Where To Eat & Drink At SXSW... And Why

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals are going on now through March 17, and this yearly event draws a lot of people from outside Austin TX.  In between the various planned activities, the attendees want to drink in (literally in some cases) the local sights, scenes, sounds and senses.  And we'd like to help.

We have gathered up all the stories we have collected from around the web that talk about food & drink related places in the Austin area, and put them on one map.  Click on each dot to see what place it is, and who was talking about it.

The full list of the stories are below the map - Enjoy!:



The stories we've collected relating to Austin are:

Veggie Tales: Austin's best spots for plant-based dining - The Austin Chronicle
You Gotta Try This, SXSW: Vegetarian favorites - Austin360.com
You Gotta Try This, SXSW: Lunch, dinner downtown - Austin360.com
You Gotta Try This, SXSW: Lunch, dinner outside the downtown core - Austin360.com
Top Austin Restaurants for SXSW, According to TripIt Users - TripIt Blog
Find time for a long, tall taste of Austin during SXSW madness - Austin American-Statesman
Austin, Texas: Where to Eat and Drink - Bon Appetit Magazine
10 places to see in 2013 - Los Angeles Times
101 Best Restaurants in America for 2013 - The Daily Meal
The Best Burgers in 25 Cities - Zagat
The Most Important Restaurants in America - Bon Appetit Magazine
'Where Chefs Eat': Insiders Guide to the World's Best Dining Delights - PRI's The World
America’s Best Bagels - The Daily Meal
A trio of Austin art galleries - San Antonio Express-News
After Crispy Pig Ears, 10 Trends for 2013 - The New York Times
America’s 12 Best Donut Shops - The Daily Meal
The Best Burritos in America - The Daily Meal
What to eat in Austin right now - New York Post
Best French Fries in the U.S. - Travel + Leisure
America's Coolest New Diners - Travel + Leisure
Top sandwich shops: Travelers pick their favorites - USATODAY.com
10 of America's best historic restaurants - CNN.com
The 25 Best Ice Cream Shops in the U.S. - Complex
Best Ice Cream Spots in the U.S. - Food & Wine Magazine
World Beer Cup 2012 Winners - USA & CAN
100 Restaurants with the Best Service in the U.S. - OpenTable
The Ten Best New Restaurants in America: Restaurants + Bars: - GQ Magazine
Best Restaurants 2011 - Esquire
The Best New Restaurants in America, 2011 - Bon Appetit Magazine
2011 Top 100 Chinese Restaurants Competition - Top 100 Overall Excellence (USA)
2009 Top 100 Chinese Restaurants Competition - Top 100 Overall Excellence (USA)
Food Wars - Travel Channel
America's Best Donuts - Travel + Leisure
National Carousel Association
Sweet Tooth - Food Network
Bar-B-Que - Food Network

Things To Do: Orange County, CA

Just south of Los Angeles and north of San Diego lies Orange County California. If you're not familiar with Southern California, it's where Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm are located (and a lot more).  Zoom our map out to get your bearings, then zoom in to find lots of things to see and do.

To give you a flavor of what you can find in Orange County, we have mapped the places from ten different articles from four different local media - those that know Orange County the best.

Click around to explore, and see the article list below:



Articles we've mapped:

• Southern California Close-Up: 10 places to explore in Inland Orange County - Los Angeles Times
• One perfect day in Irvine, CA - Sunset
• Cruise California's Newport Harbor - Sunset
• Best of Orange County 2011 - Best Hole in the Wall - The Orange County Register
• Best of Orange County 2011 - Best Restaurant - The Orange County Register
• Best of Orange County 2011 - Best Romantic Restaurant - The Orange County Register
• Best of Orange County 2011 - Best Museum - The Orange County Register
• 10 Great Breweries In Orange County - The Orange County Register
• Delectable Donuts - The Orange County Register
• Donut Gold - Coast Magazine

If you need more local info, check out the official website for Orange County.

Our Reading List & Everything Map

Announcing two new features on our blog:

• Our Reading List - the stories and places we collect in between our big articles
• Everything Map - our map of, well, everything we have blogged about, and all the places from Our Reading List (over 5,000 as of today)

If you are someone that likes to find unique places to visit, these two new features should quickly become a favorite.

Enjoy!

A Dinner, A Show, And Maybe A Murder

Well not a real murder.  A dinner theater murder.  More on that in a little bit.

Dinner theater (or theatre) is a form of entertainment that includes dinner as part of the ticket price, and you eat in same room as the performance.  The earliest professional dinner theaters in the U.S. provided plays and musicals, and these are still the predominate types of acts.

Like other forms of live entertainment, the industry has had boom and bust years. Not as prevalent as it used to be, the industry still survives, especially near popular tourist destinations like Orlando Florida and Anaheim California (Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm).

Our map displays 27 dinner theaters that belong to the National Dinner Theatre Association, and 12 others that are independent dinner theaters.  Let us know if we missed your favorite one.  [article continues below map]

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Another type of performance is murder mysteries, where the performers may also be your servers.  The majority of these are traveling shows using existing restaurants, although there are a few that have their own venues.

If you've never experienced a dinner theater, they can be a lot of fun, and definitely something different in this internet age.

Between Rock and a Hard Place

You've just settled into your American Airlines seat for a long trip, and you have to wait for the plane to get into the air before "unstowing your electronic devices". What to do? Well it turns out that American makes an effort to provide some interesting content in their AmericanWay magazine.

One of the articles that caught our eye was called "Between Rock and a Hard Place", which covers the music scene in Portland Oregon.  Portland music scene?  Yep, and here are some of the artists that hail from there:

Spoon | Modest Mouse | The Shins
The Decemberists | Pavement | The Dandy Warhols
Yacht | Typhoon | Blitzen Trapper

In case you're hungry in Portland for some local favorites, we've added restaurants to our map that have been visited by Food Network and Travel Channel food shows.

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