Mothers can be so stereotypical, such as when they look worried when you so much as sneeze, or when they tell you to drive carefully. Mother’s Day is, in part, a celebration of those stereotypes and how our mothers can be downright silly when it comes to their children.
These are universal themes. But what about mothers across the country? Where do you get an East Coast mom the best chowder, or the best guacamole for the San Francisco mother? We’ve looked to our users to find out.
Get in the car and take your mother to one of these fancy places to say thanks for all they’ve done and all they’ll continue to do – and if she grips the door handle and says, “Slow down, slow down,” this one time, at least, you should do it without sighing.

The Boston Mom

Your mom took you to the Boston Children’s Museum when you were young, and happily drove you on college visits to what seemed like every single college in Massachusetts. Hey, how about taking her to a restaurant? That’d be wicked cool. Try Union Oyster House, and thank her for all she’s done for you while she destroys some fresh lobster.

The New York Mom

Get her what she really wants: a perfectly grilled Porterhouse at the famous Peter Luger Steak House. Order some broccoli on the side to make her happy; no matter how old you are, you’ve still got to eat your vegetables.

The San Francisco Mom

Tear your mom away from her pottery wheel and yoga mat and scoot over to Maya. If you or your mother are vegetarian, don’t fear; there’s food for you, and more importantly, more guacamole than you can shake a lamb’s tail at.
Otherwise, try the piramida de res, consisting of hanger steak, grilled tomatoes, sautéed onions, a black bean puree, and a chile vinaigrette.

Nothing says, “I love you, Mom,” more than vertical food.

The Chicago Mom

How many times did your mother take you to the Shedd Aquarium during that phase in your childhood when you ate lots of tuna fish sandwiches and insisted you were going to be a marine biologist? Say thanks with a Prince Edward Island Mussels served with smoked sausage at Sweets & Savories. For an entrée, check out the Mediterranean Seafood Stew.

The Washington D.C. Mom

How many mothers can looking perfectly at ease eating pizza in cashmere & pearls? Bet your mom can. Take her to 2 Amys and order a meal as quirky and fantastic as she is. How about pizza with garlic and anchovies with deviled eggs on the side?

Where’s the place in your town that just seems to yell, “Mom, you were right all along”? Leave us a comment.

We’ve made it possible for our users to link their accounts on Menuism & Facebook Eating applications.
Follow this link to open Facebook, and then provide your Menuism screen name (or the e-mail address you’ve registered with us) along with your password.

If you have any questions or comments, talk to us:
info@menuism.com

And happy spring!

We just recently noticed that we have a nice little mention on the Restaurants page in wikipedia.  Pretty cool!

One interesting twist is Menuism.com, they review the dishes rather than the restaurant.

- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurant#Restaurant_guides

Let us know if you see any other Menuism mentions!

Justin

Just in time for spring, Menuism is premiering a brand-new look. We’ve added lots of new features that will enrich your Menuism experience and expand your online foodie capabilities.

Keep an eye out for these new features:

Private Notes: Use these like your own virtual notepad, jotting down notes on food, reviewers you want to contact, and ideas for future reviews. These notes will also help you track which restaurants you’d like to visit; you’ll be seeing these synced with your my Menuism area of the site.

Dynamic City-Based Lists: Easily view recently popular local restaurants and reviews.

Rate Reviews & Reviewers: We’ve exacted our system of rating to direct you towards the best reviews. We invite you to vote on the helpfulness of each review with pro & con buttons you’ll find at the end of every review.

Should we do the good news first? Menuism has been growing, and we’re really excited about what that means for you, the user. In a few weeks, we’ll be launching a brand-new design that will really, really rock. Foodha’s been snacking non-stop to keep up his energy up to get the new look out on time.

Bad news: Glitches along the way are, sadly, almost inevitable, and we hit one this week when we were sending out newsletters. Duplicate and stray e-mails may have popped up in some of your mailboxes, and we are very sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

We thank you for the patience, and we very much look forward to seeing all of you around the site. We love reading about all of your culinary adventures.

Lastly, let us know how we’re meeting your expectations. We take our users’ feedback very seriously, so shoot us an e-mail anytime: info@menuism.com

It’s hard to imagine, but we launched Menuism.com a year ago in Oct 2006. Time sure flies when you’re eating. Menuism keeps growing and we keep learning more and more about food and all of you food-passionate users. What keeps us excited is that we know that we’ve only scratched the tip of helping you find food. We’re constantly looking to improve your entire dining experience and we’ll be doing some site updates in the coming months to reflect that commitment. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any suggestions or ideas, use the feedback form, email us at info (at) menuism.com or just leave a comment.

Here are some tasty stats about Menuism 1 year later:

• New York - Almost 700 users and 2000 reviews!
  John and I started our eating and reviewing in Chicago and Seattle so we’re excited to see New York surpass all the other cities. There’s no stopping the foodies in NY! It may be time for us to head east and try some of the tasty sounding places.
• Canada is picking up steam with Vancouver and Toronto each with over 300 reviews!
  It sounds like there’s some good eating up in Canada that we need to go check out.
• 1,279 different cities have at least 1 review! (with coverage of 48 out of 50 US states!)
  This stat amazes us. It’s just goes to show that food opinion knows no boundaries. Our favorite reviews are the ones that come from cities that we’ve never heard of so keep it up!
• Over 1/4 of the restaurants reviews have dish reviews (with an an average of 2 dishes per review)
  This tells us that people do care about the food at restaurants and that hopefully people are benefiting from this extra knowledge. Next time you go to a 5 star steak restaurant that has 1 star ribs or a 1 star taco stand with 5 star tacos, remember to let the world know!

We wouldn’t be here without any of our wonderful users and we’re always thankful for your participation and passion. Feel free to message either of us if you want to grab a meal!

Happy Eating!

- John & Justin

P.S. If you’re on Facebook, remember to try out the Menuism Eating app. It’ll let you share your wonderful taste with all your Facebook friends!

If you use Menuism, then you must love food. John and I will both be traveling through the SF bay area next week and would love to meet other Menuism users! Come join us for dinner on Thursday September 6th at 7:30 in Mountain View. We’re still trying to decide on a place so let us know if you have a suggestion. If you could RSVP using this evite, that would help us estimate a headcount.

http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/justin@menuism.com/mealbayarea092007

We probably can’t foot the whole bill, but we’ll get the appetizers.

Bring your cameras and your food-loving hat!

John & Justin

Your marriage proposal left something to be desired. You can’t remember the last time you told your mother that you loved her. Hey, you’re just not good with emotions. So how can you write a restaurant review that says how you really feel?

Abandon the Obvious. Start by ending your love affair with words like good, delicious, and perfect. They’re the comfort blankets of the English language and you’re all grown up now. You don’t need to be a foodie to know what you’re tasting. Remember it. Was it crispy? Was it soft on the inside? Did it have a sweet aftertaste?

Take Pictures. Pictures will jolt your memory and fill in the gaps in your description. Plus, everyone loves a little smutty food porn. Take these examples.

A photo by justin wickedly labeled, “All You Can Eat”. From Tadashi Sushi.

A burrito for a small army from Sandiago’s Mexican Grill. Photo by fattiusthebear.

Write about the Interesting and Funny. Was there a fire in the kitchen? Were the men sitting one table over squabbling over their golf game? These things are all part of the dining experience. If it really stood out in your memory, write about it.

Don’t Hide Your Personality. Some of us can do the whole swirl, sniff and slurp wine tasting without giggling, and some of us can’t. So what if you don’t write for Gourmet magazine? There are still countless numbers of people who want to read about your opinion. After all, that’s why they’re visiting a public restaurant review site.

Re-Read Your Review. After you’ve finished, take a moment to look back. Check for typos that make you look silly. Try to read it from the point of view of a stranger: would you be captivated by what you’re reading? Would you find it useful? Would you give yourself an A? Tweak as necessary.

Menuism Users Show You How It’s Done
Or, select words from the superstars.

Rayvenhaus
Motto: Searching the bounty main for the best restaurants!
Best Trait: His honesty results in laugh-out-loud reviews. He also brings in personal experience. “I’ve slopped food in cleaner pig troughs then the bathroom at this restaurant.” (Taco Bell, Lynwood)
Memorable quotes: “I’m telling you what, I love the service at this place. I think next time I’ll try one of their Subs in a Tub.”(Jersey Mike’s Subs)

trufflupagus
Best Trait: Her far-reaching vocabulary: not surprising, considering she’s a professional writer (and photographer). She describes the Mexican Bloody Mary at Café Colonial as “a mix of vodka and tequila with perfectly piquant tomato juice and spices.” And she makes the Shrimp al Ajillo at El Faro sound like a Biblical experience. “A terrific rendition of this incredible classic – small shrimp, bubbling in a clay casserole filled with hot sauce and an immense amount of garlic…” Want some yet?
Memorable Quotes: “You have to be a super-hardcore capsaicin addict to tango with these peppers.” (Spicy & Tasty)

tommers
Motto: The deliciousness is in the details!
Best Trait: He merrily foodies his way from start to finish: his four visits to the Three Seasons Restaurant in Palo Alto cumulated in an 811-word review. Skip a sentence and you’ll be missing out on gourmet-ing vicariously. But he’s no grumpy food critic: in his hundreds of words, you’ll be loath to find any more critical than “wasn’t great.”
Memorable Quotes: Worth noting are his epic struggles with the limiting star rating system. About Saha he writes, “Four stars, just barely”; with AUX Delices, it’s “Four stars going on five?”. But the best may be his happy response to the EOS Restaurant & Wine Bar: “Hot damn! What a great meal!”

My job involves looking at hundreds of restaurant websites. As multiple tabs gather on my Firefox, I mildly worry that an animated chef doing the polka might show up in my dreams. Restaurant websites are a recipe for disaster, as owners are notoriously tight-fisted and their website designer is often the lowest bidder.
At a recent conference I attended for restaurant owners and managers, a speaker said, “You have to get into the twenty-first century with a website for your business.” The bad news is that owners are listening. Here are some things that that will send your potential customers lunging for the X in the corner of the screen.

Overenthusiastic Use of Multimedia: I’ve seen sites that have buttons that squeal, squeak, or moan every time a mouse runs over them and animated knives that sharpen themselves as a transition to every page.Too often, the multimedia takes the place of actual content; it’s these sorts of sites that have the most “Under Construction” pages – a good segue to the next point.
Serious Offender: Gregoire’s Restaurant . The links are swirling images that I can’t identify, but they look suspiciously like rounded coffins. Move your mouse and out pops the name of the link in a seedy-looking font. Are we meant to be surprised or terrified?

The Under Construction Page: If a page doesn’t exist yet, don’t link to it. There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking on a link that promises information but doesn’t deliver.
Serious Offender: Burrito Boyz . If I were an investor trying to get that ball rolling by clicking on “Invest”, I’d be greeted with a sadly pixelated Under Construction image. Bad news. Anyway, did I say nothing’s more frustrating than the under construction page? That’s a lie. Take the next point, for instance.

Playing Hide-and-Seek: Your potential customer shouldn’t have to hunt for your address, phone number, or other contact information. Put these things on the front page.

Manager in a Fortress: Hey, Rapunzel? If your customer had an especially good or bad experience (okay, most likely bad) she’s going to want to e-mail the owner or manager. Either post your e-mail address or create a feedback form. You can’t placate an angry customer who can’t reach you.
Serious Offender: Bob Chinn. if you’d like, you can read his entire biography, and you can even sign up to have him send you e-mails, but your chance of reaching him is slim to none unless you hire a private detective.

Music: Sorry, Beethoven; vocal website are so Web 1.0, and for good reason. The person doing dinner sleuthing at work will be given away by a burst of music to annoy the coworkers; another person already listening to music will be treated to an unpleasant remix. Play your favorite music at your restaurant; keep it off the internet.
Serious Offender: Katana. No one wants to buy your “Sounds of Katana” CD to “escape into a world of smoky sake, sexy candle-lit moment and luxurious beats” while they’re eating Bagel Bites.

The Orphaned Website: You can’t just slap your logo, address and menu onto a site and forget about it for months. Think of your website as your portfolio that needs continual updating. Post your specials every time they debut and display positive reviews as you receive them.

Thank goodness for Menuism, which will give you all the information you need with an interface that’s just as pretty as you please.

The weeks of coding have happily paid off; Menuism is thrilled to present a Facebook application. Short of going out to eat with your friends, it’s the best way to share the dining experience. You can enjoy a fully integrated experience — all of the reviews you see on Menuism can be read on Facebook, and the review you write on Facebook will be hanging out on Menuism for everyone to see.

The coolest feature for the food-lover might be the GutCheck option on Facebook; write down that delicious dish you’re eating for all the world to see on your profile. If you’re eating something with truffles, we want to hear about it.

We’re the first application on Facebook related to dining out and food. Time to pause and reflect: the days where we all blindly followed one gourmet expert is long over. (Heck, we used our Zagat guides to smash gross-looking bugs long ago.) One step back for The Man, one leap forward for The Masses!

To play food critic, join us on the “Eating” application at http://apps.facebook.com/menuism.

Anne, Marketing Intern