restaurants

Singapore automates the dining experience

Forget the Slow Food movement. True geeks are in a rush to spend their cash on the latest electronics, not snobby epicure. So when we spotted a fast-food restaurant that's automated, our heart rates sped up accordingly.

Kitchen Mogu Mogu is a Singapore-based Japanese fast-food restaurant that styles itself after similar dining concepts in Japan. In fact, it feels like buying from a vending machine, only in this case it's hot Japanese grub, not sodas or candy bars.

The transaction is easy. Tap the touch screen for your orders and make your payment. You can choose to pay … Read more

Gotham Geek Guidebook: Balthazar

Left-leaning news hub The Huffington Post launched a new blog on Thursday, one that's been talked up quite a bit among the New York new media scene. It's called "236.com"--that's 23/6, which could be considered the 24/7 of the liberal leisure class that reads HuffPo blogs in the first place. (For the record, the main 236.com domain, which will include more print and multimedia content, has not yet launched.)

Anyway, in describing itself to curious visitors, a blurb at the top of the new blog explains: "236.com is … Read more

Waiter! Didn't you see my light?

Note to restaurateurs: Eating in the dark does not equate sophisticated ambiance. If not done up right, it's just a nuisance. This nifty invention, I fear, will only encourage the below-candlelight dimness I have been coming across in restaurants lately.

Taylannas, a company out of Miami, has introduced "Menus That Talk." The DVD-size device recites the menu choices at the push of a button. The customizable device uses a different button for each category like appetizers, desserts or salads. The talking menu, which includes Braille imprinted on the buttons, also offers Spanish as an option. There is … Read more

MojoPages: Media-rich user reviews with karma

MojoPages is a new user review site that launched last week. It's similar to Yelp, but MojoPages users can post video clips and pictures to individual reviews about restaurants and local attractions.

In addition to offering a free-form template to create your written masterpiece, MojoPages gives you a form on which you can rate each establishment's value, service, and quality--things often mentioned in a well-written review.

One of the other standouts of MojoPages is the implementation of user photos. Instead of just uploading photos to an establishment's profile page, you can add them to each review. This … Read more

GroupRecipes: An online foodie confab

A lot of chefs will say that you're not a real cook if you have to have to work from a recipe, which I'm going to go ahead and dispute right now. Some of us with sophisticated palates just require a little more structure than others.

Since discovering new recipes online is my favorite pastime, I'm usually an Epicurious kind of gal--great content, easy to use--but GroupRecipes.com has taken recipe sites to a cool social/interactive level. It's got a lot of the standard Web 2.0 features: users can create a foodie profile, add … Read more

Dine with the fishes at Hilton Maldives' underwater restaurant

What I really should be saying about this, just to tick off fellow Craver Mike Yamamoto, is that I wish this underwater restaurant were off the coast of Antarctica, so that I could go and see some penguins swim by. Alas, I don't know how well that could be accommodated with all the, you know, heating that'd have to be installed. But I digress. The Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa has recently opened the Ithaa Undersea restaurant, which is indeed underwater. A blogger at Table of Malcontents seemed rather disgusted at the prospect of dining in an establishment … Read more