On the Friday of Wine 2.0 we decided to treat ourselves and head to The Slanted Door. We had intended, naively, to go for supper - only to find that it was booked out for two weeks straight. As we walked in with the last of the luncheoners, we were able to wangle a seat - which immediately called for a miniature celebration in the form of two classic Austrian wines.

For Greg it was the Gruner Vetline Shmelz, and for myself I chose the Csersgezi Fuszeres, Hill Top. Both were smooth, floral, off-dry and crisp - perfect for an afternoon lunch, especially seeing as we had a conference to go to. A wine conference it may have been - but a conference none-the-less.

Crispy Imperial Rolls with *shrimp, pork and glass noodles* Amazing, we got this starter to share, and we were served five of the little suckers on a plate. The only thing better than a novel food - is a novel way of consuming food. Hence my personal preference to eating with chopsticks at restaurants; hand making tortillas; enjoying Mongolian stir-fries; eating Indian or Persian food with my bare hands; the occasional shot of tequila and of course - shucking oysters straight from the rock and eating them with lemon, Tabasco and salt. It’s all about the process and trying to make it all more tactile - and for being a day-to-day knife and fork person, any food or process that breaks the norm is a welcome addition to my repertoire.

We photographed the process of eating the crispy imperial roll which involves:

1. laying out a piece of lettuce
2. placing a piece of mint on the lettuce
3. adding a lump of noodles on top
4. inserting the Crispy Imperial Roll
5. rolling it all into a consumable ball
6. dipping it into the teriyaki and plumb sauce
7. stuffing it all into your mouth and rolling your eyes back into your head because its just so good.

The Slanted Door is an incredibly popular restaurant in San Francisco and they only use organic produce and ecologically farmed meat. It’s nice to see people’s taste buds moving in the right direction.

The wine blogging world has no equivalent to Pim Techamuanvivit, creator and goddess of http://www.chezpim.com/ which also seems to be absent from the James Beard list, which is really surprising, considering the quality of writing and level of contribution to the industry. Pim’s following is enormous, and considering that she’s young, 30, attractive, self-made and frequently dining in high-class restaurants in hugely varied global locations, I’m sure there are many prominent wine writers out there who came onto the scene well before Pim, and probably wish they could be in her shoes.

I was disappointed that one of my preferred food blogs, Amateur Gourmet was not included in the James Beard Nominees for writing. Much like Dr. Vino, Amateur Gourmet writes so consistently well, and serves up an eclectic dish of restaurant recommendations complete with photographs of the meal, personal anecdotes, literary references and a recommended selection of cookbooks for the enthusiast to get stuck in to. To my mind there’s really no question, one of his blogs last month is inspiring myself and Greg to go down to the Slanted Door restaurant tonight, which will be a welcome treat before going off to Wine 2.0 tomorrow evening.

Amateur Gourmet’s photographs take a brilliant angle by showing readers photographs of dishes and getting the readers to comment. Needless to say it’s a rather cruel exercise, because just looking at the photographs prompts drooling. But you’ll notice the level of participation amongst readers, one feels that Amateur Gourmet embraces its readership and plays to an audience creating a gourmet form of media. Grape Thinking salutes the Amateur Gourmet. At least we’ll be able to taste the food in person tonight.

I’m a sucker for multimedia. In fact, I haven’t switched my television on in months and ordinarily get my dose of audio-visual online. Video content is one of my favourite things about food blogging, and a site that really packs it in is Savory, with Savory San Francisco, Savory New York and Savory Chicago being the first of their installments and many more to come. Food journalism has never been so uninhibited. Unique video content allows shots of food, a taste of ambience and samples of the Chef’s opinions, and with this type of site becoming the industry norm, we can look forward to a lot more local restaurants who significantly raise their standards to match up. It’s a win/ win situation for food journalists and restaurants all round, but if only there were a way to bring food and wine more comprehensively together, as certain chefs are undoubtedly inspired by certain wines whilst wines are often made to compliment the flavours produced by local chefs. And as far as the writers go, they partake in both. Grapethinking aims to be the link..com/

Foodist Colony despite the great name has really got something going with their ‘build your own restaurant guide’ function. My god mother has shelves of binder files with holiday ideas, recipes and restaurant reviews all clipped from magazines and put into folders for later use. Just clicking on my Bookmarks, I have over 220 bookmarked sites, and with so much more information I seldom have time to go back, and by the time I do, I can’t remember why I had bookmarked it in the first place. This kind of personalizable wiki which allows readers to share reviews as well as build up a list of places they’ve been to and places they still want to go has huge potential to catch on to everything from novels (creating a virtual book club) to wines, recipes and restaurants. It’d be like an online experience journal, and ultimately recipes, restaurant recommendations, lent books and wine are the currency of any great social circle, where there’s free trade of all. I would never be as disciplined as my god mother as to cut out and catalog physical articles, but with the ability to do it online I think we’ll all start. We want to make this our newest feature at Tastevine so people looking to organize and keep track of their recipes can do so.