A Yelp for green hedonists, hold the whining?

Well, I’ve been having fun exploring FarmPlate.com, which bills itself as the largest nationwide directory of sustainable food businesses . . . an online community of farmers, fishermen, foragers, food and drink artisans, restaurants, markets and foodies. With the same sort of rating/review star system used by Yelp, it hopes to cut through the clutter of competing social networking/user review sites with a fresh approach to helping green folk find awesome food & drink they can feel good about.

At the moment, FarmPlate claims listings of over 12,000 farms, 7,000 restaurants, 5,800 food artisans, 4,200 drink artisans, 3,600 farmers’ markets, 3,000 food and agricultural organizations, and 4,400 other contributors to the sustainable food movement.

I admit I use Yelp to find good restaurants around town, in the hopes it will help HH and I weed out the worst experiences as we explore. But more often than not, I end up with high blood pressure from the idiot reviews people post. You know the ones I’m talking about: “My girlfriend and I were hammered when we arrived….and the food was pretty tasteless.”  “I asked the kitchen to mash up Baby Madison’s fois gras and they sent it out chopped instead.” “I know it was Valentine’s Day and a Friday and we didn’t have reservations but Boopsie and I still shouldn’t have had to wait 30 minutes for a table.”

I’m hoping the FarmPlate reviewers are a little more intelligent. In fact, I’d be willing to bet on it. Or maybe it’ll just be different complaints, like “Wish they offered something for fat-free, gluten-free, low-salt vegans”  (don’t laugh – we overheard someone at a restaurant make that complaint at Root Down last weekend)

I’m off to explore those “drink artisans” now. That has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Category: Cooking, Food, Local, Organic, Restaurants, Sustainable, Useful Stuff