Short Order Reviews: Seattle Fooderati on Twitter

In Seattle, where restaurants, chefs and food are topics discussed and debated with more fervor than politics, Twitter is giving foodies inside access to the conversation, 140 characters at a time

Scrolling down my computer screen one day, I noted Skillet Street Food’s latest menu and learned that Herbfarm co-owner Ron Zimmerman was planning a trip to Germany. Frantic Foodie Keren Brown discussed doughnuts with Lara Ferroni of Cook and Eat, while Patricia Eddy of Cook Local sought advice on how to use the demi-glace she bought from Vashon Island’s Sea Breeze Farm. Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl announced she was in Toronto, eating “the most decadent knish that ever lived.” Oh, and my former colleague Hsiao-Ching Chou, who organized a live “tweet-up” for a dinner prepared by local star chefs, signed in from the hospital to announce the birth of her son. It couldn’t have been anything else but a day on Twitter, Seattle’s most populated culinary cocktail hour.

Despite its palpable nature, food has proved to be the perfect Twitter topic for our tech- and food-obsessed town. Maybe that’s because we have an emotional connection to food, it’s a practical necessity, and a business—sometimes all at the same time. In Seattle, Twitter’s 140-character bursts of information have exploded this year into the fastest, most uninhibited way yet to share and get foodie news and opinions. It’s also become a split-second source of advice on cooking and eating, a place for job leads, mini-commentaries on restaurant meals and suggestions on where to find everything from a cooking internship to a book agent to a happening happy hour.

Unlike other forms of social media—or, ahem, real life—Twitter offers a six-degrees-of-separation equality between amateurs, professionals and celebrities. When you can “follow” and comment on the doings of almost anyone with a Twitter account (a small percentage of users don’t allow universal access), it opens the possibility that the strangers you admire may notice you and talk back. Anyone following Reichl, for instance, knew where the Gourmet editor dined while in Seattle this year, and could weigh in. “Was Tilth salty? I love their menu but food is always over-seasoned,” tweeted Seattle personal chef “DanaTreat” to Reichl after learning where the star had eaten.

For anyone interested in Seattle’s food scene, Twitter is now an essential way to get behind-the-scenes information, and to join the conversation on both a personal and professional level. Hot news—the fact that Seattle was getting its own trendy Korean taco truck, for instance, or that pastry chef Neil Robertson had left Canlis and was joining the team at Café Juanita—is now breaking on Twitter, spreading out virally as followers repeat, or “retweet,” the information and add comments. It even has the air of a citywide dinner party at times, with tempting recipes such as rhubarb compote hopscotching from one tweeter’s table to the next, as readers grab dinner ideas from the daily feed.