We love to eat, and we love to talk about what and where we’re eating. And most of our conversations about restaurants in NYC are fueled by the stories, reviews and gossip we read online. Where the Times’s Wednesday review used to be the ultimate word, we live in an age where insta-experts, power bloggers and bigwig critics stand on level ground. 2007 was the year when bloggers became major newspaper critics, publicists shuddered at the word “deathwatch,” and any armchair-Chowhound found the power to make or break a restaurant with a few well-placed posts.

Right there in everyone’s bookmark bar are the food-blogging big boys, Eater and Grub Street. Responding to (or creating?) the cycle of scandal and news, certain stories became obsessions—Eater played up the whole Jason Neroni versus Porchetta issue into something worthy of an episode of “Law & Order,” and Grub Street covered Sam Mason and Tailor to the point of overkill before the place even opened. But good deeds do not go unnoticed in this holiday season: Grub Street arranged for Eric Ripert to cook a "last supper" at Le Bernardin for some poor guy about to lose his taste buds.

A few specialized bloggers provided a hyper-local service to readers, and we applaud their dedication to the form. Midtown Lunch turned office workers onto street carts and crazy cheap eats in unlikely neighborhoods; Pork Chop Express diligently mapped out every single papusa and taco at the Red Hook ballfields and kept readers up-to-date on the situation between the vendors and the city inspectors who still might shut them down.

Several folks proved that this wacky blogging thing can lead to more mainstream success. Restaurant Girl, Danyelle Freeman, settled in (somewhat controversially) as the Daily News’ regular critic; the Amateur Gourmet was just one of many bloggers to publish a cookbook; and local-girl-made-good Andrea Strong was all over the TV screen.

But newspapers survive and print still counts, since thankfully there remains a place where writers can pull off long-form, well-researched work. Alan Richman's journey to Brooklyn, published in GQ over the summer, shouted out deserved outer-borough joints like the Good Fork and Al di La. The always-entertaining Jeffery Steingarten, writing in Vogue, hired Paul Liebrandt as a private chef and lived to tell the tale. The Times’ Dining section, under a new food editor this year, published some over-the-top stories with a shock factor: Frank Bruni spent a few absurd silicone- and steak-fueled evenings at Robert's Steakhouse in the Penthouse strip club, while a behind-the-scenes piece on bad behavior in good restaurants exposed just how many people puke at Per Se.

Are we navel-gazing? Who cares. There was plenty to dish about this year, and—as the cacophony of blogs proved—you can never be too gluttonous when it comes to gossip and hype.