Gastronomique: Scooping Inside Scoop.
If you wanted to know the latest gossip in the SF restaurant scene, you wouldn't come here. Not yet: we are convinced we will start receiving FAT JUICY TIPS --just any second now-- about which new place is about to open, and which chefs are about to switch kitchens. No, you would go check out the Inside Scoop. So we were disappointed to see that GraceAnn Walden, who penned the column for fourteen years, had moved on to other endeavours. GraceAnn always had her ear to the ground, scooping hot tips after hot tips, and dishing them fresh from the oven to you.
Since food reviewer Amanda Berne is taking over the column, does this mean that Amanda's reviewing gig is up for grabs? Personal to M. Bauer, food editor: us, Michael, us, us, us! We absolutely won't mind having our food expensed, and we have all these cool disguises from the village people garage sale to go totally anonymous. Just between us, cowboy, we're very frisky too.
We emailed GraceAnn to check her out and in our very own Inside Scoop™, she says: I am happily retired from the Chronicle. We were too shy to ask if she took the buyout package management offered to long time employees to reduce the Media Worker's Guild influence, like Ken Garcia or Glenn Dickey did. By the way, Michael, honey dear: we are not unionized, we are a barely legal immigrant, call us. We did ask about her future: she will be the West Coast correspondent for a new luxury travel and food online magazine and newsletter. [She] will be traveling to LA a little and other west coast cities. The new ventures is managed by her friend in NYC, Laurie Werner, formerly of Departures magazine.
She will also spend the next few months working on her web site, GraceAnnWalden.net which, when it launches, will report on local restaurant-food news, bargain of the week, recipes, cookbook reviews, chef interviews, hosted restaurant dinners and [her] tour schedule and allow you to subscribe to her 5,000 strong mailing list.
Tour schedule? Yes, you can hang out with GraceAnn in real life if you miss her weekly visit in the Chron too much: next tour is in North Beach on 1/28, where you can learn why the Italian people came to North Beach --it's the cheese, duh, even we know that-- and how they lived and also explore Italian food in North Beach today and 150 years ago. Go to the corner of Columbus and Green, wait for the silver DeLorean. More tour info here.