The $2 shot turns out to be a very small mixed drink at 123BurgerShotBeer.Com. This one has the charming name of "Panty Dropper."

The siren song of the storefront is irresistible: It seems to suggest you'll be able to buy a burger for $1, a shot of hard liquor for $2, and a beer for $3. "Why is the beer the most expensive thing?" you wonder as you traipse into the darkened Hell's Kitchen sports bar.

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Tomorrow's New York Times Magazine jumps the shark and provides its readers with a moral challenge: Justify your consumption of meat with a 600-word essay. Of course, the dice are loaded, and anyone who favors meat -- either actively or passively -- has a long row to hoe. Arguments like "Everyone does it" or "We've always done it" are likely to prove unavailing. The prize for the winner of the contest: publication of the essay in The New York Times, providing the Old Gray Lady with free content (what? you think the prize should be a pair of juicy steaks?), and justifying a position that its favorite writers (e.g., Michael Pollan) have long staked out.

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I've got to admit I was charmed when the Marilyn Hagerty story broke, and she was interviewed by our own Camille Dodero. Then Lauren Shockey revealed Hagerty intended to visit our city. The so-called critic from Great Falls, Montana Grand Rapids, Michigan Grand Forks, North Dakota, prominently pastes her picture at the top of every column, makes a single non-anonymous visit to a restaurant, eats only one dish with no beverages, then writes at length about it in the flattest declarative prose imaginable, making the landscape of her native plains state seem mountainous by comparison. That sort of prose is a nice antidote to all the flowery food writing most of us have to digest on a daily basis.

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If you're in the food-journalism biz, you get bombarded on a daily basis with press releases, often as many as 30 per day. Some are faintly rational, but others immediately provoke guffaws with their wild assertions. Here's the best one I've received so far today.

According to the National Restaurant Association: "While dining out remains a popular choice for Americans to celebrate Valentine's Day, new National Restaurant Association research shows that nearly one-third would also like to receive a restaurant gift card on February 14."

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southparkstudios.com

Would-be chefs routinely blow $60,000 for half-year courses at the city's cooking academies. Afterward, they stage at restaurants, spend years as prep cooks, work the line, and finally function as sous-chefs before donning the chef de cuisine's toque. How much training do waiters usually get? About two hours.

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Chalky, crumbly, low on flavor -- and please leave it in the oven a little longer.

You see them lined up on tables between the lavender sprigs and homemade soaps: pale, starchy, looking like a kid who hasn't been in the sun all summer. These are the baked goods of the farmers' markets. And not only do the cookies, cakes, pies, muffins, and sweet rolls often look bad, they frequently taste bad, too.

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Robert Sietsema

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20th Century Fox via Grub Street

I recognize most of the characters, but who's the bald guy?

The end-times for Foodism are near, my friends. This Sunday, Marge Simpson turns into a food blogger, as reported in an extensive Grub Street interview with Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman. Too predictably, the episode features or at least name-checks such foodie superstars as Tom Colicchio, Gordon Ramsay, Ruth Reichl, Frank Bruni, Wylie Dufresne, and, of course, Anthony Bourdain.

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If you asked me the most annoying thing about restaurants lately, I wouldn't say noise level, astronomical wine markups, no-reservations policies, or tiny tables with no room for the dishes you've just ordered. Nor would I hesitate one second before shouting, "Upselling!"

Upselling occurs when the service staff tries to get you to order more food or wine than you'd intended, sometimes by direct suggestion, sometimes by more devious techniques.

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Read Fork in the Road, Eater, Grub Street, or any of the other New York-based restaurant-watching websites and everything seems hunky-dory. Each month, for example, statistics show that far more eating establishments have opened than closed. In fact, if you total up all the openings over the last decade, and subtract the paltry reported closings, you're likely to conclude that every storefront in the city is now a restaurant.

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