World's 50 Best Restaurants - And Why I don't Care

San Pellegrino's list of the 50 best restaurants in the world were just announced. And the winner is... who cares?

Okay, lists are fun, everyone likes them. And it's inherently cool to compare the best in the world at anything. With that being said, the 50 best restaurants in the world is a stupid list.

You Know You're In San Francisco...

When frickin' Johnny Rockets serves "naturally raised" beef.

Tips on How to Photograph Your Food

Taking photos of your food has been getting a lot of attention recently. Some people love it, some people (chefs) hate it. Regardless of where you stand, the fact is that more people have cameras thanks to smart phones and there seems to be a genuine interest in keeping track of and sharing what we eat. The NY times dining & wine section has been all over this trend and recently offered up some tips on how to take good food photos. His suggestions are more for those that have a serious camera and time to make the food look a certain way, but I think his points still hold true for those with a camera phone. Here are two that I think help:

Take a Picture, It will Last Longer

About a week ago, we launched a 'My Food' tab in our user's profile on menuvore, that displays pictures of everything the user has eaten/reviewed. You can also see what other Menuvores (what we call our users) are eating/reviewing by going to their profile and clicking on their 'My Food' tab. We thought this would be a cool way for people to see what they and their friends have eaten.

Well, the New York Times agrees with us. Today, it posted this article, talking about the increasingly popular trend of taking pictures of what you eat.

Get on Board the Tacolicious Train

I'd heard about Tacolicious before. They're at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market on Thursday, they're always doing cool special guest chef tacos there, and they're constantly being talked about on Twitter, including a recent tweet by @davkyl, which I enjoyed, "If Beretta f***** a Mexican taco cart in Ensenada, you would have Tacolicious. That place can hang even by the SoCal-Mexican-food standard." Not sure what most of that means, but couldn't have said it any better.

Should We Know What We Eat?

One of the less discussed aspects of Obama's new health care bill is that it now requires chain restaurants (and vending machines) to disclose information about calories directly on the menu.

Buried deep in the health care bill, section 4205 calls for mandatory nutrition labeling of menu items at chains with more than 20 restaurants. While it’s not necessarily the most groundbreaking change, it represents a wider shift by lawmakers not only to provide better health care but also to help prevent disease in the first place. (The bill also includes $15 billion for other preventative health programs over the next decade.)

Read more

While cities like New York and Philadelphia have already tested the waters in this sort of legislation, a nation-wide mandate should set a new precedent for transparency in what you eat.

One of our goals here at menuvore is to give people more information about what they eat, whether it be "Does it taste good?" or "Is it good for you?". We think that the more information you have, the better your eating experience will be.

The details on implementation are still a little fuzzy, but for now we are optimistic and will watching to see how it unfolds.

Do you want to know how many calories you are eating when you go out? Let us know!

Good News for the Irish

Just in time for St. Patrick's day, another John Campbell's Irish Bakery has opened up (yesterday) in Pacific Heights/Cow Hollow (San Francisco). In case you're not familiar, the other one is on Geary Blvd. in Outer Richmond and boasts some of the tastiest Irish breads/desserts around.

A few items that are particularly tasty are the Irish Raisin Soda Bread, chocolate cherry bread and snowballs. What is a snowball? Remember this:

It's more or less a classy, tastier version of these. Didn't know these were in the Irish repertoire, but they are frickin good.

Congrats to John Campbell's on a well deserved second store.