Dining 2008: The year in blogs

APRIL

Recipe-gate hits home at Diner's Journal: It was bad enough when the Huffington Post exposed Cindy McCain's whimsical, homemade campaign-site recipes as unflinchingly lifted from the Food Network. But steal the roadmap to Julia Moskin's passionfruit mousse? This means Diner's Journal war!

Grief counseling over Florent's closure: After the New York Post officially announces that Florent would go out with a Mardi Gras bang, owner Florent Morellet tells Bruni that he'll be soothing customers with themed dishes, décor and performances, reflecting the five Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Nobody seems willing to get past the first stage: denial. 

Is goat meat considered a low-fat alternative? Just when New Yorkers made it known that an all-fried menu wasn't going to fly, Time Out's The Feed reports that the shuttered BarFry space would be soon clueing diners in on a new trend—goat meat—at Mexican replacement Cabrito.

Provençal proves too provincial for some: Hankering for a space that would not be just "a special-occasion restaurant," Marc Meyer tells Diner's Journal that he's giving up on Provençal cooking and going for a surefire (and, persumably, more bankable) farm-to-table theme that's a bit closer in concept to the owners' other spot, Cookshop. It opens the following month as Hundred Acres, to mixed reviews.
 
"Carmellini? He's just not here right now": FloFab was the first to dangle a question mark over strained relations between A Voce and its, chef Andrew Carmellini, on Diner's Journal. Announcing the news that the restaurant would branch out to the Time Warner Center, she asked the owners whether Carmellini would be at the helm. It must have been the cagey answer, "He's still with us...for the time being," that tipped her off.