Hello there! My name is Elsa Marvel, and for the time being, I'm filling in for the inimitable Neal Ungerleider. Although Neal will be missed, and following in his footsteps is a daunting task, I'm very, very excited to pick up where he left off! I'll be keeping my finger on the pulse of dining and food-related happenings in our fair city, and posting my findings on openings, closings, good things to eat, great things to eat, and whatever else may come up, a couple times a day.

And who am I, you ask? Well, before anything else, an unrepentant eater: I grew up in a family of foodies, and spent my formative years eating everything from wild boar, to ceviche, to all sorts of veggies. Originally a Yankee from up north, I came down to Philly in 2002 and fell head over heels in love with this city. The beauty of the place and all the super awesome things to do around town helped, but what really did it for me was the food, from as lowbrow (but delicious) as scrapple and cheesesteaks, all the way up to Le Bec-Fin.

When I'm not thinking about what to eat next, I can be found reading, writing, obsessively watching The Wire, besting my Scrabulous opponents, and plotting out outfits for the week. I really love reality show villains, almost any food involving poached eggs, and impromptu dance parties. Questions? Comments? A burning desire to say hello?! Send me a note!

So! On to business as usual here on the MenuPages blog!

Le Bec-Fin [Official Site]

[Photo: before_roy/flickr]

This is my last day at MenuPages and writing the last post is always a tough task. After more than two years at this company, I will be leaving to work on a MA program at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva, Israel. It's going to be quite a change to say the least.

But before I head out, I just want to say this. Philadelphia, stop being so self-pitying and self-hating when it comes to your dining scene.

There's plenty in Philadelphia to be upset about. A horrific crime rate. Ineffectual, incompetent city government. A stagnating economy with a massive lack of job opportunities. The Sisyphean inability of the Iggles to make the Super Bowl. Phoenix kicking Philly's butt.

However, the dining scene isn't one of them. Philly is a great, unique restaurant city. Here are some of the things I'll miss:

• Philadelphia boasts the East Coast's best Oaxacan and Veracruzanan food. Tacquerias like Plaza Garibaldi, Acapulco and Taqueria La Raza beat Sunset Park, Brooklyn's Mexicans hands down and easily surpass anything available in Boston or Washington.

• A dedication to creative food that's unpretentious. Restaurants like the Standard Tap, Royal Tavern and Good Dog marry culinary school artistry to the classic American canon. Just don't call them gastropubs.

• Talula's Table, even if we never got to eat there.

• Watching Stephen Starr's rise to industry superstardom firsthand. We won't get into a comparison chart between the hospitality industry in Philadelphia and New York City, but suffice to say it's an entirely different ballgame. Watching Starr have two of New York's most successful restaurant openings with the NYC incarnations of Buddakan and Morimoto was a joy. His competition now includes national figures such as Danny Meyer and Jeffery Chodorow... and let's face it, that's awesome.

• Lo-fi ordinary food like cheesesteaks, roast pork sandwiches and pizza. Although most Philly pizzas are sad affairs, pizzerias like Tacconelli's Pizza and Marra's are regional treasures. Ditto for South Philly's red sauce Italians and sandwich shrines like John's Roast Pork and Shank and Evelyn's.

• Chickie's Italian Deli. Their veggie hoagie is one of the best meals in the world — tastewise, the equal of anything Thomas Keller or Marco Pierre White could ever churn out. We're not kidding you.

• The bars. Yuengling Lager. The whole thing. Non-pretentious joints where you can walk in by yourself, have a $3 citywide special, put Motorhead on the jukebox and have the time of your life in a neighborhood where you don't know a soul.

• Sarcone's Bakery. Dear God you guys rock.

With that said, we'll be having some special guest editors over the next few weeks overseeing the blog. Then... a brand new editor. It'll be awesome, we promise.

As for me, I'll still be reachable via e-mail and will be blogging at Lowlife. Thanks for reading the MenuPages blog, everyone.

— Neal Ungerleider

We don't often talk about MenuPages (the company) often. But as you may have heard, MenuPages was purchased last week by New York Media, publishers of New York Magazine.

Here's what a better business reporter than ourselves, Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times, wrote:

MenuPages.com will remain a stand-alone Web site, while also providing listings on the magazine’s site, nymag.com, and it will give New York Media an entree to the seven other metropolitan areas it covers. The restaurant section is already one of nymag.com’s most heavily used features. New York magazine’s site covers about 6,000 restaurants around the city, said Serena Torrey, a spokeswoman for New York Media. The listings give price ranges and other information, but while some of them have menus and user reviews, many still do not. By comparison, Ms. Torrey said, MenuPages covers about 10,000 restaurants in Manhattan alone, along with a smaller number in Brooklyn, and they are much more likely to have menus and multiple reviews. “They have many, many more menus than we do, and they have an incredibly efficient menu transcription system and updating system,” she said. MenuPages also has listings for Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington and South Florida. In some areas, the listings are available through the Web sites of other media partners, like The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Boldface ours. You see, Philly even got some Times love out of this story. More reaction is available over at, among others, Gawker, Mediabistro/FishbowlNY, CNet and paidContent. And even though this particular editor will be leaving MenuPages on Friday to start a long-planned graduate school program, we're still proud as hell.

Now onto the press release.

Continue reading "New York Magazine, Meet MenuPages" »

We just added several new restaurants to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Center City caffeine magnet Remedy Tea Bar.

• Worthy Ludwig's replacement Time.

• New Center City coffeeshop (that used to be an old one!) Blue in Green.

• Royal India in King of Prussia, aka the best Indian restaurant to ever open inside a gas station.

• Up and coming South Philly Italian contender Nicholas.

We just added several new restaurants to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Eric Ripert's brand-spankin' new 10 Arts.

• New Center City high-end takeout and market Union Gourmet.

• West Philly's Cavanaugh's is a Penn/Drexel institution — and we've got their menu.

• The Hikari, a new upscale Japanese restaurant straight out of Northern Liberties.

• Bucks County/Bensalem Italian restaurant Casmirri's.

We just added several new restaurants to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Fancy new Israeli joint Zahav is in the hizzouse.

• In deep Northeast Philly, there's a vegetarian Indian Chinese restaurant called Taj-India. There's lots of ice cream and the food is spicy.

• Why not try the Korean-style manta ray dinner at Seo Ra Bol?

• Like a good neighbor, Langhorne's Blue Fountain Diner is there.

• Who wants garbage plates and beef on weck? We do. Ugly American is happy to oblige.

We just added several new restaurants to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Newly opened Fishtown/Port Richmond scenester pub Memphis Taproom.

• Logan Square's Tower Bistro.

• Popular Drexel Hill pizzeria Goodfella's.

• Ardmore Japanese spot Harusame.

• Northwest Philly restaurant/bar Liberties Manayunk.

We've just added a whole bunch of menus to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Joe Pesce — a Center City Italian/Seafood restaurant with a pun-tastic name.

• Independence Brewpub successor & conventioneer magnet Field House.

• Ambitious Pennsport New American Peppercorns.

• One of South Street's newest additions, the Miami Cafe.

• Beloved Essington hangout Lehman's Tavern.

We've just added a whole bunch of menus to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Yakitori Boy, Philly's only (as far as we know) yakitori/tapas/karaoke bar.

• Northeast Philly slice & cheesesteak haven Apollo Pizza.

• Blue Nile Falls — 215's newest Ethiopian restaurant.

• Beloved South Philly steam table exotica purveyors Indonesia.

• Cake, a Chestnut Hill bakery/coffeeshop.

We've just added a whole bunch of menus to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Pearl, the Rittenhouse Square Nuevo Asian nightclub/resto.

• The City Avenue branch of Pei Wei Asian Diner.

• Manayunk cheesesteak institution Chubby's Steaks.

• Lee's Hoagie House's Bensalem incarnation.

• West Philly Haitian joint Soleil De Minuit.

We just added a number of new menus to MenuPages Philadelphia. Highlights:

• The newly resurrected Astral Plane Millenium

• Northeast Philly's nuevo Thai BYOB Kao Tip

• The PETA-friendly lunch truck cuisine of Viva Las Vegans

• Philadelphia's first Uzbek-Russian restaurant, Stolovaya

The following menus have all been recently added to MenuPages Philadelphia:

• NoLibs bar Irish Times

• Center City Japanese joint Kaizan

• South Street Korean/Japanese Gaja Gaja

• Fairmount Park restaurant Centennial Cafe

• University City takeaway Picnic

The following menus have all been recently added to MenuPages Philadelphia:

• 13th Street Indian BYO Bindi

• Old City tapas joint Triada

• The new South Street outpost of crab cake chain Bobby Chez

• Monk's spin-off Belgian Cafe

• New NoLibs Paraguayan resto Arbol Cafe.

We're proud to announce that MenuPages has been named as Time magazine's 6th best website of 2007. Here's what they have to say:

Open your takeout menu drawer and you're likely to find the five food-stained restaurant menus you've been ordering from for years. But if you live in big cities like New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles — places with countless foodie havens — your mealtime options shouldn't be limited to these same, stale choices. Log on to MenuPages.com, choose the neighborhood you live in, pick the type of cuisine you'd like to order and browse selections from hundreds of eateries. With approximately 25,000 menus from eight cities, you'll surely never have to order plain ol' pizza again.

Honestly... we're pretty happy about this. It's always great to see hard work being appreciated; and, moreso, we're very glad Time thought we were worth a mention.

Alright; back to the usual.

We're proud to announce that MenuPages has set up a new partnership with Yelp, the popular West Coast-based dining/shopping/nightlife/community site. Starting today, when you view a restaurant's site on MenuPages Philadelphia, you'll now have the option to view nearby Yelp listings for arts, nightlife and shopping. For an example, use the handy screen capture below:

Yes, corporate partnerships are an awesome, awesome thing indeed.

We're proud to announce that the MenuPages San Francisco Blog has a new editor, Adam Martin. A former reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, Martin will be covering the Bay Area food beat.

Due to an internet outage, we weren't able to post yesterday. But, hey... we're back!

It's Labor Day weekend. Go and do something fun, dammit!

We'll be back on Tuesday.

We're excited here at MenuPages. There's a website called Citysearch... Perhaps you've heard of them. Well, Citysearch now has restaurant menus — and it's all thanks to MenuPages.

Here in Philadelphia (and in New York, Boston, Chicago, South Florida, San Francisco, Washington DC and Los Angeles), Citysearch is now displaying tens of thousands of menus from MenuPages.

According to MenuPages CEO and founder Greg Barton, "Partnering with Citysearch, the pioneer in the online restaurant guide business, was natural for us. The combination of Citysearch coverage and services with MenuPages' comprehensive menu database will provide the best local restaurant discovery and selection experience for users."

Full press release after the jump.

Continue reading "MenuPages Teams Up With Citysearch" »

Let's welcome the newest member of the MenuPages blog family. The brand-spankin' new MenuPages South Florida Blog just launched. Edited by native Floridian Carolina Bolado, this is the place to learn about everything from Colombian hot dogs to why Floridians call mahi-mahi "dolphin." Also, we learned that Florida has much, much better Latin food than Philly. We're jealous. Check it out.

We're having some technical problems this morning. All shall be fixed soon.

Update: Everything's been fixed.

You may have noticed some changes at MenuPages lately. You can now view the latest MenuPages blog headlines directly from the MenuPages homepage. Pretty convenient, eh?

We've added new menus to the site. Highlights:

• Rylei, a romantic BYOB in Northeast Philly. You read that correctly.

• Almaz Cafe, Center City's first Ethiopian restaurant. They make a mean cup of coffee too.

• Brown Sugar Bakery, one of Philadelphia's few Trinidadian restaurants.

We're taking July 4th off. There's plenty going on around town. Go see the fireworks and eat some good food for us, ok?

The MenuPages Blog will return on Thursday.

MenuPages South Florida, the newest member of the MenuPages family, launched today. Our most geographically extensive site yet, MP:FL covers Miami, the Florida Keys, Broward County and more. All in all, a staggering 3963 restaurants are included on the site. How about some Cuban food? Or Key West seafood? Or even just some old school treats from the Rascal House? Check it out.

MenuPages South Florida [Official Site]

The MenuPages Philadelphia Blog is a compulsively updated guide to all the latest in restaurant, food and dining news. We update multiple times daily and are eager to hear from our readers. As could be guessed by the name, we're a product of MenuPages— Philadelphia's source for restaurant menus, reviews and ratings. MenuPages launched in Philadelphia in the summer of 2006 and we have grown to include over 2100 restaurants since then. We're also active in other cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Washington DC. In other words: We (really, really) know our food.

Your editor is Neal Ungerleider. A native New Yorker, Neal moved to Philadelphia in 2001 and quickly discovered the magic of cheesesteaks, West Philly Ethiopian and North Philly barbecue trucks. When not at MenuPages, Neal is a freelance writer and journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as Slate, Wired and Gridskipper.

We publish other blogs too. Check out our counterparts in the following cities: Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.