Monday, December 5, 2011.
An Eating Day Off.
I spent two hours rejiggering the lengthy menu from the Broken Egg Café for an updated review of the place. The easy part is writing the review. Putting the menu into NOMenu's standard format takes much longer. The owners of the place--which is franchised eight times around the South--are better at marketing than they are at cooking. Their menu makes everything sound special and wonderful, although if you distill it down it's not revolutionary. When I started, it ran over 11,000 characters. After simmering, it was down to 3,300.
I had a little time to work on tomorrow's review update of P.F. Chang's, whose menu presents the same challenge that the Broken Egg's did. Readers like having the whole menu in the review, but I feel the need to edit out all the hot air, and clarify a few code words. For example, P.F. Chang's follows the current national restaurant trend in avoiding any use of the word "fried" in dish names. Instead, it uses "crispy." Remember: crispy = deep-fried.
I needed a day off food research today. Entirely too many major meals last week have put stress on my belt. I didn't go out or cook anything. After my standard breakfast regimen, all I ate was the last quarter of that ciabatta sandwich Carmelo gave me at the radio station last week. I didn't even bother to toast the bread or take the chill out of the meats and cheeses. It still tasted great.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
