If you enjoy this site, please check out mamster's new weblog, Roots and Grubs.

Hey, isn't this FAQ extremely out of date?

Sure is! Now I like all kinds of fish and room temperature food, but Greek food still sucks.

Who is this "mamster" and what's the point of this site?

I'm Matthew Amster-Burton of Seattle, Washington. The Grub Shack is dedicated to exploring great food through essays and restaurant reviews. I don't pretend to be authoritative or comprehensive, but who needs another sidewalk.com anyway? (No one needed even one, apparently: Sidewalk has been absorbed by Citysearch.com.) Instead, look to the Grub Shack for in-depth essays on home cooking as well as opinionated info on cookbooks, travel, and restaurants.

Some of my inspirations for the site and for food writing in general are:

• Fat-guy.com. Steven Shaw says he's a lawyer by day, but I can't imagine how he could have time to practice law and churn out the reams of cogent restaurant reviews and other essays that he does. Recently Shaw has added a cooking page, and while I can't say our philosophies are entirely in line (he's a restaurant-kitchen kind of guy), it's as valuable a resource as the rest of his site. Shaw and I are now colleagues in a food discussion site called eGullet.
• Jeffrey Steingarten, despite being the food critic for Vogue magazine, looks and cooks nothing like a supermodel. He's a curmudgeonly fanatic, but whether he's taking you to a $350 dinner of Kobe beef in Tokyo or attempting to cook french fries in his own kitchen, Steingarten captivates. He is one of the finest writers in America today, and his essay on ripe fruit is probably the best essay I've ever read. As a negative Amazon review put it, "[H]e never lets up on food! All we hear about is food, food, food, food (did I mention food?) and more food." Exactly: buy his book, The Man Who Ate Everything, immediately.
• David Rosengarten is the host of Taste, which used to run on the TV Food Network. What I like about Rosengarten is that he'll take a favorite dish, something as simple as quesadillas or as complex as Szechuan shrimp with chile garlic sauce, and by the end of his article or 30-minute program, you'll know more than you ever thought possible about the dish. He's also the most practical of wine experts, overflowing with useful advice on how to match wine with food.
• Seattle Caustic Compendium was an independent guide to cheap eats, as well as clubs and bars, in Our Fair Emerald City. Alas, like too many feisty young sites, it passed away. The Compendium covered a greater variety of neighborhoods than I'll be able to, but at least indie reviews are back on the web.

What qualifies you to write about food?

Nothing other than the fact that I love to eat it and I think about it all the time. As for writing experience, I've been an occasional journalist, contributing pieces to (among others) the San Francisco Chronicle, Addicted to Noise, and Extra! As of April 2001, I'm also an occasional restaurant critic and recipe columnist for the Seattle Times.

Do you harbor any food-related fantasies?

Of the kind I'm willing to share, one: in my fantasy, some media conglomerate with bulging coffers takes pity on me and sends me on an eating tour of Emilia-Romagna, in Italy.

Why do your articles keep mentioning New York if you live in Seattle?

Laurie and I lived in New York from August 1998 to August 1999. As far as I know, New York is the best place in the world to eat, although I might tell you different after I get the aforementioned trip to Emilia-Romagna. The Grub Shack will do its best to cover food the world over, but if my examples seem centered around Seattle and New York, please understand.

Do you accept contributions?

Absolutely. Cash is preferred. Oh, you meant writing? By all means. I'm especially interested in pieces about food areas that I'm not particularly interested in, including room-temperature food, fish, and Greek food. Feel free to email me queries or just send whole articles. If I like it, I'll print it.

What? You don't like room-temperature food?

Well, I like cheese and crackers. Snickers bars are fine at room temp. But tuna sandwiches? Gazpacho? Sorry, but no.

So what do you like?

See the essays and restaurant reviews for my favorites, but two things that never fail to make me happy are a big plate of phad thai at Siam on Broadway in Seattle and a chicken sandwich at Island Burgers and Shakes in Manhattan. I've only once managed to have them both in the same week, though.