Web gem: Serious eats

www.seriouseats.com

Last update: October 5, 2007 - 3:44 PM

www.seriouseats.com

Paging through a stack of food magazines is a favorite rainy Sunday afternoon pastime, but lately it's an activity that's feeling a little Dead Tree Scroll-ish. So now I log onto this smart, New York City-based pastiche of original and rehashed food, cooking and dining content.

The Web's wide open spaces suit food writer/webmaster Ed Levine's outsized passion and larger-than-life persona. And it allows him -- and his small, highly readable staff -- to go off on all kinds of entertaining and informative tangents. I enjoy the earnest cooking demonstration videos, which illustrate basic but easy-to-screw-up dishes such as scrambled eggs. Superchef Mario Batali is a regular blogger. The recipes almost always fall in the I-want-to-cook-this variety. There's even a weekly cookbook giveaway. Levine's commentary is reliably lively, even when it's a little Manhattan-centric for Flyoverists like me. But eating vicariously in the country's restaurant capital can't be a bad thing.

RICK NELSON