Hand-Picked Goodness

What I'm reading about this week:



The Memory Addict: A New York Magazine profile of controversial and professional memoirist, Augusten Burroughs. The article opens with this quote, "Memory is the same as imagination." Can you see where this is going? It's worth the read -- especially for the last two paragraphs.



To Die For: Another NY Mag profile -- this time written by Adam Platt. Our beloved restaurant critic travels to Japan to play Russian roulette...with his dinner.



Much Ado About Miley: Newsweek takes a look at what went wrong on the Miley Cyrus/Lebowitz photo shoot. Read this article, think about it for 2 minutes (tops) and then please, move on.



Lose/Lose Scenarios: The New York Times reviews Grand Theft Auto IV, a video game that CNN says, "Will sell about 6 million copies and make about $400 million in sales worldwide in its first week alone." While praising the shit out of it, they forgot to mention the insanely violent nature of this game - especially through its depiction of women. Jezebel luckily reminds us.

I Believe the Heart of Life is Good

Dad is the guy with the gray hair sitting in the blue chair and the Dalai Lama is the guy in the monk outfit.

My dad met and spent time with the Dalai Lama recently -- an experience that I think is cool enough to talk about on my blog. I spent some time hearing from him and my mom (who also had the privilege of meeting the Dalai, listen to him speak and shake his hand), and it was inspiring to me, the third party, to hear about what an interesting and amazing man they had just encountered.

The Dalai once said this, "As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery…we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion. Love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.”

Basically, he believes that the meaning of life is happiness and if you are able to see the positive side of life, of situations and of yourself, you will find it. I'm thinking that's not a terrible mindset to adopt. I like where his head is at.

Pretty awesome that my pops got to chill with him for a day.

Facebook "Chat" Means Admitting You Use Facebook

As you may have heard, Facebook launched a new feature within the past few weeks -- the ability to chat with your Facebook friends while you stalk their profiles, photos and relationship status updates. When I found out that this application had launched, my first thought was, "It's about f'ing time." But as I let the newness of the idea wear off, I began to realize there are a few inherent problems with the ability to chat while on Facebook:

1. Admitting You Use It
No one likes to strut around and boast about the fact that they stalk friends and perfect strangers all day. No one likes to admit that updating their profile gives them a small tingle in their spine and when an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend updates their relationship status to "Married" or even better, "Single" their breath gets caught in their throat. Facebook, while genius, isn't something that 20-somethings will brag they use...all day. Or at least in the same way that their 18-year old, college-bound brother uses it. We're working! We're busy and important at our mid-level jobs! Who has time to look at the pictures of that girl I went to high school with 10 years ago? Seriously...we're cooler than that. Right?

2. Anonymous Stalking is Over
Sigh. It was great while it lasted. No longer can you browse the pages of Facebook without people knowing you're there. "Oh, so you saw my invitation for that benefit, because I saw you online. You're coming right?" "Oh, so you saw my relationship request and you have yet to accept it..." "Please take down pictures 1, 6, 32, 33, 34 and 42 from your latest album 'Totally Embarrassing Pictures' while you're online." The list goes on. Your Facebook experience has the potential to be compromised -- no longer can you sneak online and ignore friend requests, party invites and inbox messages just to see the pictures of that hot guy you're stalking. People can see you.

3. Because We Already Talk Too Much
If you're willing to participate on Facebook chat, you're opening yourself up to a lot of random people saying, "Hey." Let's face it, probably a solid 3/4 of your Facebook friends are mere acquaintances and people you haven't spoken to in 5 years and probably never will. When you log into Facebook chat, all your Facebook friends who are online come up because as the system works, they are all your "buddies." You can't block some and make yourself available to others. You are out in the open, food for the wolves. A random hello could creep up -- maybe from one of those "friends" that you wish wasn't really your "friend." Like your boss.

4. Facebook = Procrastinating
If you are logged into Facebook during working hours and a friend starts chatting you up, you can't NOT write back. You're admitting that you're obviously doing nothing in the office, so you do have time for a conversation. This is unlike gChat or AIM that most people are logged into all day. If they don't respond immediately to an IM, it's possible that they are in a meeting, at lunch or just super busy. You just can't get away with those type of excuses (real or fake) on Facebook.

Looking Good

Oh, there's so much more where this came from.

Bits and Pieces

Short bites of the news that interested me today:


NEWS ITEM I WISH WAS REAL: Britney Spears is threatening to release private video diaries that she has recorded over the past six months. Content would entail rants about family, friends and juicy details about exes K. Fed and JT. Keep in mind Brit was in crazy world over the past six months. Amazing.



NEWS IN MY 'HOOD: Bar Milano opens up to mixed reviews this week. The good from Savory Tidbits, the bad from the Eater.com comments section.






NEWS ON THE WEB: The Filter, a digital music company backed by Peter Gabriel ("In Your Eyes," one of the all-time best songs), was announced today. I tried signing up for a beta invite, pretty sure I was shot down.






MOST IMPORTANT NEWS ITEM: Speaking of getting shot down, I failed to get a reservation at Momofuku Ko again today -- my patience is wearing thin. As Carrie Bradshaw says, "In New York, life is what happens when you're waiting for a table." In this case, it's a lifetime.

Savory New York: Leaves a Good Taste in My Mouth

As an avid New York City foodie, I'm constantly online scouring the restaurant scene. I'm interested in the latest openings, critic reviews, menu changes and the best of the "word of mouth" throughout the city. I subscribe to foodie blogs, read numerous magazine and newspaper reviews and when I'm gearing up to go to a new restaurant, I follow a very strict four-browser process:

1. Menupages: I check out the location, the menu, the prices and read a few reader reviews.
2. Hopstop: I figure out how to get from point A to point B.
3. New York Magazine: I see what their critics say -- and usually look for an Adam Platt review.
4. Open Table: Grab an online reservation.

This approach is clunky. Four browsers to research one restaurant is excessive and I've been looking for something to remedy this online habit for a while now -- and I think I've found it. Savory New York is a new website created by Chris and Jennifer McBride. Its mission is to provide a "combination of in-depth restaurant information, hand-aggregated critical reviews, recommendations from top chefs and documentary-style video profiles of notable restaurants would go a long way toward helping people make better decisions about where to dine out." Savory (domain at www.savorycities.com) currently covers four metropolitan areas: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco and will soon dive into a fifth -- Seattle.

Savory delivers on one page almost everything I was looking for in a restaurant site. I can read a brief summary about the restaurant (even watch a quick video if one is available), make a reservation, hopstop the location and read user and critic reviews. One of the features I especially like is that I can make a profile and queue restaurants that I want to try (solves that pesty problem of drawing a blank when you need to provide a restaurant recommendation) and I can also mark restaurants I have eaten at and then write a review for the site that gets posted immedietly.




I also love that they have recommendations from famous New York City chefs as well as bio pages for some of them. Not to mention there are feature articles on the homepage of the site diving into new and notable restaurants or highlighted and seasonal dishes. This type of platform provides a little bit more insight than the standard restaurant pages let on and gives the site somewhat of a casual webzine feel.

Savory isn't perfect just yet. Menus aren't available on the restaurant pages, which is a huge loss for me, as I like to think about what I might order ahead of time -- or make sure I'm even interested in the food. Also, they provide a price range (i.e. cheap, expensive, etc) -- but this doesn't usually help anyone. I like to look at menus and see the exact prices of the dishes. Also, since this site is just getting up and running, there aren't too many reviews populating each page, so you're not going to get the user experience you might get from a seasoned site like menupages.com

They've got a few bugs to work out as well. I've tried four times to edit my user profile and I keep receiving an error page. This is something they'll need to look into asap or it will deter users from rating and reviewing restaurants -- a key component to their venture.

In true Adam Platt style, I'll give Savory three out of five stars: Two stars for the prospect of using one website when researching a restaurant and two for the personal queue idea. But I'll take away one star for the profile glitch and because I know Savory has much more potential for informational features than it is currently demonstrating.

Why? Because I Can't.

If you're a foodie and if you live in New York, you've probably heard about David Chang's new eatery, Momofuku Ko and his gimmicky -- but smart reservation system.

In order to reserve a seat at Ko, you need a computer, a half dozen assistants dedicated to this one task over the course of a few weeks and a prayer. At 10am every morning, the reservation system on the Momofuku website opens up, and just like signing up for classes in college, thousands of eager foodies are online wishing for a coveted seat at this 12-person restaurant.

Chang is as smart a business person as he is a chef. He's using a simple economics theory that even I can remember from high school -- scarcity increases desirability. Those limited spots at the long wooden bar at Ko are seriously sought after because there are only 12 in a city of millions of diners. I love food, but reading multiple reviews of Chang's menu leads me to believe that this palate is a little too sophisticated for me (as I mentioned before, I'm a cheap date). Nevertheless, I want to eat at Ko -- mostly because it's just so hard to do.

We could be mad at Chang for making his restaurant seem elitest -- but in fact, it's not. A 10-course tasting menu is only $85 and the seats in the restaurant are given to the lucky few that can get a reservation online. There's no name dropping or bribes -- it is as simple as who can log onto the website first. Frank Bruni can't even get a seat -- and has been letting everyone know for weeks now.

Right now, David Chang might be the only person who can get away with a gimmick like this. He was nominated for his third James Beard award and his other restaurants have received an infinite amount of critical acclaim from the most respected reviewers -- and more importantly -- from word of mouth. Although I find it frustrating, simply for the fact that I know it will be nearly impossible for me to get a seat, I try to remember the menu I read about and the fact that I'm not a huge fan of caviar and fois gras. So I shouldn't be bothered, right?

Wrong. Knowingly, I've fallen into Chang's trap: I simply want to go to Ko because I can't.


Momofuku Ko
Address: 163 First Ave (between 10th and 11th streets
Phone: None, reservations only taken online.