Craving Fashion Storms the Waterside Shops in Naples

At the Waterside Shops in Naples, FL, the Gulf Coast’s premiere shopping destination, there’s a premiere event debuting on Friday, September 6th from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM, kicking off the Waterside Shops’ first Friday Monthly Event Series, and you’re invited!

Take a fashionable and sumptuous tour, sampling the unique culinary tastings of over 25 restaurants and local chefs, while browsing your favorite designer’s windows and sipping on the evening’s signature libations.  Live entertainment and informal modeling will accentuate the evening. If you live in the area, or are going to be in the area, be sure to dress your fashionable best, and join the other revelers for a night out to support local food and fashion!  You can see the event’s Facebook page here, which includes a full list of participating restaurants and sponsors.  For further information and tickets (GA/VIP), or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities, call 800.755.6441, or send an e-mail to waterside@markit-group.com.

Proceeds support Make A Wish Foundation and St. Matthew’s House.

Group tickets are available.

WHERE: WATERSIDE SHOPS, 5415 TAMIAMI TRAIL NORTH, NAPLES, FL 34108

WHEN: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2013, 5:30 PM – 9:00 PM

WHAT: CRAVING FASHION, FOOD AND FASHION EXTRAVAGANZA

HOW: CALL 800.755.6441 OR EMAIL WATERSIDE@MARKIT-GROUP.COM FOR TICKETS

Visit BrickTop’s Restaurant in Naples, FL for a Unique Dining Experience

If you’re ever in the Naples, FL area and haven’t checked out BrickTop’s Restaurant at the Waterside Shops, you’re in for a treat! This little gem is warm, classy, and welcoming – and that’s just the beginning!

They have an incredible range of menu items, including rotisserie chicken, kosher hot dogs, and flat bread pizzas. Their sides are equally tempting, and include signature deviled eggs and fresh vegetables. Comfort food, meet healthy food – they’ve got something for everyone.

Daily and weekly specials are fresh every week, so be sure to check back often. And for the adults, there is a full bar and ample wine list. Go ahead and indulge yourself, you won’t regret it!

Visit BrickTop’s at 5415 Tamiami Trail N, or call them at (239) 598-1605 to make a reservation. You can also check out their restaurant online at http://bricktops.com/

Support Our Local Super Man!

Just a quick post to remind you to support local businesses in your area!

This week we’re supporting a Naples, FL business man who has been nominated as “Naples Illustrated Super Man.” He needs our help to win, so please vote for Matt Berman!!!

Only a couple days left to vote!

Check out the Naples Illustrated article about it below:

Naples’ Super Men

Our premiere Super Men feature last fall was a hugely fun and popular hit, so we could hardly wait for the second edition. Well, the wait is over!

Naples Illustrated polled the community and narrowed the nominations down to 12 worthy gentlemen to compete to be one of the seven finalists who will grace the pages of our September issue in a fabulous feature.

Now it’s up to you, our loyal and highly regarded readers. Click the name or image of the guys below, check out their bios and vote for your favorite—or favorites. And don’t worry, Naples Illustrated hasn’t forgotten about you too. As a bonus, we’re offering up Dolce & Gabbana‘s Light Blue fragrances for him and her (more than a $160 value) to one lucky voter at random.

Let your voice be heard! Vote early and vote often for your favorite Super Man before the campaign ends on June 15th!

Cleveland Business Running Restaurant Gift Card Giveaways

As part of their spring health campaign, West Park Dental in Cleveland, OH is doing monthly drawings for restaurant gift cards!

This month’s pick is PJ McyIntyre’s Irish Pub – you just have to be a fan and submit your info to be entered into the drawing. The pub has delicious food and a really fun atmosphere, so we are looking forward to seeing a deserving fan win $25 to enjoy this fabulous local spot. Here’s the link to enter: http://bit.ly/XrFAOX  Good luck!!

Book that cute bistro on Opentable!

I know it’s hard to believe, but now you’ve only got three days left before Valentine’s Day! Have you decided where to take your honey? If you keep putting off deciding this might help you get motivated- opentable.com has a ton of participating restaurants who all list their information on the site and let customers book reservations from the comfort of their home. Or cubicle. Or mobile phone. Or wherever! Be sure to check the site for Valentines Day specials that restaurants near you may be offering!

Here are the Open Table links for some of the bigger cities, but chances are your city is registered, too. Just visit Opentable.com and see!

OpenTable – Cleveland

OpenTable – New York

OpenTable – Chicago

OpenTable – San Francisco

OpenTable – Florida

Use Dish.Fm, never eat the wrong dish at a restaurant again!

We love the sound of this new startup, Dish.Fm. How many times have you gone out to dinner with your friends, only to be disappointed with what you’ve ordered? The same thing happened to the founders of this fun new app, and they are doing everything they can to make sure you always order something delicious when you go out to eat. Take a look!

Article excerpt from Mashable.com — visit this link to read the whole article!

Dish.fm Finds the Best Dishes to Order at Restaurants

Seth Fiegerman

2 days ago

The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Dish.fm

One-Liner Pitch: Dish.fm makes sure you don’t order the wrong thing on the menu at a restaurant.

Why It’s Taking Off: It’s like Yelp for meals instead of just restaurants.

Finding a good restaurant to eat at has arguably never been easier thanks to review sites like Yelp, but picking out the right thing to order from the menu can still be a challenge. That’s where Dish.fm comes in.

Dish.fm, a free iPhone app that launched in mid-December, highlights the top dishes at restaurants in San Francisco and New York by analyzing data from millions of posts on web services like Yelp, Foursquare and Instagram. The startup developed an algorithm to process natural language in restaurant reviews and perform sentiment analysis for specific dishes that are mentioned in order to find the most highly rated items on the menu.

Zhanna Sharipova, one of Dish.fm’s three co-founders, had a bad streak of eating at decent restaurants in Moscow but ordering the wrong thing on the menu. One night, she ordered “tasteless” pasta from a restaurant and started picking at the food from the plates of two of her longtime friends, which got the group to thinking about how to prevent this situation from happening with other restaurant-goers.

“I was picking food from their plates and they were laughing and saying that in the age of information technology and iPhones, this should never happen because there is so much knowledge in the world about everything,” Sharipova told Mashable. “We played with the idea and decided to make an application that could solve the problem by telling me in advance which dishes are tastier than others.”

The result is an app that’s simple to use and very visual with pictures of the recommended dishes on each menu displayed front and center.

Dish.fm launched in private beta in early 2012 and was originally more of a user-generated review service for meals, similar to apps like Foodspotting. Soon enough, the team came to the realization that it would take years to accumulate enough data this way to make the service appealing enough for the mainstream consumer so, in July, the app was reconfigured around data from other web services.

READ FULL ARTICLE

Surprise Surprise: 2013 Full of Food

Checking through our newsfeed we found this article about mini burgers. We’re sorry to say that if you’re a fan, you might be out of style in the new year. Take a look at the excerpt below, and check out the full article on NPR to get the whole story on what 2013 holds for the slider!

Hold That Mini-Burger: Restaurants Forecast Food For 2013

by Jessica Stoller-Conrad

January 03, 2013 2:33 PM

Enlarge image

Sliders. We’re over them, the National Restaurant Association says.

Bob Ingelhart/iStockphoto.com

Still ordering gazpacho and sliders at your favorite restaurant? Not pre-screening restaurant menus before you make a reservation? Well, hop in the DeLorean and set the chronometer to 2013: You’re really behind the times.

Technology is in and bacon-flavored chocolate is out, says a recent survey of 1,800 chefs across the nation.

The survey, part of the National Restaurant Association’s latest Restaurant Industry Forecast, categorized 198 menu items as “hot trends,” “yesterday’s news” or “perennial favorites.” Meant to be an annual snapshot of the entire restaurant industry, the forecast also predicts trends in restaurant technologies and consumer attitudes in the coming year, says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of Research at the NRA.

Restaurant consumer expectations are high, even before they walk in the door. More than half of adult patrons will check out a restaurant’s menu online before their visit, the report says.

And about that menu? One of this year’s hottest restaurant tech trends includes in-house iPad menus, which offer customers high-resolution photos and detailed descriptions of dishes.

OpenTable Shares List of Restaurants Who Go Local

 

OpenTable is trying something new, and we approve! The online rating and reservation restaurant site is forming a list of restaurants who use locally-grown ingredients. They are all over the U.S., so you can search your city for the best eats, and even make a reservation. The list is sponsored by Chase Saphire, and if you use your Saphire card you’ll get points for dining.

Check out the list and see what dining spots are going local for flavor and community support!

Restaurants using locally-grown ingredients

Say What? Restaurants Looking Into Noise Reduction Technology

We’ve all been there – you go out to eat and spend the whole meal shouting across the table. Loud restaurants can be a major turn-off for diners. But now, thanks to a new high-tech sound system controlled by iPad, a new new-control solution could be in the works. Check out the video, from restaurantnews.com

High-tech sound system lets restaurant control noise level

Fast Food Chains Want You to Embrace ‘Fourthmeal’

What do you all think about adding extra meals to the day? Fast food chains hope you are in favor of it- and they are marketing more heavily towards consumers who want to find munchable deals after midnight or before 6 a.m. Great article from TIME Magazine was published today about the ‘questions’ that several well-established fast food chains are posing to consumers. For example, ‘2a.m. breakfast, anyone?’

Fast Food Chains Want You to Eat More Than the Usual Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

You’d think that McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and other chains would be satisfied to draw in crowds who come during the normal meal hours, and who order food and beverages that are normally enjoyed during those hours. Instead, in the never-ending quest to boost sales at all hours of each and every day, chains find it far too limiting to accept classic nutritional concepts — like that there should only be three meals per day, and that it’s not a good idea to start the day off with a sugary soft drink.

Here, a few questions fast food giants are posing to consumers:

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2 A.M. Breakfast Anyone?
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For a few weeks now, reports Columbus Business First, McDonald’s has been testing out “Breakfast After Midnight” at more than 100 locations in central Ohio. As soon as the clock strikes 12, customers can order Egg McMuffins, breakfast burritos, hotcakes, and other favorites normally only served during the morning hours.
The program is part of McDonald’s “Nocturnivore” campaign, aimed at attracting late-night (or very early morning) diners who are hungry, or perhaps just bored and looking for something to do, to its restaurants, which are increasingly open 24 hours a day. For obvious reasons, the wee hours of the morning are the slowest for business at fast food restaurants. Just 1% of quick-service restaurant foot traffic arrives between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. But McDonald’s wants to change that, and is waving the prospect of an extremely early breakfast as a way to drum up business during the normally dead time period.

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Soda: Breakfast of Champions?
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USA Today recently highlighted the mini push to encourage fast food diners to have a sugary soft drink with breakfast, rather than the usual orange juice or coffee. In one promotion, Steak ‘n Shake was offering a free breakfast taco with the purchase of a $1.79 28-ounce Coca-Cola between the hours of 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. A 28-ounce soda, by the way, would be a full can’s worth (12 ounces) in excess of the soda ban proposed in New York City.

Since May, meanwhile, many Taco Bells have been promoting what it calls “MTN Dew A.M.,” a concoction mixing Mountain Dew and orange juice, served until 11 a.m.

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Read full story: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/08/08/fast-food-chains-want-you-to-eat-more-than-the-usual-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner/