Thanks Seattlest!

Seattlest wrote a really nice piece about Urbanspoon the other day – check it out:

http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2006/12/11/
urbanforknspoon_is_the_best_restaurant_guide_in_seattle.php

Spoonback

Since embarking on this little project, Urbanspoon, I’ve become increasingly aware of just how little I know about food. I love to eat, but compared to food bloggers like Hillel at Tasting Menu or Pim at Chez Pim, I’m a total novice. It turns out (you probably already knew this) that food blogging is huge. All of these dedicated people eating and assaying and photographing and then putting it all down in virtual print for the benefit of the rest of us.

I knew practically nothing about this resource, and I’m guessing that’s true for a lot of people. So there’s a need to connect diners with food bloggers, and vice-versa. We’ve added a feature to do our part to help.

Bloggers - Spoonback is a way for you to share your posts on restaurants with everyone on Urbanspoon. You can see what it looks like on blogs like Megan’s iheartbacon, Matthew’s Roots and Grubs, Thomas’ Cuisineazine, or Laurel’s LBlog. And you can see how these posts are shown on Urbanspoon for restaurants like Crow and Tilth.

Here’s how it works.

1. Pick a restaurant that you’re reviewing on your blog, go to the restaurant page on Urbanspoon, and click the link “add your review to this page”.
2. Pick an image link (there are a bunch on that page to choose from, some really tiny, some bigger with more interesting info) that you want to add to your blog post.
3. Copy the html into your blog post.

From there Spoonback will take over. It will notice the image, read in your post, and show a snippet from your post and a link to your blog from the restaurant’s page on Urbanspoon.

Happy Hour

Finding great happy hour spots around town has recently become something of an obsession for my wife and me. I’m not talking about things like a buck off selected appetizers, or $3 well drinks. We’re looking for nice restaurants that offer really good food at a steep discount if you happen to show up at odd hours.

We live in Eastlake, so there’s a strong local bias, but I thought I’d share what we’ve learned so far. If you have any recommendations, we’re always looking for new places!

Serafina – We tried Serafina’s happy hour for the first time last night. We had the plin (little pork-stuffed pastas), the crostoni (they use the word “quivering” in their description of the buffalo mozzarella) and the calamari (sauteed, not deep fried). All three were great, and each was less than $5. The happy hour runs 4-6pm on weekdays.

Ponti – This is probably our favorite happy hour spot. You can cozy up at a little table by the fireplace. We usually order the salmon quesadillas (fantastic), the tempura prawns (yum – ask for some soy sauce and wasabi), the calamari and the fish and chips. There are half a dozen other items on the happy hour menu, and all of them are 5 bucks (except the fish and chips – worth it at $10). The other thing that’s nice about Ponti is the hours. Happy “hour” goes 4-6:30pm and then again from 9-close, 7 days a week.

Matador – It’s over-crowded, over-hip, and I wouldn’t bother for a normal dinner. But what a great happy hour! Tortilla soup, spicy prawns, nachos and guacamole and wonderful fish tacos. A bunch of other items. $4 each! Just 4 little bucks. Amazing. The hours aren’t bad – 4-6pm and 10pm-1am, 7 days a week.

Chandlers – This used to be an exceptionally good deal. Some of their best food, including the Tempura Prawns and Asparagus (wonderful), was on the happy hour list. Alas, they realized they were giving away the store. Still it’s a nice deal for the food they still offer (some sushi, calamari and crabcakes) and it’s fun to sit on the deck in summertime (oh so long ago). Happy hours 3-6pm and 9:30pm-close.

McCormick & Schmicks – Attention, bargain-hunters. McSchmicks has the cheapest happy hour we’ve found yet. Mountains of food for just $1.95. A big cheeseburger: $1.95. Fish tacos? $1.95. Quesadilla? $1.95. There’s only one small problem with this otherwise perfect arrangement. The food’s not all that good. Happy hour runs 4-6pm and 9-11pm. Except Friday’s and Saturday’s – then it’s from 8pm-10pm.

Of course, there are a ton of other places. I like Seattle Weekly’s happy hour guide, but it’s not comprehensive. Perhaps Urbanspoon should include a happy hour page…

Update: The Culinary Fool just pointed me to another, much more comprehensive, happy hour listing – SevenNites. Check it out!

Vij’s

I really like Indian food, and I’ll try anything that looks good on the menu. Curries and vindaloos, tandoor and paneer… but I’m a little embarassed to admit that I usually end up with the classic: chicken tikka masala.

This has left me with the impression that Indian food is rich and heavy – a spicy Eastern alternative comfort food. My favorite Indian place in town is Taste of India on Roosevelt, and it’s really good, but I’d been lulled into the misconception that this was approximately the best I could expect from the genre.

I was so wrong.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were up in Vancouver. On some friends’ recommendation we decided to check out Vij’s. We’d been warned about the wait – they don’t take reservations and the wait was 2.5 hours when we got there. So we put our names down, went for a walk, and then sat down wondering if it would be worth the fuss.

It was amazing! Delicious, elegant, inexpensive, light but rich, original… in short, exquisite. The service was friendly without being intrusive, and Vikram Vij himself came around and seemed genuinely interested to in how our meal was going.

Oh, and tikka masala wasn’t even on the menu. We made a meal of a bunch of small plates – prawns, portabellos, black cod. Not exactly what I usually think of as Indian. He just put out a cookbook which has recipes for most of the food we ate.

If you’re in Vancouver and you don’t mind a wait, or you don’t mind showing up at 5pm for dinner, you should go. Vij’s alone makes me want to start an Urbanspoon site for our sister city to the North.

Dinner and a movie

Eating out isn’t always just about the meal. Sometimes dinner is just one piece of a larger evening agenda. We added a feature a couple of days ago that might be a help when you’re planning a night out – at least if the plan involves restaurants and movies.

Pick the movie theater you’re going to and you’ll get a list of the restaurants within walking distance, rated by popularity and price.

For instance let’s say you want to see Volver at the Egyptian (opening there this Wednesday). Like me you might notice that Via Tribunali (on my wishlist) is right up the street. So now you’ve got a perfectly good excuse to go to a restaurant you’ve been wanting to try.

We also added a similar deal for the hotels in town, for those who might be visiting Seattle and looking for a place near their room.

Vessel

Culinary Fool has a tempting review of a new place in town serving cocktails and small plates – Vessel. The Times gave it a glowing review as well. If you like fancy drinks and small-but-good food, might be worth a visit.

I want to go to La Carta de Oaxaca

It seems like everybody has been to La Carta de Oaxaca. Everyone raves about it, everyone says, “you haven’t been? oh you have to go.” So I actually feel a little embarassed not to have tried it. There are a bunch of restaurants like this that people who know good food have recommended – but that I just haven’t gotten around to yet. I kind of lose track of them, and next thing you know I’m back at Nishino’s instead of trying something new.

Fortunately we’ve just added something to Urbanspoon that can help – “Wishlist”. It’s basically a way to keep track of restaurants you want to try. Think of it a bit like your Netflix queue. Next time you want to try a new place and can’t think of one, just pull a restaurant off your wishlist.

Here’s my wishlist.

We got a bunch of feedback asking for this feature – thanks!

25 for 25 for 15 more days

Every November "25 for 25" sneaks up on me and it’s half over before I can do anything about it. 2006 is no exception. For the rest of the month you can get a three course prix fixe (pronounced “pree fiks”) meal for $25 at any one of (wait for it) 25 nice restaurants around town. Or a lunch for half that.

It’s a nice promotion, theoretically limiting the damage to just $25 per head for a serious meal. Unfortunately it seems like I usually end up seeing something even better that just happens not to be on the $25 list, and then you have some wine, add in tax and tip… I guess 25 for $47 doesn’t have the same lilt. But it remains a great excuse to try a restaurant you might not otherwise want to spring for!

• Andaluca
• Barking Frog
• Brasa
• Campagne
• Cascadia
• Earth & Ocean
• Etta’s Seafood
• Eva
• Fish Club
• Flying Fish
• Market Street Grill
• Nell’s
• Nishino
• Oceanaire
• Ponti
• Ray’s Boathouse
• Sazerac
• Serafina
• Six Seven
• Szmania
• Third Floor Fish Cafe
• Tulio
• Wild Ginger
• Yarrow Bay Grill
• Zoe

Bon appetit!

We’re on the phone!

It turns out people don’t always choose where to get dinner while they’re sitting in front of their computer. Let’s say you find yourself at a dead stop in traffic on the 520, tired and hungry and eager to let someone else cook. Now Urbanspoon can help.

This is particularly true if you happen to have a Blackberry. Thanks to Phil Bogle we’re now integrated with his Berry411 application. Search for a restaurant and you’ll get Urbanspoon reviews, links and popularity right from the results. If you have a Blackberry and you haven’t heard of Berry411 you’re in for a treat. It’s free, faster than calling 411, and can answer pretty much any question you have to ask.

If you don’t have a Blackberry but your phone has a web browser, just go to www.urbanspoon.com. We have a version of the site that works well on the phone.

For the technically inclined, we’ve built a simple REST api that makes it easy to integrate from additional platforms. Anyone interested in putting a J2ME face on Urbanspoon? How about text messaging? Step right up…

Getting started

Hi.

We’ve just gotten Urbanspoon off the ground, and it seems like a good idea to have a place to talk about the site, the company, and, most importantly, eating. Thus this blog. If you have questions about any of those things, please don’t hesitate to ask!

The idea behind Urbanspoon is to make a truly simple restaurant search site. Most often when we use the web to get info about a restaurant we want the phone number, the location and the menu. Most of us don’t have time or inclination to maintain a food blog, but we do have opinions and recommendations that we share with our friends. Urbanspoon should help with that.

Apart from the basics, here are a few distinct features:

1. Restaurant menus – I always have a hard time finding these. So we want to show either a link if the restaurant already has a menu online, or show a scanned menu if they don’t.
2. Reviews from the critics – we want to offer people a range of opinions in one place. We’re currently looking at sites like the Times, the PI and the Stranger. We also want other people with strong opinions – either on Urbanspoon.com or on their own blogs – to chime in on restaurants, and let the best reviews rise to the top.
3. Voting – we have a simple up/down voting scheme to measure the popularity of restaurants in town. We wanted something totally transparent, like Rotten Tomatoes but for restaurants.
4. Personal restaurant lists – people can create and share lists of their favorite restaurants and their own commentary on those restaurants. The idea is that most people don’t take the time to write a whole blog about food, but everyone can share their favorites.

I hope you like it – we can’t wait to hear what you have to say. And to see where people are eating!