I’ve never been so endeared to food writing in as much as I have the past two years. When I get the Wine Spectator, I read the feature articles and then simply skip the restaurant reviews. Purely because it’s a little out of my league, and I don’t always want to wonder if I should be wearing a tie or if my pants are good enough when I go out. The Girl Who Ate Everything is the perfect remedy to such snobbery and pretension, because unlike the Vegas super-chef restaurant reviews in Spectator, I can actually use her advice on a real life budget on just about any day of the week. The key to the success of blogs is that they’re practical. Recently she’s covered a quest for macaroons, sidewalk dining in Paris, takeout burgers in NYC all the way through to Thai and Indian, it’s a blog for the cosmopolitan realist. Robyn, the author, is a junior at New York University majoring in Food Studies.

Our friend Phil Bilodeau over at Sonoma Wine gave us the following info to share about the Showcase coming up in July.

Event: Sonoma County Showcase Weekend of Wine & Food

Dates: July 12-15, 2007

Description: Don’t miss the 28th annual Sonoma County Showcase Weekend of Wine & Food, the ultimate Wine Country experience, held July 12-15. This gala event features four days of fantastic wine and food presented by world-renowned winemakers and Sonoma’s top chefs. Indulge in exclusive all-access luxury packages of spa, golf, and wine safari experiences, or enjoy events a la carte, including private winery lunches and dinners, an extraordinary Sonoma Family Style gala dinner, and Taste of Sonoma, a two day grand tasting with over 100 wineries, 50 chefs, wine seminars, chef competitions, and more. For more information or reservations, visit www.sonomawine.com/showcase or call 800-939-7666.

Of course it’s a bit pricey, but top chefs and wine safaris… what could be better? We understand the difficulties of sharing event information and getting people buzzed about an exciting event that you’re putting together, whether it’s a small local get-together or a big extravaganza like the Showcase. Tastevine, which we keep talking about and is looking to drop May 28th, will have an event calendar / bulletin built into it’s community structure so that all the winos and novices alike can know what’s going on and know the cool events they and their friends should attend. We’ll have to watch for spam though… maybe we can use a “digg and bury” style system so the events that people don’t care about will get canned. Cool wine & food events are a must if you’re living a chill lifestyle, and having a simple method to plan your outings only makes the tastevine experience better.

I’ve just come back from my local wine merchant in search of mid priced great quality Languedoc-Roussillon for the not too daunting gauntlet of the May 16^th Wine Blogger Wednesday, hosted this month by Weingolb. Though I have much hope for being able to choose and review a good Languedoc-Roussillon, what’s really getting me is the Is My Blog Burning advertised challenge for Khymos’ ‘They Go Really Well Together’ challenge of preparing a recipe which includes coffee, chocolate and garlic as ingredients, and I’ve spent a lot of time deliberating over the potential combinations.

A few years ago I thought chilli-chocolate cake was nuts, which is relatively passé considering Khymos’ madcap ‘molecular gastronomy‘ which finds unlikely partners in Snails and Beetroot; Banana and Parsley; Liver and Jasmine and my personal favourite, white chocolate and caviar. Is My Blog Burning perhaps offered the first medium to get food bloggers to work independently on the same project, and thus is a true blog tapas, a celebration of finding unity in multiplicity.

For the task at hand, I feel at risk of being like Thomas Edison, saying he actually discovered 600 ways not to make a light-bulb, in my quest. The ingredients of coffee, chocolate and garlic represent a task a little less fatal than the famed chefs who cut blowfish perfectly so it is delicious and not deadly, because a ruined recipe of garlic, chocolate and coffee would not leave one the consolation prize of licking the bowl!

My approach is going to be to make take a tuna steak and pan sear it in garlic butter and serve it on a plate with wedges, and then to make a chocolate sauce with a bit of coffee in it, and pour the sauce over the tuna steak and potato wedges. Does that sound insane or what! Now the trick is to find the wine to go with that - any suggestions?

There’s no need for food to ever be pretentious, ever. Food is about enjoyment, plain and simple. That’s why I like Slice, this guy is on a great and noble quest, finding the perfect slice, which is something that anyone whose ever spent time in New York can appreciate. New York isn’t Europe, people don’t just sit around at cafés all day and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. New Yorkers live on their feet. In my time in NYC I began to appreciate two things: Ray’s is not the best slice of pizza (just like Nathan’s aren’t good hotdogs) and there’s really no better lunch for a person about town than a slice. You don’t even need a plate, you can just eat it above your New York Times and get informed whilst curbing those hunger pangs. Slice has ingeniously done his own little map on Google’s MyMaps, and what makes me proud is to see my local joint, Nick’s Pizza, on it. By the way - a Nick’s Pizza Pepperoni Slice with a bit Kanonkop 2005 Pinotage ($14) is a killer combination (and you can get Kanonkop at the wine shop just up the road: it’s a neatly balanced equation, because the money you save on the food affords the little bit extra on the wine.)

On Saturday, in the spirit of summer, we went up to Richmond Park and had a picnic in our own local Royal Park. Picnics are perfect for pasta salads and we prepared a pesto, olive oil, Greek feta and tri-colour fussily salad garnished with roast pine-nuts and fresh chopped basil. Picnics should be cheap and simple, and perhaps the most important factor to take into consideration is the wine. White wine would be my preferred choice for such an occasion, and on Saturday we treated ourselves to Boschendal 2006 Sauvignon Blanc ($10), Ogio Pinot Grigio ($6) and Leopard’s Leap Lookout White ($8).

To my mind, Leopard’s Leap won the day, for a couple reasons. First off, this wine is amazingly priced and when one is splitting costs amongst friends it’s always nice to keep things simple. Graphically, they’ve pulled off playing on South Africa’s wildlife heritage without creating a critter, and instead have created an attractive brand. Third, the varietals choice makes use of what South Africa is abundant in and does well - chenin blanc, chardonnay and columbard, promoting the real essence of the Cape. And lastly, the wine is exceptionally pleasant, and is refreshing, clean, uncomplicated and elegant with fresh lime flavours on the entry and subtle hints of honey and melon on the finish. One could easily entertain a host of friends for an afternoon in the sun, and have Leopard’s Leap Lookout White keeping everyone very satisfied throughout the day.