From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Cyber eats

With local restaurant reviews, recipes and online shopping, food Web sites are good enough to eat.

by Dan Sweeney

March 15 2006

It's hardly news that everything is online these days. Except for the occasional trip to the mailbox, it's possible to live quite comfortably without ever leaving the house, much to the delight of agoraphobics everywhere. Although pizza and Chinese-food delivery have existed for ages, this easy access certainly doesn't stop at food. What follows are some of the best foodcentric stops on the information superhighway.

1. Epicurious.com: Combining the best content from Bon Appétit, Gourmet and other Condé Nast magazines, this site offers recipes and articles on cooking, restaurants and all manner of drinks, both alcoholic and otherwise. While feature stories include the somewhat predictable Best and Worst Food Trends of 2005, the best cover South African wines and the death of the Atkins diet. The worst involve ridiculously priced foods like the $5,000 hamburger at Fleur de Lys in Las Vegas and the fact that every freaking restaurant on the planet insists on offering a chipotle dish.

2. Chowhound.com: If you're looking for a good place to eat, this is the place to hit up for ideas. The message boards are filled with little-known but excellent restaurants from every part of the country. The Florida board declares the best Mexican food in Broward County is served at Taqueria Doña Raquel, a place most locals have never even heard of. While not every poster can be taken at his or her word, Chowhound's consensus on a particular restaurant is usually spot-on.

3. Food.com: The Web site for the Food Network includes the expected TV schedule, so you know when you can get your next fix of the gorgeous Sandra Lee, the insufferable Wolfgang Puck or the grating Emeril "Bam!" Lagasse. But the site also boasts heaps of tender, juicy recipes and mounds of buttery, sweet kitchen creations. Once you've packed on the pounds with all that home cookin', the site also has a section devoted to dieting. It gets you coming and going.

4. Omahasteaks.com: The site sells the best steaks in the world. We've heard about some sort of Japanese novelty called Kobe beef that puts our American product to shame, but damn it, they're already better than us at cars and baseball; they will not, for God's sake, beat us in red meat. What's next? Apple pie? An improved version of your mom? Anyway, at this site, you can order mouthwatering Omaha steaks and have them delivered right to your door. Eight five-ounce filets will set you back $69.99 -- and they're worth every penny.

5. Backofthebox.com: You know those recipes that appear on the boxes and labels of everything from mac 'n' cheese to steak sauce? This site has them all. It serves as both a great repository for recipes and a convenient place to stumble upon one you saw on a box of Rice Krispies awhile back but accidentally threw out. Now, you have to bring a dessert to the company picnic, and, well, you get the idea.

6. Allrecipes.com: As its name suggests, this site has every recipe ever created since the dawn of recorded history -- or at the very least, the dawn of Joy of Cooking. We tried to outdo the site by searching for unusual foods, but it beat us like a drunken stepdad. Pheasant? Six pages of recipes. Snails? Three pages. Gizzards? Seven freaking pages! Rocky Mountain oysters, however, appear to be blessedly absent.

7. Killerbeeguy.com: Although Africanized killer bees are feared for their collective tenacity and B-horror-movie reputation, Reed Booth thinks they're awfully sweet. The self-proclaimed Killer Bee Guy, Booth has been harvesting honey from killer bee hives for more than 12 years and making -- ahem -- a killing off it ever since. Recently featured on The Food Network's Food Finds, Booth sells his Killer Bee brand of honey butter, honey mustard, bee pollen and raw honeycombs via his Web site. It sure beats trying to harvest the stuff yourself.

8. Mikeska.com: The Mikeska family (including all nine children and 34 grandchildren) is known as the First Family of Texas Barbecue, and their fire pits can be found all over the state. But Rudy "Tim" Mikeska Jr., president of Rudy Mikeska's Bar-B-Q Inc., has expanded the product line to include prime steaks, chicken-fried steaks, center-cut beef medallions, pork tenderloin, baby-back ribs and exotic meats such as quail, pheasant and whole suckling pigs, and sells all of them at this site.

9. Southfloridagourmet.com: This site offers a window on the best restaurants in the area, along with notices on foodcentric festivals and fine wines. In fact, wines take up a good deal of the site's space, with wine-related stories practically outshining the food-and-restaurant coverage. But the site does both of these well, with great reviews of hot spots such as Trina and Acqua and in-depth discussions of wines from all over the world and for every budget.

10. Southfloridadines.com: Like many other dining sites, this one offers restaurant reviews, but its main draw is half-off coupons users can redeem at various local restaurants. The deals vary widely, from a $10 coupon for Miami Subs Grill that costs $5 all the way up to a $50 offer from Max's Grille, available to the site's members for just $25. Registration is free. Members simply buy a certificate on the site, print it out and save a ton of cash. It's that easy.