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Philly Mag Mocks Food Bloggers and Blog Readers

Photo: dbdbrobot/flickr

I’m an emigre from the restaurant biz in NYC to the restaurant biz in Philly. From my vantage, the food world in this fair city seems like its just reaching an awkward adolescence. Celebrity chefs? We have maybe two or three, and one isn’t even a chef! The folks at Philly Mag don’t agree with my assessment. John Marchese sees The City of Brotherly Love as a jaded foodie town, deafened by the constant drone of food bloggers: “Now, food, restaurants, chefs — the whole gastro-industrial complex — might just be the most hyper-examined subject in this city.” Maybe “our future will resemble a kind of Zombieland, with cities populated by insatiable, vacant-eyed creatures who emerge at night to eat food and talk about food and blog about food and tweet about food.” Why can’t the exploration and discussion of food and restaurants be a rewarding, non-zombieish endeavor? Why can’t we talk about foie gras and employ our brains? Five different blogs speculating on one restaurant opening? Get a life, bloggers and blog-readers, he says. Focus on something more important than crème fraîche and chef changeovers. With all these gossip-hungry reporters searching mercilessly for a scoop, John thinks no restaurant can fly under the radar, escaping the talons of the blogger hawks. I’m sorry, John. I work at one of the most amazing restaurants in the city and we are very much under the radar. I think there are copious interesting, thoughtful commentaries on food culture and dining yet to be written. And I look forward to reading (and maybe even writing) lots of quality food-focused stories in the days and years to come.

Philly Mag Mocks Food Bloggers and Blog Readers