Post script paper calls

A little post script from my Viral Vegetation project: just when I thought it was time to bring out the dinner mints, the Star called. They read my food article on Rabble and asked if I'd write a news piece for their paper. On the cover of tomorrow's living section, and on the web today, here she is: Using the web to find a foodie near you.

The last supper

All this waiting has been enough to make my stomach growl. So as I flip on my stove’s front element and set it to high, prepping dinner, I think to myself: it’s about time.

Three months ago I wrote, “This is the first of many meals to be discussed, dissected, and devoured.” Well, each course of my meal is finished. This morning with the click of a mouse my final feature at j-school went up on Rabble.

I set out to discover the dining set in Toronto that has moved onto the web. Bloggers, restaurant owners, chefs, and critics invited me into their world. Morning meetings brought the best coffee that has swam over my underdeveloped taste buds. Evenings meant dinners or a drink at an industry event.

I visited old restaurants and consumed new media. Each day I’d wake up to a full feed of the new foodies I’d started to follow on twitter. But the semester has come and gone, and with it my story. Another copy, with the photos posted here, will run in Futureale come May—along with Lauren’s column on Cowbell’s butchery sessions.

If we have to bring out the dinner mints (though Lauren says they ruin the good dining taste) now is the time. The marks are in, the story is up; I’m pleased with what I’ve done.

Thanks to all that picked up my calls, sat in front of my camera; offered interest and answered questions. In a city so easy to get lost in, this community is undeniably tight knit and vibrant.

To all the food friends I’ve made over this semester: I’ll see you on twitter.

*all photos are by Ryan Couldrey

Last week Lauren Wilton, Joel Solish, and Mary Luz Mejia sat down with me to talk about how social media has changed the food community. As active community members, bloggers, and tweeters, they've seen the landscape of Toronto's food scene change in recent years.

We talked about how and why they tweet, which restaurants have the best twitter feeds (and food), foodie meet ups, and followers becoming friends.

Last Thursday these three made the trek to the Ryerson campus, where I led them down the long dark hallway towards our online computer lair. There they sat down before my video cam and chatted about eating, tweeting, and the like.

I'll post the full video tomorrow, for now, meet my guests:

Coding a food community
Image: cybernetnews

When it comes to the web, Greg Bolton is among the earliest of adopters. He learned to code as a student of Carnegie Mellon’s Supercomputer center in Pittsburg, back in the early ‘90s, when computers were still large grey boxes that relied on dial-up connections.

Bolton’s then-rare ability to write HTML won him a job at the digital marketing agency Henderson Bas, where he helped build user-friendly sites for clients. He eventually quit when business at Pantry, the College St. coffee shop he owns and runs with his wife Liz, started to pick up, but found that what he’d learned at Bas also applied to his new business.

Pantry is currently active on twitter, hosts a blog on its site, and has plans for a rewards program for users who check into the restaurant on foursquare. Social media has provided Bolton the chance to share Pantry’s story, and invite people into the store. “What twitter is neat at is that sometimes you can promote without looking like it,” Bolton says, citing the Rosedale sandwich shop Black Camel’s feed, which updates followers as to how many buns are left, showing how rapidly they go.

Bolton knows how powerful of a marketing tool twitter can be, but still can’t always find the time to tweet—and that’s ok, he says. “If you’re on twitter too much it can look like you’re trying to promote yourself [too heavily], or like you don’t have enough cooking to do.”

While social media has brought changes to the food industry, it’s also brought it closer together, Bolton says. “It’s tied Ontario, particularly Toronto, to Prince Edward County and Niagra,” he says. “It’s made that one big blob of food trends and issues. People are much more aware of things happening outside the city.”

Since the adoption rate of twitter has risen, Bolton has seen the food community become more connected. “I’ve always been on the web and wrestled with how to turn online communities into real communities,” Bolton says. “Twitter seems to hold a key. It’s so immediate and has that many-to-many connection.”

Next up for Bolton is foursquare, but first he has an obstacle to climb over. “I’ve checked in so many times I’m going to be the mayor of here for fucking ever,” he laughs from a table near the kitchen at Pantry.

Even with Bolton’s embrace of new technology, old rules of customer service apply. If regulars don’t use Foursquare, they’ll get special treatment, he says. “If people are in here that much, you should be doing that anyways,” he says of the free coffee he plans to honour future mayors with. “Any good place does that.”

Geeking out in good company

Marie Nicola is a nerd. Her friend Anastasia Tubanos is a geek. If internet rants are to be believed, the two terms are most certainly not synonymous. Still, the difference is debate-able. Some say it’s that geeks get laid. Others say nerds programs while geeks game. It’s all semantics.

Both women are social media nerds, gizmo geeks, fangirls for forums, twitter, foursquare and the like. You get the point. In recent years, Nicola and Tubanos have found something new to geek out about on the web: food and drink.

Nicola is editor-in-chief of Dine.TO, a dining guide to Toronto. Tubanos is producer of the Naked Wine Show, a minute long video blog that profiles a new wine each week. As journalists in the food and beverage business, they have had to learn the ins and outs of each community. They’ve done this the best way they know how, social media.

Over three cups of joe at Balzac’s in Liberty Village we talk about what hooked them on social media, the friends they’ve made on it, and how it’s changed the industries they report on.

Nicola attended the first foodie meet up, where she says she met an amazing group of people. “It was another event that showed there were people that are not just in the industry,” she says, adding that a boom of interaction between local food lovers followed the event. “There was a food explosion on Twitter. There was a lot of foodie pride at that time, and it hasn’t let up since.”

More so than individual twitter users, Nicola says restaurants are hoping to impress more established new media, like locals She Does The City, BlogTO or SweetSpot.ca, as well as crowd sourced sites like Chow Hound, who she calls “a feared bunch.”

“A lot of restaurants fall prey to foodie opinion,” Nicola says. But keeping one ear open is smart, she says. Staying active in online conversations gives restaurants a chance to respond quickly to criticisms, adapt, and show the ever-vocal foodie community that they are being heard. “They need to be able to interact in these circles. If they have misstep, foodies cut them up.”

Tubanos chimes in with a wide-eyed taunt, “You don’t want to mess with the foodies,” she quips, only half kidding.

As a wine industry observant Tubanos has seen the age of the average wine enthusiast fall, a trend she relates partially to web 2.0, which makes information about wine more accessible and the conversation about it less stuffy. Meanwhile, she’s kept a close eye on beer, which she says is becoming more discussed and intellectualized.

The trend, she says: wine is becoming more populist, beer is becoming more elite-ist, and food is for everyone. Then the message is the same for geeks and nerds alike: eat up.

*This post is part of a larger feature I'm writing on how food and web culture intersects in Toronto. It's simulcast on Ryerson In The Moment and my temp micro blog Viral Vegetation

Eating our words

Not so many months ago Lauren Wilton was fresh to Toronto, yet another Winnipegger who uprooted her life to the big smoke to pursue bigger and better things. She enrolled in George Brown’s culinary program, rented an apartment in the city’s west end and opened a Twitter account using the handle @WhetMyAppetite.

Wilton’s Twitter feed reads like a mix between Gourmet magazine and a much racier Cosmopolitan. In between Tweets about her favourite coffee shops and brunch spots are stories of high times and hangovers. Here’s a taste: Just woke up from our serial killer extravaganaza with a friend from Winnipeg in my bed who I didn't even know was at the party.

People quickly started to take notice. Soon restauranters, critics, and other foodies were inviting Wilton to dinners, tasting, and demonstrations. She laughs and tells me she’s smoked joints with some of the city’s top chefs, and if you read between the lines, she’s even slept with some of them.

When Wilton tweeted that her apartment had been broken into the director of catering and events at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, Arlene Stein, offered her pro bono tickets for a $120-a-plate dinner hosted by TV chefs Michael Smith and Paul Finkelstein. Another of Wilton’s followers, the food critic Ivy Knight, forwarded her resume to Hank’s—a café on Church and Front—which offered her a job interview.

Not everyone is as willing to be as unedited and off-the-hinge as Wilton when it comes to scandalous tweets. One night Wilton was at a party at Niagra St. Café that produced a stream of drunken, misspelled tweets from a crowd that included Pantry co-owner Greg Bolton and Jamie Kennedy sommelier Jamie Drummond. The next day, the tweets had mysteriously disappeared.

Still a student, Wilton’s not worried about bad publicity—yet. If she lands in a respected industry position Wilton says she’d consider censoring some of her raunchier thoughts. Until then, her red lipstick and leopard printed persona will live on, online.

“This is my shtick,” Wilton says. “I’m inappropriate. It’s who I am.”

* This is the first of many meals to be discussed, dissected, and devoured. For my final feature in my final year I’ve decided to write about food. Lunch with Lauren started the discussion on foodies and the web. Over the next few weeks I’ll be interviewing restaurateurs, critics, and food bloggers about the local foodie scene, 2.0. Coverage will follow.