Corinna Hardgrave looks up some internet diaries of the food-obsessed
The blog bug never really bit me until I discovered food bloggers. The internet is an outlet for passionate, obsessive, and well informed chefs, food writers and "professional eaters", who record their views chattily, sometimes each day. Heading the popularity stakes, with 200,000 site hits a month, and winner of a number of coveted blog awards, is Chocolate & Zucchini (www. chocolateandzucchini.com). This elegant blogue chronicles the world of Clotilde Dusoulier, a 25-year-old English-speaking Parisian who lives with her boyfriend in Montmartre. You can almost smell the charcuterie and the croissants as she trawls the boulevards of Paris, retracing her grandmother's steps in search of the best markets for organic food and cooking the French classics from Grandmère's handwritten recipes. The petite software engineer, who is compiling a cookery book, may move into food writing full-time.
Pim Techamuanvivit, who is originally from Bangkok but moved to San Francisco, is another big draw. She regularly eats in top-end restaurants, recounting her meals in her blog, Chez Pim (http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/). With an ample wallet to support her habit, Techamuanvivit regularly eats in the kitchens of top restaurants, hangs out with the hottest chefs, compares notes with leading critics and has clandestine meetings with Alba-truffle dons in Monte Carlo. She has brought Thai food to the slow-food movement, explored the nuances of sour curry and divulged the secrets of her mother's recipes from Thailand. She is the coolest of culinary It girls, and, not surprisingly, publishers and TV moguls are sniffing around this cult figure who has helped make eating a high art.
Movable Feast: The Diary of an Itinerant Chef (www.movable-feast.com/) is served up by Luisa Chu, a talented chef and food writer who is back in the US after doing a stint in Les Ambassadeurs at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. She was born in Hong Kong, raised in Chicago and worked in journalism and television production before becoming a chef and blazing a Michelin-starred trail from Alain Ducasse's Plaza Athénée, in Paris, to Ferran Adrià's El Bulli, in Spain, through Paris and on to Alinea, in Chicago. This is no small-time chef complaining about bullying in the kitchen. She is a radio correspondent, recently made her television debut, on Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, and is generous with the inside track on the culinary curve.
And then there's Gastroville (www.gastroville.com). Described as "a refuge for foodies", this is a site whose seriousness will scare you out of your culinary skin. Mikael and Vedat, dedicated gastronomes, eat mainly Michelin-starred food and do the most in-depth restaurant reviews you are likely to encounter. Compare and contrast is only the start of it. Check out Vedat's views on El Bulli versus Can Roca, another renowned Spanish restaurant, for a lesson in culinary constructive criticism (www.gastroville.com/ archives/spain/000032.html).
The pair have a rigorous food-rating system that rises to a perfect 20, for "exceptional food that is rare to encounter". They are obsessed with provenance; presumably, the dental records of each slain beast are submitted before its meat is allowed to cross their refined palates, raw, mi-cuit or torched. They are experts in truffles and gourmet-worthy mushrooms; for them there is no sin greater than to pass off a dried morel, assaulting their taste buds with its vulgar "sharp, metallic, acid and smokey taste". But if you're looking to drop a wad of cash at a top-end international restaurant, it is worth checking out their site.
The best ultra-niche food blog has to be the hilarious escapades of Eddie Lin in Deep End Dining (http://deependdining.blogspot.com). Determined to devour the most challenging dishes in Los Angeles, Lin opted for the Korean speciality of live baby-octopus tentacles. Not raw tentacles, which some people also eat, but live ones (http://deependdining.blogspot.com/2005/ 07/rude-food-live-octopus-tentacles.html).
Lin explains: "One doesn't grab live tentacles, they grab you. And they grab the plate and the sauce dish and the slices of garlic." Get the picture? "Squirming, writhing and wilful", the disembodied tentacles use their suction cups to grip the teeth and tongue of the adventurous diner, generally putting up a battle to avoid being swallowed. In short, perhaps the ultimate food-chain challenge.
The blog is brilliantly written, with a great sense of drama. Lin hurtles his readers through his exploits; in case there are any doubters, he also provides a video (http://deependdining. blogspot.com/2005/07/live-tentacles-movie- rated-nbl-not.html).
His appetites have not gone unnoticed. He recently made his US television debut, as a tuxedoed "stunt eater" on CSI: NY, popping fried water bugs into his mouth from a $10,000 plate of extreme food. Not content with upstaging regular extras, when asked what he was being paid he replied: "Mad money. Might just have to buy another house."
It is unnerving to discover how compulsive some of these public diaries are. You will find a slew of vacuous wannabes. You may question whether they actually exist, but among the thousands of alternatives you're certain to find several that strike a chord. Just Google "food blog". Today I got 1,760,000 results.