Have you heard about the tomato pie at Mozelle’s? Sampled the new menu at Diamondback Grill? Experienced the one-and-only Pulliam’s?
Yes, you might read about these places in the Winston-Salem Journal. But since June, people have been getting snapshots — literally — of Winston-Salem restaurant meals from the Local Dish Winston-Salem blog (http://localdishws.blogspot.com).
Susan Hatfield Morris started the blog after friends teased her and her husband, Joe, for always taking pictures of their food before they ate in restaurants.
“It was kind of a joke,” she said. But now Morris is sharing those photos as well as short reports on good meals with 500 to 600 visitors to her blog each month.
Morris started writing all the posts herself, but now has several contributors. A companion Facebook page with more than 400 members allows others to post photos and a line or two about meals. The site inspired Morris’ friend Alex Schenker to create
photofoodies.com, a site where photos can be uploaded from mobile phones and other sources.
The blog has reports on about 40 restaurants. Some have multiple entries, and posts are archived by restaurant name and by category, such as Mexican, steak, bakery or vegetarian.
By day, Morris, 41, does marketing for Sunrise Technologies, a local Microsoft partner. By night, she’s eating out and sharing her good experiences online.
Morris typically eats out about three nights a week.
“I do like to cook, too. There was a lull period where I ate at home for two weeks. Then other people helped with posting,” she said.
Morris’ interest in food started with working in restaurants during and after college. She said that for about 12 years, she cooked, bartended and waited tables in a handful of restaurants. She has a good idea of what makes a restaurant work.
In starting the blog, Morris decided to only report on places she or others liked. She has rules that people can’t write posts about restaurants where they work. She accepts posts only for locally owned restaurants, and she doesn’t accept free meals. No one is allowed to criticize a restaurant.
“Winston-Salem already has a restaurant critic. I want to highlight the positive,” she said.
So not every meal gets a post. She might post a report, but simply leave out any dishes that weren’t up to snuff. Sometimes she tries a restaurant more than once before she finds it worth writing about.
“Eight of us went out to dinner one night, and I couldn’t write about anything. A couple of people got sick. But I did e-mail the manager the following day and let them know,” she said.
And that’s what Morris encourages other people to do: Talk to an owner or manager instead of trashing a place on the Internet.
Carla Hackaday, a speech-language pathologist, didn’t like the positive-only policy when she first started writing for the blog.
“At first, I didn’t think it was fair. You’d want to warn people (if a restaurant wasn’t good),” Hackaday said. “But then I started to like it. It’s really fostering a sense of community among people who want to support local places.”
Doug Grimes, a contributor who posted an item about Pulliam’s, said he would like to have some criticism on the blog. But he said that it’s still good to have another source of restaurant information.
“It’s kind of exciting. And Winston-Salem is a lot more vibrant than it was when I moved here (five years ago),” Grimes said.
“And it’s like my mother said, ‘If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.’”
Morris said she is a fan of Winston-Salem and likes to be able to support local businesses.
Though she writes most of the posts, Morris also benefits from them, too. Despite living many years in Winston-Salem, she had never been to Pulliam’s until Grimes posted his report.
“I also discovered Ted’s Kickin’ Chicken,” she said. “And I hadn’t been to New Town Bistro in about 15 years until someone wrote about it, and now it’s one of my favorite places,” she said.
mhastings@wsjournal.com
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