Last weekend, someone asked me how I find the restaurants I eat at for my various failed and ongoing meals projects. I have three primary sources: advice, serendipity and media.
First, the advice of friends and coworkers. Hey, they wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t share at least some adventure for experiencing exciting new dishes and places to eat.
Second: serendipity. The average block in New York City must contain about seven eating establishments, so I’ll merely walk around an unfamiliar part of town to spot new places to eat at.
Third, and my most common source of inspiration, is local media. I find dining leads in locally produced blogs and city news pages online. I discovered my most-recent 52 Meals Project restaurant on some New Yorker’s Flickr photostream. More often, my leads stem from commercial media sources. The online edition of New York magazine contains my favorite and most fruitful restaurant write-ups. Overall I find the magazine’s content too glib and targeted above my pay grade, but I respect most of its themed food listings and capsule reviews, especially within the “Best of New York” section, which are pithy and accurate.
I enjoy the 500-word “Tables For Two” review in The New Yorker, although each week it makes me wish the magazine would include more than one restaurant write-up per issue. Time Out New York is another classic source, especially its annual Cheap Eats issue. And although I don’t consult its restaurant reviews regularly, I find gold in the occasional “100-best” lists featured in The Village Voice.