Serious Eats: stu_spivac's Profile

For the record, the SE article linked from this post isn't the article that was plagiarized. It took me a while to figure that out. In fact, I had to search SE to find the plagiarized article.

stu_spivac at 10:50PM on 11/06/08

From Serious Eats

Serious Eats City Guide Premiere: New York (How to Leave Here Pleasantly Full)

I'm planning to visit New York in a couple weeks. The only question I have left is what to pack for dinner on travel day. I'm looking for something that can be stored in a cooler or at room temperature and be eaten at a highway rest stop. I was already thinking about a sandwich from Blue Ribbon Bakery but fried chicken sounds even better. Except. A mere month ago no less an authority than Ed Levine himself said the fried chicken sandwich at Blue Ribbon Bakery was consistently disappointing. So, is the fried chicken as fried chicken that much different from the fried chicken as a sandwich or has something changed dramatically in the last month?

stu_spivac at 11:12AM on 08/28/08

From Serious Eats

Huarache Glory at Huaraches Dona Chio in Chicago

I've only been to the Maxwell Street Market once but I recall a sea of food vendors and I remember seeing huaraches there for the first time. I was already too stuffed to try one. Aren't there several that serve huaraches? Which one should I look for?

stu_spivac at 11:55AM on 08/09/08

From Serious Eats

Yelp Extorting Businesses

Also, regarding the quality of reviews at Yelp!... Obviously, you have to take them for what they're worth. Unedited, quickly jotted notes from random strangers. They're pretty useless individually. Collectively, I think it's very valuable. If restaurant A has 1 bad review and restaurant B has 10 reviews, 8 good, then I think you can make a reasonable inference of relative quality. Of course, you'll be misled on occasion but it's certainly safer than walking down the street and picking a restaurant at random. And professional reviews aren't perfect either. Yelp! is just another tool. Personally, I get more use out of Serious Eats recommendations, local papers and Google but Yelp! is another tool and it may have its place.

stu_spivac at 2:35PM on 08/05/08

From Serious Eats

Yelp Extorting Businesses

So, the reporter talks to two people. One is apparently gaming Yelp! with practices that are questionable at best. The other seems to be a case of sour grapes. The proprietor seemed to expect that her business account would allow her to quash any number of bad reviews. Her Yelp! page is generally positive but there are a small number of very negative ratings. This is a feature, not a bug.

Yelp!, on the other hand, is offering businesses the ability to shape their presence on the internet. I don't know exactly how their salespeople are selling the feature. They may be making misleading or unreasonable promises. However, the feature that they're selling is clearly ethical and nothing like extortion. They don't move or remove reviews, positive or negative, except where the reviews are believed to be fraudulent. I suppose it comes down to an issue of credibility. The proprietors interviewed for the article both seem sketchy and I have no reason to doubt Yelp!.

Frankly, I'm disappointed at how this is being handled by Serious Eats. Even if you give more credence to the news report than I do, you can't ignore that this is a two-sided issue. Your screaming scare-title gives a bad name to blogging.

I actually reported a fraudulent review to Yelp! once. I knew the restaurant in question well enough to be certain that the review was a lie. It was actually racist, too. I was disappointed that it took so long for Yelp! to address the issue. Months. At least. It's gone now though.

I've used Yelp! in the past because the map implementation is fantastic. It was much easier to do a broad survey of restaurants in a given area using Yelp! as compared to Google Maps.

stu_spivac at 2:27PM on 08/05/08

From Serious Eats

Win Fuchsia Dunlop's 'Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper'

Shrimp with scrambled eggs
steamed chicken

stu_spivac at 12:17AM on 08/02/08

From Serious Eats

Introducing Photograzing: Share Your Favorite Food Photos Here

I never participated in Tastespotting because they didn't permit links to bare photos. (The photos had to be part of a blog post.) I'm looking forward to participating here. Even though it allows me to participate, I mention it because it may have been a wise policy. You should keep an eye on flickr-centric posts and see if you consider them to be as worthy as full-fledged blog posts.

I'm curious whether the new Tastespotting still has that policy. I noticed that they're now linking directly to the source of the image from the RSS feed. I'm glad Photograzing also does that and I hope it stays that way. As I recall, the old Tastespotting and one or two of the pretenders to the tastespotting throne required you to click through their home pages to get to the original source of the image. I'd rather see ads in the rss feed than have to click twice.

stu_spivac at 10:54PM on 07/02/08

From Serious Eats