of the restaurants on the list, but none of them REALLY stand out for me. Reading this, plus reading Eating Madison A to Z, (which I recommend, by the way,) got me to thinking along two lines of thought: 1.) What, exactly, does "American" cuisine mean? and 2.) what IS the best restaurant serving American cuisine?

I have two more posts coming your way soon, gentle and not-so-gentle readers. Beware!