The 2011 Challenge

Two years ago, we initiated what has become dubbed "The Challenge" as a way to motivate ourselves to expand our culinary horizons. In 2009, I attempted (and failed) to avoid eating in the same restaurant for 365 days. Last year, Rene spent his time recreating restaurant dishes at home. While we may have not reached our end goals in our respective challenges, we learned a lot along the way. Hopefully you readers did as well.

And with the dawn of a new year, it is once again time to throw down the gauntlet. We received a number of suggestions for this year's challenge. Eating dessert after every meal sounded like a delicious recipe... for diabetes. Vietnamese weekdays would have won out except that I can not afford to pay the Crescent City Connection toll so often. And unfortunately, The Folk Singer put the kibosh on "Awful Offal Humpdays" because she said there was no way that she was eating tripe, sweetbreads, or tongue for dinner once a week.

In the end, I decided to dovetail off of a suggestion from a reader who thought it would be fun if every week I had to eat at a local restaurant that I have never been to before. Given the lag time between dining at a restaurant and writing about the experience, I knew that such a challenge would not be feasible as written. Plus, Rene and I try to cover as much ground as we can individually, and there are quite a few spots that he has written about but I have yet to visit, such as Le Foret, Dominique's, and Rue 127. Still, the goal behind this suggestion is to push your faithful bloggers to cast a wider net over the local dining scene, an expansion that many other readers have encouraged us to undertake.

So without further ado, the 2011 Challenge is stated henceforth:

Once a week, every week, I will write about at least one local eatery that has never before been written about on Blackened Out. This includes write ups by Rene and myself. Basically, if the restaurant does not have a label (a full list of which is located on the left midway down the page), then it's fair game to be included in the challenge list.

BONUS: The first 15 qualifying restaurants listed in the comments of today's post MUST be included in The Challenge. Only one restaurant per commenter. Changing IP addresses in order to submit multiple entries is grounds for disqualification. No purchase is necessary. Void in Alaska, Hawaii and wherever else prohibited.

The 2011 Challenge. In the words of Barney Stinson, it's going to be LEGEN... wait for it... DARY.