the salt & pepper diaries

Urban Spoon has just released a great new i-Phone application. Simply select your country, then city, cuisine type and price bracket and a single restaurant recommendation is presented, along with all details, link to web site and a diner rating.

The neat part though is the ‘shake’ feature. i-Phones have a clever technology feature called the ‘accelerometer’ – this detects whether the handset is being held in ‘portrait’ or ‘landscape’ positions and adjusts the screen view accordingly. The Urban Spoon app though is using this tech a little differently - when a gadget obsessed foodie just fancies a random suggestion – give the phone a shake and see what pops up. You never know, could be a nice surprise.

Do you have a burning desire to call Chef Ramsay (I love Kitchen Nightmares US!) a plum AND have a three course dinner along with a bunch of celebs? Well, sign up to the new series of the F-Word and you can. In their words, they are looking for people who are “passionate, opinionated and enthusiastic food lovers”. Go for it, your 15 minutes awaits…

The reference in my last post to Mr.Creosote reminded me of this truly repulsive individual and probably one of the most unforgettable Month Python scenes.

Rather than write anything else – you can see the full nauseating piece here.

Those chaps at St.John are up to some odd stuff at the moment. Check out the web site to see Fergus listening to mayonnaise or General Manager Tom Blythe, eating a doughnut without licking his lips…

As I have an aversion to getting my camera out in restaurants and taking shots of food, I end up trawling Flickr for anyone who has the guts to do so. Which means that every so often I end up stumbling on someone who really does take a great shot.

In searching for pictures of Smiths of Smithfields, I found PurpleCloud (no clues of real name here!). She has been taking some incredible images of food and tagged them all with detail and passion. Some of the shots are just fantastic and show the dishes in a clear, honest and simple manner - as food should be presented.