25 March 2010

Go Read Denveater's and My "Menu Writing: The Good, The Bad, The Excruciating"

Once in a while I get invited to do a guest stint on the blog of a fellow food writer. My latest, "Menu Writing: The Good, The Bad, The Excruciating" is a collaboration with my old friend Denveater: the ever readable, always funny, often provocative Denver-based food blogger.

Denveater and I start by expressing admiration for a few restaurant menus that rise above the great bloated bulge of the unextraordinary. But mostly we have fun busting on less-careful restaurateurs, servers, and industry pundit types for their fumbling and bumbling with menu prose, food item pronunciations, and usage of cooking terms. Here's a sample:

"antipasta for antipasto -- I heard this recently on the Boston-local TV restaurant 'review' show, The Phantom Gourmet. I wonder: if you were to order the the antipasta and the pasta and they arrived at the same time, would the universe explode?"

We had a ball writing this piece; hope you enjoy it, too!