Where Did the NOLA Dining Section (Times/Picayune) Disappear To

[Timh]

What has happened to the dining section? No restaurant reviews, mostly just announcements of events and occasional frilly pieces. The dining scene is as vibrant as ever, and the TP seems to be sitting on its pen. Are they becoming just another irrelevant food section of anytown, usa newspapers?

[HungryC]

Did the TP's dining section ever have reviews? In my memory, reviews always appeared in the Friday entertainment supplement (Lagniappe). Dining section still has interesting features from time to time, but nothing like the old days when it was an entire section of the paper on Thursdays. Such is the state of newspapers today, I guess. At least the Dining content is longer than Monday's Metro section--that fish wrapper is downright embarrassing. AND my monthly subscription just went up, AGAIN.

[Timh]

As the Lagniappe is a part of the TP i just considered it as one. Still no reviews(I understand he halted during the BP catastrophy) but the restaurants didn't stop. As you know, the restaurant scene is as good as its ever been, and personally feel the bar has risen since Katrina. And there are enough interesting people doing intersting things to write about as well. Seems they(dining editors) either just gave up or lost interest.

[saturnbar]

Definitely not much in the way of critical reviews since the Storm. Even though Anderson made a thing about not reviewing and then reviewing, seems like the return to critical reviews never really happened. I am ok with that though. Seems like nobody really cares what the TP has to say anyway, they certainly aren't waiting. They just go. If they need an opinion they just go Ch---nd. Used to be they came here for insight. I think the critical aspect is more of a yearly thing which shows up in the form of Anderson's top ten. Definitely nothing like New York.

[HungryC]

Can't say I care one way or another about restaurant criticism....I am happy that other food-related outlets seem to be flourishing. Edible New Orleans is a nice publication, New Orleans magazine has pretty darn good food coverage, and we now have several radio food programs (besides Fitzmorris) and an ever-multiplying number of food-centric blogs. So I'd wager more food-related content is available these days, though the newspaper is no longer the dominant platform for such content.

[saturnbar]

In yesterday's paper I noticed they had a brief item on the chef at Meson 923 moving on, and it got me thinking about this thread. The reason being, I didn't recall ever seeing anything in the Picayune about Meson 923, at least nothing detailed. And then I just started flipping backwards in the Dining section, and I went back to maybe June, and not a single article that focused on a single restaurant and profiled the cuisine or the experience. Its like the Picayune is simply a blog at this point, posting tidbits here and there about goings on, really doesn't offer much of anything in the way of content. Meanwhile, the blogs, and I am including Peyton's Haute Plates, are bursting with content. Let the writers write I say.

[paz5559]

http://www.nola.com/dining/