THE LIFE VICARIOUS

Dining coverage now on Eat Me Daily, Chilltown Lunch, The Feed.

We've been lately lax about posting here for a reason.

If you have an eye for food art, read our coverage on Eat Me Daily. If you're hungry for daily New Jersey dining news, read Chilltown Lunch, and if you're looking for round-up reviews and special events recaps, find us on Time Out New York's The Feed blog. And if you just want a laugh, follow our @restaurantgirl Twitter.

Restaurant Girl at a loss for words over Abe & Arthur's.

A few weeks ago we struck up a conversation in the Eater Blogger Lounge at NYCWFF with one of its hosts, and he couldn't understand our criticism of Restaurant Girl, suggesting we wouldn't like it if someone parodied the way we write. Well, this week Restaurant Girl returned to form, reviewing Abe & Arthur's and if we ever write like this, please publicly humiliate us or worse, make us eat at Abe & Arthur's.

"Maybe I'm getting old, but I like a little separate between church and state at dinner. I don't care less about who's sitting at the next table than what they're eating for dinner. "

The propietors of Abe & Arthur's own nightclubs, like Tenjune and nightclubs that also play restaurants like STK.

Abe & Arthur's is named for the owners' grandparents and so is the Symone Lounge just below the dining room.

"There's a raw bar with oysters, clams, shrimp, lobster, and one of those seafood tower."

"Apparently, the steaks our "soaked in butter.""

"Have you ever had that delivery experience where you're too lazy to go out or cook, so you order take-out and it's at your order in five minutes."

"If I were you, I'd give up on surrender to the noise level and people-watch."

ChilltownLunch kind of sort of maybe totally underway.

Our new New Jersey centric food and dining blog, Chilltown Lunch, is mostly up and running and there's a week's worth of posts ready for you to read and all about free drinks, Halloween decorations, taco trucks on TV, 15 cent hamburgers, drinking with the New York Giants and Bayonne politicos who ruin street fairs and hate America.

Read ChilltownLunch here and follow it on Twitter @chilltownlunch here.

L'asso replacing Chipotle all week at this week's CMJ Marathon.

Last year was the first Music Marathon to have a press and artist's lounge full of free sneakers and jars of pomade but it failed to feed with an on-site Chipotle to serving starving musicians and bloggers for only one afternoon. This year's lounge is an improvement, with L'asso serving pies from 12 - 6 all week long then ending the week with two nights of semi-private pizza parties featuring the restaurant's favorite bands and comedians on hand to celebrate their five year anniversary. You can RSVP here for the festivities.

Diane Birch is also performing Saturday night, sinking her AM radio hooks into the only CMJ show this year being held at City Winery. Tickets are still available.

We had no idea we were on a juice cleanse.

Until we got this Tweet:

We can't believe people still confuse us, but only because it was brought to our attention, we're compelled to bring it to yours. The real RG went on a three-day post-NYCWFF detox she's chronicled on her blog. We're not sure what's more amusing, that she only bothered to write three posts the first day and give up on it, or that she wrote these sentences:

"Apparently, I'm not be alone because Blueprint Cleanse just came out with a "juice with dinner" cleanse."

"Mustard and onions are started to seem appetizing on their own."

"Not most the productive day."

In other news, the Daily News has a new slate of food bloggers, here's her replacement.

The last of our New York City Wine & Food Festival Coverage.

Winding down before moving on...

Our final thoughts on the festival over at The Feed.

And an interview with Metromix.

Alas our answers are clipped, our beard is not.

A round-up of our New York City Wine & Food Festival coverage.

So in a last minute unexpected move we ended found ourself chronicling the NYCWFF for Time Out's The Feed and it felt like our first step away from this site and toward more focused food writing. We're proud to learn we can write this well given the time constraints but more important, given the opportunity.

NYCWFF kicks off at Chelsea Market with Guy Fieri and Sandra Lee.

Bon mots from Martha Stewart.

Rachael Ray - 99% chitchat, 1% cooking.

Bourdain and Bruni talk rectum, foie gras and other delicacies.

More to follow...

Check out our NYCWFF coverage over at Time Out's The Feed.

In what may be a sign of things to come, check out our coverage of the NYC Wine & Food Festival over at Time Out New York's Feed blog. We'll be covering events for them throughout the weekend.

Though the end of food coverage on The Life Vicarious isn't here quite yet. We're still gearing up to launch Chilltown Lunch this month and in the meantime you can follow our Jersey City dining Twitter feed at @chilltownlunch. There you'll get reminders like "Don't forget to pick up your free pretzels today at Philly Pretzel Company on Greene Street if you're around." (Yes you, right now.)

And we'll be tweeting the weekend away as @restaurantgirl as well. You'll get a full report here ASAP if someone introduces us to the real thing during the festival.

Now for our loyal readers, grainy not publication-worthy pictures - Sandra Lee, Jacques Torres, Anne Burrell, Guy Fieri, and the view from the line outside - of last night's Chelsea Market After Dark party after the jump!

The Life Vicarious elsewhere on the web.

Less posting as we gear up to launch Chilltown Lunch but we wrote a new fake RestaurantGirl piece on the FTC blog crackdown over on The Gourmet Glossary. Beginning Thursday we'll be tweeting coverage (in character) all weekend from the New York Wine & Food Festival where once again we're unbelievably lucky to have the access we do. Then in the weeks ahead we'll be contributing weekly dining coverage to somebody's something or other. Big news! You heard it here first!

Now Restaurant Girl just makes us smile.

We totally overlooked this since we moved on, but she has not. Although she's gone from the Daily News, the RG is still reviewing restaurants and last week it was Yerba Buena Perry. Here, a few favorite lines that bring a smile to our face:

"You never really have a great meal at a bad restaurant. Did you ever notice that?"

"Chef Medina draws inspiration from all over Latin America, including Brazil, Cuba, Peru, Argentina, and Spain."

"But Medina proves otherwise New Yorkiers to Brazilian, Cuban, Argentinian and Peruvian comfort food staples."

And as a bonus from her description of the Measure Up Bowl:

"Measuring cups feel like punishment."