DO you feel the need to know exactly when Osteria Mozza, Pizzeria Mozza's sibling, will open or where Daniel Craig eats when he's with his agent? Is it hard to concentrate at work while you wonder who had dinner at Cut last night and which pastry chef just donned a new toque at the Water Grill?
Now you can log on and find out. The food-blogging world -- once a sanctum of fevered insomniacs up all night baking muffins and writing about it or amateur critics cataloging the best places for \o7pho\f7 or fish tacos -- has expanded to include two new, polished Los Angeles-based food blogs, Eater LA and the Knife.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday January 06, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 26 words Type of Material: Correction
Blog writer: A Food section article Wednesday about Los Angeles-based food blogs said Eater LA's Dana Harris writes film reviews for Variety. She writes news stories.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday January 10, 2007 Home Edition Food Part F Page 3 Features Desk 0 inches; 26 words Type of Material: Correction
Blog writer: A Jan 3. article about Los Angeles-based food blogs stated that Eater LA's Dana Harris writes film reviews for Variety. She writes news stories.
Both launched in November and both cater to a new breed of cyber-foodie: one drawn to the food-scene gossip instead of recipes or full-fledged reviews. Both state their missions: Eater's is to give daily restaurant industry news, and the Knife's is to "blog about restaurants favored by the entertainment industry."
This shift in context from their online predecessors means one thing is often noticeably absent in the new blogs' coverage: the food. You'll learn which chef has just gotten canned but not what his or her panna cotta tastes like; which \o7boite\f7 has just been renovated, but not how delicious its new tasting menu is. And you probably won't be reading any recipes.
Says Eater LA's editor-blogger Lesley Balla: "Personally, I would like to write about the food, but that's not what we are." And according to Dana Harris, the blogger behind the Knife: "If I start waxing poetic about poached eggs, then we have a problem."
Eater LA, the West Coast offshoot of the popular New York food blog Eater, founded by Ben Leventhal, is a joint venture between Leventhal's company She Loves New York and Curbed, a new-media network or "blogomerate" covering aspects of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The network includes sites that report and comment on city real estate communities, the "architectural arts" and the Hamptons.
Variety film editor Harris launched her blog independently, but it was quickly embraced by the entertainment industry trade newspaper's editors and was soon added to Variety.com's lineup of blogs. "The link between entertainment and the food industry in L.A. and the sex appeal of them combined makes sense to us," says Michael Speier, Variety's executive editor of news.
