We Make Fondu

May has proven to be a crazy month already…and we’re...

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:14:00 -0400

We did some details work!

Recommend or share ANY review

Featured on the Front Page!

And climbing the rankings!

May has proven to be a crazy month already…and we’re only 7 days in.

We released Version 1.13—a prettier, friendlier update to the app y’all already love. It includes:

A shiny, new first-timer’s experience (you can take a peek by going to “View Intro” in the Profile tab).
A logged out experience where you can search through reviews without making an account (just to whet the appetite of Fondu newbies).
Added a share button on all reviews so it’s even easier to recommend places to your friends!
A consolidated, improved Invite/Find friends process.
And a beauty treatment for the whole app :)

Perhaps the even bigger news, is that it turns out Apple liked these changes so much that they featured us in the App Store! On the Front Page and in “New & Noteworthy”!!! As of this writing, we’ve even risen to top 20 travel apps in nine different countries!

We’re kind of absurdly excited right now if you couldn’t tell!!!

p.s. If you’re even a little bit as hyped as we are, tweet about it! <3

Spreading the Foodie Love

Thu, 03 May 2012 02:23:43 -0400

A little birdy told us that we’ve got some new Fondu Ambassadors…

Say hello and be sure to follow them!

View Fondu Ambassadors in a larger map

*Want to become a Fondu Ambassador too? Learn how at http://bit.ly/yWPwUh*

#6WordReview Winners!

Wed, 02 May 2012 18:45:05 -0400

This one made us smile AND shared a protip. The Most Creative: @DamianDazz

Wondee Siam I - “Hello Secret Thai Menu, I Want!” #6wordreview @fondu
— Damian ‘Dazz’ White (@DamianDazz) April 27, 2012

And here’s The Most Retweeted: @maxmeyers

Fresh sammies, warm cookies, nice staff. #6wordreview of Pret a Manger @fondu
— Max Meyers (@maxmeyers) April 27, 2012

For those following along with the contest, this should come as no surprise. The Randomly Selected: @henrymclay

Props to all of our entrants—be sure to keep up with Fondu on Twitter and Facebook to hear about other upcoming events & contests!

NYC Bake Sale for Share Our Strength: Thank You, NYC & Friends!

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:51:07 -0400

NYC Bake Sale for Share Our Strength: Thank You, NYC & Friends! :

If you weren’t able to attend the mouth-watering NYC Food Blogger Bake Sale last Saturday, there’s still time to help out their charitable cause, Share Our Strength. Donations accepted until Friday! (check out their blog for more information)

bakesalenyc:

[All photos in this post courtesy of Ken L.]

Thanks to all of our generous sponsors, bakers, volunteers, supporters, and donors, the NYC Food Blogger Bake Sale was a HUGE success! We were able to raise $3400 (and counting!) for Share Our Strength!

…

“Occasionally On Camera; Always Coding.”

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:55:00 -0400

“Occasionally On Camera; Always Coding.”

26 Most Reviewed Austin Places on Fondu

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:18:59 -0400

26 Most Reviewed Austin Places on Fondu:

NYC loved their list…now let’s take a look at Austin!

Home Slice Pizza & Frank Restaurant tie for the top spot. Which do you think is better?
Some of these sound familiar? Frank Restaurant, Juan in a Million, Fado Irish Pub, Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, Kenichi, La Condesa, Kerbey Lane, Chuy’s, and Uchiko were all on our big SXSW list.
Juan in a Million might just be the best restaurant name ever <3

While you’re thinking about tasty places…be sure to enter our #6wordreview tweet contest to WIN $50!!! Just tweet a #6wordreview of any restaurant @fondu and you’ll be automatically entered. Happy tweeting!

25 Most Reviewed NYC Places, 2012 Edition!

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:43:07 -0400

25 Most Reviewed NYC Places, 2012 Edition!:

With the first quarter of 2012 in the books, we thought we would take another look at the top restaurants & bars on Fondu.

New Top 2! Shake Shack and Wafels & Dinges are the new king & queen of New York.
Welcome to Spitzer’s Corner, Locanda Verde, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck, ABC Kitchen, Max Brenner, Num Pang Sandwich Shop, Katz’s Delicatessen, Eataly, The Dutch, and The Grey Dog! Whew!

Your favorite place not on the list? Be sure you and your friends review them on Fondu!

Don’t live in New York? Keep your eye out on our Twitter for more top lists this week. We’ve got at least 2 more in store!

Last but not least, be sure to enter our #6wordreview tweet contest TO WIN $50!!! All you have to do is tweet @fondu with a #6wordreview of any restaurant/bar/cafe/club. Details at Glocul Mag.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who made our event yesterday a huge...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:05:00 -0400

photo by Ajay Tandon

photo by Patrick Yan (@patrickyan)

photo by Larissa Horn (@Lady_Larissah)

A big THANK YOU to everyone who made our event yesterday a huge success!!!

We hope y’all enjoyed your sliders, wafels, and dumplings. If you want us to keep you updated about the next event, be sure to *like* our Facebook Page or *follow* us on Twitter.

Also, don’t forget to leave a quick review of the food truck you tried! Wafels & Dinges, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck, and Mexicue Taco Truck would all appreciate more love on Fondu :)

Traditional Taiwanese street food with a local lager twist

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:27:00 -0400

[This is a guest post by Matt Silberstein (matt4c), a Fondu Ambassador in Denver]

We pulled into the strip mall’s narrow, pot hole ridden parking lot on a recent Denver Sunday afternoon. After tediously maneuvering the car into one last remaining space, we could barely wait for the food explosion soon to come. We hurriedly opened the door to Lao Wang Noodle House only to be told by a very harried grandma Wang that they were completely out of food. The place was packed. Sounds of noodle slurping and loud talk filled the tiny, frill free space.

Lao Wang Noodle House is what many would call a hole in the wall. It’s part of a vibrant authentic Asian Denver food scene found along southern Federal Avenue. This is not your typical Americanized Chinese food establishment. No rice, egg rolls or chow mien on Lao Wang’s well focused menu. Chung Ming Wang and her husband Tse Ming Wang, at an age when many think about retirement, serve up soulful Taiwanese fare. Hand prepared soup dumplings (xiao long bao), fried potstickers and several types of noodles form much of their Shanghai inspired traditional fare. Seafood is scarce. Expect instead dishes with lots of pork and beef.

Xiao long bao is the one reason you want to try this place. It originated in Shanghai and I’ve learned it’s a big part of today’s Taiwanese street stall reality. Steamed, folded, pinched and served piping hot, these bite sized soup dumplings give up a zesty broth explosion upon first bite. As the hot liquid leaves its tender, smooth skin, a bite of minced pork remains. Just be careful and avoid eating these whole. Nothing like burning your mouth to ruin a meal. Served in a traditional steamer basket, you may be tempted to order a second round of ten.

Other dishes don’t disappoint. Chinese style spaghetti with savory meat sauce or a silky rendition of wonton soup make for perfect soup dumpling companions. Order off menu and ask for a healthy serving of flavorsome bok choi. Prepare to be blown away by the simply prepared pan fried potstickers. They are the best I’ve had anywhere. Sharply seasoned cold cucumbers and spiced beef soup are also local favorites. The service might be a bit slow but I’ve yet to eat a disappointing dish.

You can wash all this down with an enormous 32 ounce sized cup of water grandma Wang places on your table, standard variety of soft drinks or a cold glass of specially formulated Lao Wang lager from CAUTION Brewing Co, a new brew venture run by the Wang’s son in NE Denver. Lao Wang lager includes special spice blends designed to pair well with chinese food. Craft beer designed for dumplings.

If you can, grab a table early because it’s always busy. We like to go when they open at 11 am (Tue-Sun, closed Mondays). If you go later you may risk a severely long wait or worse, a shortage of food.

(Lao Wang Noodle House, 945 S Federal Blvd, Denver, CO 80219)

How Fondu is Made (our technology stack)

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:50:00 -0400

This blog post, we’re taking a detour from food and dining and will be diving into the back-end technology stack that makes Fondu work. It’s something that we spend a ton of time thinking about and are really happy to share.

I’ll try to cover the technologies in a semi-cohesive manner but forgive me if it jumps around. This post covers a pretty broad, but specific, topic. This post focuses on the server-side of things. The iOS app has enough meat to be it’s own post in the future.

But first, a picture of our datacenter:

Amazon Web Services

Like a lot of other tech companies, we host our infrastructure on Amazon Web Services. We probably use more of their offerings than most. Specifically, our servers are on EC2, in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). That lets us maintain different subnets for dev and production, and maintain subnet-wide routing rules. To the public, these servers are exposed via Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs).

Our DNS is powered by AWS’s Route 53 service, which has treated us well so far. It’s got a really easy interface, and integrates with ELB’s seamlessly.

All of our image and file data is stored on S3. Although the latency sucks, you can’t really beat it for simplicity, reliability, and throughput speed. When being served, all that data is run through CloudFront, Amazon’s plug-in CDN service. Sooooo easy for such a big performance gain. We even built a custom image manipulation library, prism, that ensures derivative/thumbnail images are generated and stored in S3 for later use.

Our worker queues are run on Amazon’s Simple Queueing Service (SQS) as well. Once again, latency sucks (and you have to dumb-poll them), but for the price and simplicity, it’s hard to beat if you don’t mind a second or two of latency on the output end.

Back when we were on MySQL, we used RDS as well and were quite happy with it. Would love for AWS to start supporting admin-free servers for other DBs (without locking yourself into Dynamo).

MongoDB & Elasticsearch

Fondu’s primary data source lives in MongoDB. All necessary data is also indexed into our elasticsearch cluster for when we need to get loose with our queries.

We’ve been using Mongo for quite a while now (prototyping for the last year and a half, fully-committed in production since the fall). It’s been a godsend to us for the fast reads, and the schema-less flexibility. A pretty common practice for us is to handle both sides of a data migration in code, deploy it to production, run the data migration script, and then clean out the “old” schema handling from the code. Zero-downtime migrations for most types of schema manipulation, without locking the db. Most excellent.

MongoDB and elasticsearch are both JSON (fine, Mongo is BSON, I know), based data stores, meaning there’s no painful transformations to make one format fit into the other. The only real downside is that there’s no established and reliable way to mirror/transform MongoDB data modifications into elasticsearch. As a result, we end up updating our search index from the application layer whenever db objects are updated.

We host MongoDB and Elasticsearch ourselves. One common trick that folks use to increase disk performance on EC2 instances is to store the database directory on an EBS raid array. Each of our production servers has a 12 disk RAID0 array. with an additional 2 spares each. MongoDB and Elasticsearch both run in their own version of a replica set, so each server holds all data in case one fails (Also nice for zero-downtime updates).

Python

Python is our language on the backend. It lets us iterate incredibly quickly, has good package support, and is really clean to read and write. It’s functional built-ins come in handy from time to time as well. Ruby vs. Python is just a religious war, but whatever you’re using, having a dynamic language at your disposal is crucial for keeping a small, resource-strapped team moving fast. Static languages are safer and faster, but lose the flexibility of “just make it work” judgement calls that sometimes need to be made.

Another perk of building our runtime in Python is being able to access code from Fabric, which we use for deployment and server management. Some of our datacenter configuration is programatic, so sharing that with our deployment tool is one less source for errors.

Pyramid

We use the Pyramid framework to handle web requests. We’ve played with a good 8 or 9 Python web frameworks (Django all the way to Bottle), and currently Pyramid feels like the right balance. It covers most aspects of web serving you could want, but avoids being monolithic by acting as a glue layer between best-of-breed standalone libraries. The fact that an ORM/model layer is option when you start up a project says something about how little it assumes.

Workers

We use Amazon’s SQS to handle queuing of worker tasks. Each queued request is simply a chunk of JSON that maps to a specific module, method and params for our python shell interface into the system. This also makes it really easy to run worker tasks from the command line for maintenance or testing.

Integration

Facebook. foursquare, Twitter, Tumblr. We try to integrate 3rd party services in ways that naturally suit the platform. Everything’s being integrated nowadays, as it’s generally a better experience for the user. On the other hand, we try to keep 3rd party specific knowledge out of our core library. Fondu’s core should only care about how Fondu works, and how to call the middleware modules that encapsulate foreign API calls. That lets us maintain pure API libraries, and pure core system libraries, while letting the middlewares get as hairy and ugly as they needs to. As long as the middleware serves primarily as a transformation layer, they general stay thin and wide, preventing over-complexity.

We even ended up writing our own foursquare library, after being dissatisfied with what was already out there. No Fondu code in there, that’s what our integration middleware is for. Foursquare recommends it if you’re running Python.

Monitoring

We use a combination of Munin and AWS’s CloudWatch to monitor our servers. Our logs are handled by Graylog2 and we’ve been quite happy with those party gorillas. We used to run our logs to Loggly, but do to threading problems in the Python library, and Loggly’s inability to stay up for more than a week at a time, they’ve been moved to “backup” status. Graylog2 has a really easy router to ship logs off to Loggly in the background.

Future

We’re quite happy with the flexibility that working in Pyramid and Python has allowed, but we’re seeing bigger picture for our in-browser experience. We’re currently building a node.js based web-app. Playing with backbone.js at the moment, but we’re still deciding on the client-side structure. Running javascript on the backend provides a lot of benefits that wouldn’t come as easy as if we had kept going down the Python path (for the web server). The API is staying Python, both because of the large body of work it represents, but also because an async, event-based logic core of that size is enough to keep a one-man backend team up at night in cold sweats. So much potential for failure, so much trickier to debug and follow flow.

We’re hiring that web developer right now. Somebody that owns everything that lives inside the browser, and a little more. Node.js, client js framework, CSS, the whole shebang. Think you can top Twitter’s website for usability and smoothness on a seal-sized team? Ya, here’s my number, so call me maybe.

When is the android version coming out? Pretty please.

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:27:33 -0400

we’re working on it! expect to see a web app first, android will come soon after :)

. @mlewislogic and @viseling talking about the tech behind...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:00:00 -0400

. @mlewislogic and @viseling talking about the tech behind @fondu at NYU (Taken with Instagram at NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences)

[This is a guest post by Olivier Pasco (opasco), a Fondu...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:04:34 -0400

[This is a guest post by Olivier Pasco (opasco), a Fondu Ambassador in Southern California]

A few weeks ago I had the chance to spend a couple of days in Paris. I don’t go to Paris quite as often as I’d like but every time I find myself back there I have to go and have dinner in a Parisian Brasserie. I usually prefer a simple local one rather than one of the fancy touristy types. Obviously, the first benefit is the price but ontop of that you have much better chances to get a friendly service. Yes, even in Paris you can find friendly service! If you want some addresses, check my recent reviews on Fondu.

My typical meal in a Brasserie starts with a draft beer, usually a Grimbergen or a Picon-Biere. For the main entree, I go with a Tartare/frites. If you are not familiar with what a Steak Tartare is, it’s a patty of raw shredded beef mixed with various spices, some mustard and, if you like, some Worcestershire sauce, Ketchup and Tabasco. I just love it! (and yes, Jef, the one you make is the best)

I know, some of you may be wondering why I don’t go for some more classy French Cuisine but you can find this in the US as long as you have a good enough credit limit and it’s not that much cheaper in France. Not to mention that I get to eat French Cuisine on an almost daily basis at home. But the Tartare is for me the most Parisian dish I can have there for a very decent price while most places in the US won’t even serve you beef cooked rare.

So, if you ever go to Paris, don’t forget to try a not-too-touristy Parisian Brasserie and go for raw meat! And if you don’t feel brave enough you can always try un Magret de Canard or une Salade Landaise.

Vive le Prix Fixe: Dine Around Seattle, Sun.-Thurs. Mar. 1-29th

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:22:16 -0400

[This is a guest post by Elisa Mader (lagourmande), a Fondu Ambassador in Seattle, WA]

Since it began 10 years ago, Dine Around Seattle has become a beloved bi-annual fine dining tradition. Every March and November, many of the city’s top restaurants offer promotional $30, 3-course prix fixe dinner menus, Sundays through Thursdays, and some even offer $15 lunches. Here’s your chance to check out that schmancy restaurant you’ve been meaning to try, but at nice price (Nishino, anyone?).

Planning your Dine Around Seattle meals is serious business, and with nearly 50 participating restaurants, you have some thinking to do. Here are just a few ideas:

photo credit to Geoffrey Smith

Take a long lunch at Monsoon (or Monsoon East). As if Monsoon Seattle’s fresh, creative Vietnamese cooking weren’t enough of a draw, this Capitol Hill restaurant has outdone itself with numerous mouthwatering lunch selections, including vermicelli with Painted Hills Farm flat iron steak and oxtail pho with wagyu beef. If you indulge in Monsoon’s famous wine list, however, you might need to take the rest of the day off.

Enjoy the view at Palisade. When you indulge in the pricy but exquisite Northwest/Polynesian cuisine at Palisade, located in the Elliott Bay Marina in Magnolia, you’re also paying for its panoramic views of Puget Sound and the Olympics. With both lunch and dinner offerings and menu items such as a smoky, unctuous salmon bisque and an intriguing root beer-braised pork shank, you can’t not go!

Welcome Dine Around Seattle newcomer Betty. This Upper Queen Anne eatery has been dishing up fresh, seasonal bistro fare for a few years now, but this is its first year participating in the promotion. With entrées such as warm parmesan pudding with crostini and marinated red peppers; and with main courses such as grilled pork tenderloin accompanied by sautéed savoy cabbage, bacon and apple, let’s hope Betty becomes a regular participant.

Go vegetarian at Carmelita. Where’s the beef? Carnivores won’t even bother to ask when they see the amazingly creative menu from this Phinney Ridge vegetarian fave. Saffron “paella” with stinging nettles, English peas and baby artichokes? A frothy, foamy Meyer lemon sabayon with strawberries for dessert? Yum and yum.

Dine beyond Seattle at Barking Frog. Don’t be fooled by the name; Dine Around Seattle isn’t entirely Seattle-centric. There’s The Scotch and Vine in Des Moines and plenty of Eastside participants. Then there’s Barking Frog. This gastronomic Mecca in Woodinville is offering many delicious, healthy options, such as a smoked lentil soup with an organic egg prepared sous vide and a red beet pappardelle pasta dish with pears, chard and hazelnuts. It’s healthy enough to justify ordering the maple cake afterward.

Don’t take my word for it, though. I’m looking forward to reading your Fondu reviews of the Dine Around Seattle restaurants! Find out more here:http://dinearoundseattle.org/.

—Elisa Mader

Fondu: @lagourmande

Twitter: @ElisaMader

St. Pat’s in the Steel City

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:57:00 -0400

[This is a guest post by Karla Leskovsky (kleskovsky), a Fondu Ambassador in Pittsburgh, PA]

Saint Patrick’s Day falls on a Saturday this year. In my world, that means indulging in a few more adult beverages than I normally would on a work night. In fact, being a Saturday means that a full day of St. Pat’s festivities is in store. In planning for such a day one needs to consider a few things. My list is as follows:

1. Drinking and Eating Establishments

My perfect St. Pat’s drinking establishment is one that’s not overly crowded and lacks “amateurs.” You know what amateurs are; they’re the people who only drink on days like St. Pat’s and Cinco de Mayo. [Insert your personal bad drunk person experience here.] For that reason, on this particular day I try to stick to bars that do not have Irish names and do not serve green beer, which is just yucky. Don’t get me wrong, I like Irish pubs and have some favorites. If you’re in Pittsburgh and want the full Irish experience, here are a few places to consider:

Piper’s Pub – In the Southside. Fantastic Irish pub food and live soccer on the screens. Good craft beers on tap. They have a Sunday brunch from 8:30 AM – 3:00 PM, a perfect way to nip that hangover in the bud.
Sieb’s Pub – In the North Hills. Bright and clean. Large menu selection that includes traditional Irish fare.
Shenanigan’s Bar and Grille – In the North Hills. Big bar with a sports theme and friendly staff. Be warned that they allow smoking.
The local CBS affiliate did a recent story about the top Irish pubs in Pittsburgh. I haven’t been to them all so cannot offer an opinion.

2. Good Parade Watching Location

The Pittsburgh St. Patrick’s Day parade is a big draw for the downtown area. There are many good viewing spots along the parade route. March weather can be pretty unpredictable so our group opts to hang out in one of the many parking garages. Check out the parade Facebook page for up-to-date information and quick responses to questions.

3. Transportation

Drinking and driving do not mix. My group is taking a bus downtown for the parade and a cab home. Here are some transportation options for the Pittsburgh area:

The Port Authority site contains detailed bus routes, rider alerts and fare information. They even have a mobile app.
Yellow Cab Pittsburgh – Plan ahead. Pittsburgh is notorious for its lack of available cabs.

Have a fun and safe St. Patrick’s Day!

A big shoutout to everyone who is going to this year’s...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:54:29 -0500

Chuy's on Barton Spring Rd

Frank on 2nd & 5th

A big shoutout to everyone who is going to this year’s South By Southwest. You may have seen some of Gauri’s reviews or Orion’s tweets from Austin and been wondering why Fondu had trekked out to Texas so far in advance of SXSW. Well, now we are happy to tell you!

We’ve driven, ran, and jaywalked our way to all of the best places to eat and drink in town—and put them into a list for you! This isn’t some pamphlet that we are passing out, this is a full in-app compilation that anyone who is using Fondu in Austin can take advantage of. Whenever you open the Discover tab in Fondu, you will see a banner that can take you right to this list. For maximum usefulness, tap on the map button in the corner to see exactly where these top places are and how close you are.

We’re featuring plenty of Austin classics (Torchy’s Tacos, Kerbey Lane, Chuy’s), hidden gems (Sam’s Bar-B-Que, Tamale House), and festival favorites (JMueller BBQ, Frank Restaurant). There should be something for everyone!

If you’re feeling low tech, just keep your eyes out for the “We’re a Top-Rated Place on Fondu” posters or “Enjoyed Your Meal?” stickers. Find 5 of them, take pictures as proof, and tweet at us! We’ll find you and give you a Fondu t-shirt!

If you’ve updated Fondu within the last week, you’ve...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:53:53 -0500

If you’ve updated Fondu within the last week, you’ve probably noticed a few changes. Version 1.1 is jam-packed with new stuff, but there are four things that we are the most excited to finally release to you all.

DISCOVERY! The long-awaited search and discovery tab is finally here. It’s predecessor, Popular, was great for finding some interesting places nearby, but Discovery turns it up to 11. Enter anything you are interested in finding (“sushi”, “lunch”, “dive bar”) and Fondu will show you all the places with relevant reviews. And as always, those reviews are prioritized by the people you are following and trust.

[pssst, for anyone who remembers SpotOn, the map mode on Discovery resurrects swiping through places on a map. We had loved it and you had loved it, and now it finally made sense to bring it back!]

BOOKMARKS! While not technically a new feature, what was once almost an afterthought is now front and center. Well, front and to the upper corner actually. On the Friends feed, you have easy access to the list AND the map of your bookmarks (hint: tap on the bookmark icon). On every review, there is now a Bookmark button so you can easily save that review and that place. Feel free to go crazy with the bookmarks…because then when you are looking for a place to go nearby, one look at the bookmarks map can remind you of the places you’ve been meaning to try.

PHOTOS! Plain and simple, nothing fancy, but a huge feature nonetheless. Try taking a picture of your delicious meal and adding it to your review—you can’t help but feel a bit like a professional. Look for reviews with pictures of the ambiance—you’ll thank us when you realize you were about to go to a bar too divey even for your college days. Or even just take a picture to remember good times with friends—we hear people like to do that sometimes.

RECOMMEND TO A FRIEND! Tell anyone and everyone about where they should go to eat and drink. We obviously want you to “have taste,” but we also want you to share it! With everyone! Recommendations can be sent through Fondu as well as email, Facebook, and Twitter. Keep on spreading that foodie love!

Don’t forget to tweet @fondu what you think of this update—it’s a big one and we want to hear your thoughts!

Ambassadors Across the World!

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:28:00 -0500

We’ve got new brand ambassadors—a lot!

Say hello and maybe they’ll share some of the sweet Fondu swag we gave them :)

View Fondu Ambassadors in a larger map

*Want to become a Fondu Ambassador too? Learn how at http://bit.ly/yWPwUh*

This morning, we hosted our first fondue breakfast! Bagels,...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:55:55 -0500

photo credit to @acohenNY

photo credit to @gaurimanglik

This morning, we hosted our first fondue breakfast! Bagels, waffles, french toast, and of course, some breakfast fondue to go with it all (peach, blueberry, and raspberry). Just showing a bit of love to some of our NYC Fondu users <3

Couldn’t make it? Didn’t get an invite? Don’t worry, this is just the beginning! Tweet @fondu if you want to call dibs on an invite for next time.

Good Spirits/Edible Manhattan

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:18:00 -0500

[This is a guest post by Adrienne Stillman, a Fondu Ambassador in New York, NY]

This Tuesday Edible Manhattan sponsored a fantastic event dubbed Good Spirits. Designed to encourage “liquid symbiosis” between some of New York’s (and other local) chefs, mixologists, distillers and other food artisans. The line up was impressive and included some of the leading lights of our city’s locavore trend. And, at $45 a pop tickets for the all you can eat and drink event were a steal.

Most of the 50+ hospitality groups in attendance were paired off into one liquor, one food couples. Here are the highlights, which make up a pretty good “best of” the current New York food and drink scene of the moment.

the punch from Hudson Whisky

Favorite All-Around Pair: Jo’s - that Nolita standby - was next door to Tuthilltown Spirits serving, respectively, falling-off-the-bone pork shoulder winter stew and a punch of Baby Bourbon, Averna and homemade pomegranate bitters.

BK Gin

filling eggs

Best Brooklyn Representation: The New York Distilling Company, who make Dorothy Parker American Gin and Perry’s Tot Navy Strength Gin based in Brooklyn on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. They are one of the only distilleries in New York State to have a bar attached to the distillery - it’s called The Shanty. Two bartenders in colorful attire were mixing up samples of the Brother-in-Law made with apricot liqueur, lemon juice and the Dorothy Parker (I had two). They were paired with Fort Defiance, another BK gem from Red Hook, who were whipping up delicious deviled eggs.

Best diner food: Pierogies from Veselka - that late night drunk food bastion (not that I would know of course…) of the East Village - made with Vermont cheddar cheese and topped with the requisite apple sauce and creme fraiche.

Best gimmick: A couple of places - including Rubirosa, Salumeria Rosi and Cadaques - had whole ham legs as well that they were generously carving up.

ham from Salumeria Rosi

White Pike Whisky

Most interesting discovery: White Pike Whisky, a white whisky made in upstate NY from a blend of corn, spelt and malted wheat that was mixed with orange juice, red pepper juice (yes, really) and peach-sassafras bitters. It was surprisingly smooth and worked well with the citrus and savory pepper.

Best food/beverage pairing: Compass Box Whisky’s Oak Cross blend with a duck escabeche (excellently done) from The Beagle. Surprisingly complementary, it was truly one of the best pairs on offer.

Best non-alcoholic beverage: Brooklyn Soda Works who had a more standard apple-ginger soda and an off-the-wall totally awesome grapefruit-jalapeño-honey. Very cool, totally yum. Runner up to Bruce Cost Ginger Ale - which is a great spicy soft drink and comes in a few different flavors in addition to the original like passionfruit, pomegranate and Jasmine tea.

Overall - a great event with some stand-out vendors, and enough food (and drink) for thought to keep me busy for at least a few weeks, trekking to the far reaches of BK (ok, Williamsburg might not be that far) and closer to home to visit their permanent shops.

To read more about my food musings and (mis)adventures, including a newly minted shortlist of my NY Favs, visit my blog atalagourmande.wordpress.com.