The Amateur Gourmet Suggestion Card

For those of you who don’t live in the Tri-State area, here’s an opportunity to post some comments too. I may be opening up a big fat can of worms here (insert appropriate graphic)

but I’d like to open up the floor for comments and/or suggestions regarding the site. More podcasts? Less movies? More nudity? I’m all ears. Or eyes, as the case may be. Ok, happy suggestion making!

38 thoughts on “The Amateur Gourmet Suggestion Card”

  1. More nudity, more drumming, less lemon.

    Really, I quite like it as it is.

    Pics are good! Keep up the pics!

    Are you using Photoshop/Some Other Image Program(tm) to enhance them? Cause, quite honestly, it doesn’t look like it.

    If you don’t have Photoshop and don’t want to learn the ways of image manipulation anyway, Picasa does it pretty well on it’s own.

    Tis by Google and free: http://picasa.google.com/index.html

    Load your pictures in there, and select them and hit the I’m Feeling Lucking button, and it’ll auto-nice your pics.

  2. I really like your site the way it is. Love the movies!

    You should make it a point to dine at more budget friendly establishments. Like a Rachel Ray $40 a day thing. Or, make it a game and try to get a lunch for under, say, $8?

  3. Nudity? Oh la la… There is an interesting thought. Lets just keep the nudes limited to Lolita, ok! (We don’t want to scare the children)

    I agree with Jodi that images could probably use a bit of Photoshop work, but they are not bad, just adequate.

    As for the podcasts, they really do not do much for me. I would rather read your site instead of listening to it. I do love the videos though. The movies are where you shine. I am thinking Hollywood, for sure!!!

    Another, off the core topic, comment I would make is on the site header. From looking at the photos from your vacation I have to wonder how old the header image is. You look much younger in that picture. Is it time for am update? Hmmm… I guess it is a good thing you are young, or you might not like this “you look much older” comment. :-)

    Keep us updated on your responses and what your plans may be.

  4. I suggest you digest

    wholewheatradio.org

    for a change.

    Love your blog. Any body who trys anything is a friend of mine.

    ~Kath

  5. I love that you post everyday. You are my daily fix. If I didn’t have your blog, it would be like losing my right arm. o.k. so my life is mundane and boring, but Adam that is why I like you, I live through your experiences, reading each one carefully, capturing all details so I can go and call my mother and tell her all the wonderful things I did this weekend.

    As mentioned before, need a new picture for your heading. Also, need a new cookbook. May I suggest Small-Batch Baking? Lidia’s Italian-American? Julia Child?

  6. Short posts, good. Daily posts, good. Pictures, good. High cholesterol, BAD. You will make me happy if you eat a little healthier and maybe exercise once in a while. Even if you *are* skinny, you show-off. :-}

  7. OH, and if you learn to consistently say, “We were seated…” instead of “We were sat….” [!CRINGE!]

  8. More recipe disasters!

    Or, if you must, recipe successes.

    I like it when you cook at home more than when you go out to eat. Perhaps I have agoraphobia-by-proxy.

    Also, more nudity would be peachykeen.

  9. more recipes and more traveling. these are the two things i cannot get enough of myself, so i love when other people post about them. keep up the daily posts! (also love the restaurant reviews.)

  10. More cooking posts with pictures. The tomato sauce post with step by step pix got me hooked on this blog.

    More cooking posts with recipes the average amateur cook can make, like that peas, pasta, pesto thing. (How many amateur cooks will buy and cook live lobsters?)

    More cookbook reviews. Lately, I’m only trying recipes that are recommended by my favorite bloggers.

    I don’t listen to the podcasts or watch movies (requires too much tinkering w/my slow computer), so, um, don’t post a lot of those.

    Less (much less) reviews of swank restaurants. I mean, what do I care about $100 per person dinners in a city 600 miles from where I live?

  11. I love your site. It is by far–by far–my favorite food blogging site. I used to live in NYC (now I live in DC, but get to NY frequently), and your descriptions of neighborhoods, store fronts, and even the errands you run make me miss the city.

    It would be very helpful if you included street addresses and maybe even a phone number to the restaurants you review. At the same place in each post so that it’s easy for us readers to find it.

    I know it’s more work for you, but if you don’t do it, then your readers will collectively spend hundreds of man hours (10,000 readers x 7.4 minutes) doing it for themselves. And this is the modern age, man! Division of labor and all that.

  12. I like the diversity. From cooking in your own kitchen to eating in restaurants to your travels and food expereinces. If you could continue to balance all these activities and join the circus, I would be impressed!

  13. Just to use frustrate any attempt to make sense of our comments – I love you trips to swanky, outragoeusly expensive restaurants. I will not, if ever, get much of a chance to go to these places and it’s great to live vicariously through your prose and photos.

    My life is very different but we share a love of food and cooking and it is great to read your experiences in New York.

    I love your blog as it is but if you need some suggestions: keep the posting as it is (trying recipes and visiting resturants), less podcasts, and maybe do a site redesign sometime

  14. More east village restaurants! If you go (and enjoy) a place that’s in my area, I’m almost guaranteed to go there in the future. I encourage this just because I’m too lazy to go over to the west side. For instance, have you checked out Hip Hop Chow?

    Definitely more home cooking. Your cherry tomato sauce rocked my world and impressed my friends and family.

    While I do love the visits to swanky restaurants (even though I seethe in envy!) I second the call for good places that are a little more in the average or budget range.

    Mostly, just keep posting!

  15. haiku about vegetables

    ballads ode to various meats

    greek chorus in counterpoint to your restaurant reviews.

    Meh, can’t think of things to change, really enjoy your site

    cheers

    d

  16. More cowbell!

    (Maybe that joke won’t work as well with this crowd…)

    If you want an honest answer that does not rely on SNL, I think you should create a scoring system of some kind, even if it’s something totally nuts. It would be nice to have a rubric to compare one restaurant at which you ate to another. But, that is all.

  17. Love the pics. Hate the pods. Movies are good. I miss the the home cooking step by step.

    I used to live in NY and I really enjoy reading your posts about shopping for pans or ingredients – the restaurants don’t do a whole lot for me.

    Finally, I suggest a competition like you did last year (?) around halloween with the cupcakes. I think that would be fun.

  18. I never listen to or view the stuff that isn’t the blog itself, so I guess I’m not looking for more podcasts or videos. I love the site for its strength of voice and personality. I don’t really care whether you eat out or cook at home as long as you write about it brilliantly. And I’ll disagree with the previous message about Photoshop. Leave your pictures alone. Don’t turn them into offensive food porn.

  19. “more nudity”? Theres been nudity? Where? Hate to have missed it.

    I like your site, no make that “love”. Cant understand the people who dont view the podcasts and listen to the videos – they’re great. Or the “Rachael Ray” comment – cant stand her.

    Seriously. If you really liked something you cooked please be more precise in the recipe (still waiting to find out how much rice and for how long). Add more personal information (dating?) – inquiring minds want to know. Otherwise keep the side bar writing on plays/books, keep the podcasts, keep the movies. You may want to try getting together a 30minute movie – sort of a tryout for a foodtv show. Your recap of the last year in NYC dining was better than RR’s new show on foodtv.

    Dennis

  20. Tell us how you can eat like a king AND live in New York AND be in grad school. Your restaurant reviews and cooking exploits are the soul of your blog–more more more! (I hate it when you’re away and have substitutes). You’re brilliant.

  21. I like the idea of adding a bit of budget friendly cuisine as was mentioned above. And to go along with that, more food traveling in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island even! There is so much incredible ethnic food in this city that won’t pinch your wallet and is incredibly delicious in the outer boroughs. Indian, Columbian, Greek and Korean in Queens, there’s nothing like it, and what an experience. I’d love to see your photos of Astoria, Jackson Heights etc. Brooklyn, really, if you don’t try DiFaro’s pizza I’m going to become some crazy person who every day tells you to go to DiFaro’s! Brooklyn is the place for real Italian American cuisine and you will enjoy the many characters who reside there. Brooklyn also has become quite trendy with incredible unpscale cuisine, some of the best in the city IMO. I will also go crazy if you don’t visit Al di La and try their incredible Venetian cuisin. I have to admit I am a novice re the Bronx and Staten Island but if you visited those places and blogged about their food it would be as exciting to me as if you went to France or China or even Lithuania. I’ve always wanted to go to City Island in the Bronx for the lobster!

    So please, A.G., give the outerboroughs a chance, eventhough your blog is already brilliant as is…

  22. I read this blog every day. As a cook, foodie, and blogger myself, I really appreciate your efforts on all fronts. Don’t change a thing. You are charming as you are. I await your cholesterol # with bated breath. Still chuckling over your earlier quote: “I’m a gourmet! I don’t have cholesterol!”

  23. Love the site! But one minor pet peeve: please stop using the word “flavorful” to describe meals! I’ve seen it on the site so often its lost its meaning.

  24. I like your blog because it expresses how much you enjoy life. You appear to be a kind, intelligent person who is open to new experiences.

    Just keep writing on whatever interests you, and it will be interesting to us.

  25. Although I love the website and enjoy it just the way it is, I would gladly welcome more cooking mishaps and less reviews.

    But still, the site is awesome and you deserve a hypothetical-chocolate-chip-cookie! (It’s in the mail)

  26. Second season of Amateur Gourmet Survivor!

    That will be all.

    No it won’t… Love the site. Check it frequently.

    THAT will be all.

  27. Oh yeah, I tried your cherry tomato sauce recipe too (but I used grape tomatoes as the store didn’t have cherry tomatoes). It was awesome! Way to go on the improvising–and then passing on your secrets to us. Thanks!

  28. I read your site every day and LOVE reading about restaurants I’ll never get to go to and drooling over photos of delicious food (actually, this is painful b/c I’m on Weight Watchers). . .I’d actually like to hear more podcasts. I enjoyed one on my commute to work via Metro this morning. . .something different from the usual music/reading paper morning.

  29. Ohh, I was going to say more cowbell. I have a disease, and the only cure is MORE cowbell!

    As a fellow Weight Watcher with Beth and your lovely mother, I live vicariously through your donuts, cupcakes and so on.

    Also, keep up the swanky restaurant posts, I love them. I live on the left coast and I don’t care that I’ll probably never go to those restaurants, I just want to read/see it.

    The most essential thing, in my mind, is to post daily. Thanks for your dedication and hard work.

  30. I think what I love most about this site is your delightful, playful, unfailing humor and good nature, even when you’re kinda annoyed. The other wonderful aspect of AG is the incredible variety. You’re a promiscuous blogger in the best sense of the word — you’ll try anything (or perhaps there’s an “almost” there, but I’ll leave that up to you). Posh restaurants, low-brow dives, easy dinnerish things, tough recipes, podcasts, movies…you give it your all. And your all is very, very good. I doubt you know how many bloggers you inspire on a daily basis. Including me.

  31. Your blog is fantastic. As a blogger, I know how much effort you must put into all your posts. Cooking is work enough, without having to reach for the camera every step of the way (wipe hands on tea towel, get clutter out of the shot, avoid harsh lighting, ack! what’s burning?)

    I think one-person food blogs do an amazing job. Most of us work (or study) and blog in our downtime. Because we love it, and we’re all exhibitionists (and voyeurs) when it comes to gastro-porn.

    I love that you do such a great mix of NY-related stuff. If I had one request it would be to have a “fave New York eats” whether cheap or exclusive. But that’s mainly because I’m headed there in Dec (from Sydney) and using your blog for research on where to eat! =)

  32. Adam: I love this blog! Someone from nigella.com listed it there, and I’ve checked in almost every day to see what you’ve been up to. I grew up in the ‘burbs (Fairfield County) but live in Houston now, and your restaurant reviews are about as close as I am going to get to these places. Your pictures are great, and your videos and songs crack me up! I’d love to take you to dinner next time I get to the city! Keep up the great work – I don’t know where you find the time to do this every day.

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