Letting the food speak for itself. Mostly.

I've talked extensively about how badly I suck at this blog thing.  You might not agree, or may even never have noticed.  I do think I do a good job of faking it after all, and every time I say that I suck I invariably get at least one IM, e-mail or Facebook comment assuring me that it's not the case.  To those people, I'd just like to point out that I POSTED LESS THAN A DOZEN REVIEWS IN THE ENTIRE YEAR OF 2012.  And trying to maintain anonymity while snapping off a quick pic or two, often in less-than-ideal lighting, before digging in so I can actually enjoy the food at its prime means that those pics often turn out badly.  Still, I'd like to think that I'm gradually improving as time passes, and as we approach the fourth anniversary of this little project's life I've noticed a pretty drastic oversight on my part.  See, once I've written about a place, I'm kind of "done" with it.  I may still go there (though I mostly feel driven to move on to the next new eatery, I get sentimental about certain places), and even take a picture or two, and sometimes I'll even post those pictures on Facebook.  Well, it's occurred to me that a lot of the people who read my reviews here might never see those pictures (especially with Facebook's increasingly idiotic algorithm bullshit).  I don't often do follow-up reviews, so basically at this point I'm putting those pictures where a couple hundred people might see them if I'm lucky before they get sucked into the void and buried.  And unforgivably, I'm also guilty of this behavior in relation to events like the Food Truck Rally, where I've taken to just posting on Facebook rather than doing yet another website review and therefore have tried things from newer vendors there that I've never given the courtesy of writing up here.  That's just not fair to me, the restaurants involved, or the people who are searching for information someplace other than Facebook.  So, here's a bunch of pictures I've taken over the past year or so, all dishes I enjoyed, from eateries that are still in business, and captured in not completely horrifying images...

Wanna Cluck Around?

Big Jud's

Maybe it's my contrarian nature, but I have a habit of not reviewing places if the Boise Weekly or the Idaho Statesman have done so recently.  This sometimes holds true even if it's a place I desperately want to check out.  It's even worse if the place has gotten national exposure.  I enjoy seeking out the places that nobody knows about, nobody talks about, or that everyone is so used to being around that they never really examine them.

Occasionally, someone contacts me about what they consider to be an egregious oversight on my part.  For example, a few months back I got an e-mail from a guy named Jim who couldn't believe that with all the burger write-ups I've done, Big Jud's wasn't among them.  It's not that I didn't want to try the place, and in fact I'd been curious about them ever since I saw them on Man V. Food, but that same exposure made me less interested in writing about them.   My time and resources are limited enough that when it comes to deciding where to eat, a place that I can get a write-up out of will usually win.  Still, this local burger institution and I were bound to cross paths eventually, and with a little incentive from Groupon I finally made the short trip to Big Jud's.  It's a trip I hope to make again.  And again.  And again...