A Taste for all seasons

Posted in CULTURE to Top of the Blogs by Joel Gillespie on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 8:00 am

On May 1, 2006, Lisa Morgan and her husband went to The Great Impasta for a birthday dinner. She snapped a couple pictures of their entrees, wrote a quick summary of the experience, and just like that, a blog was born. Three years later, Champaign Taste has developed into a reliable source for all sorts of Champaign-Urbana food information, from restaurant reviews to recipes, videos, and even an Oscar contest.

Morgan drew inspiration from another local blogger for this broad-based approach. "I had also been reading little blog on the prairie," she explained, "and, as you know, she reports on stuff going on around town as well. I thought it would be really great to have a mix of things going on around town, with a food focus."

So, from the beginning, Champaign Taste had a broad scope. Over time, Morgan developed at least ten recurring features, including recipes from local chefs, recipes featuring produce from the farmer's market, Midwestern meals, food poetry, as well as many more. But she tries to tailor her content to what her readers enjoy most. "I did want it to be a mix of recipes, food news, and restaurant reviews," Morgan said. "But as the blog grew, it was clear that there was a lot of interest in the restaurant reviews, so I’ve done more on that score than maybe I might’ve."

While she enjoys reviewing restaurants, Morgan finds the practice challenging for several reasons. First of all, it's tough to strike the right tone. "I’m not out there to just rip a place," she said. "As you can see, I tend to report on local establishments because I’m interested in supporting small businesses and I understand how tough the restaurant business is for the person who’s not part of a large corporation. Yet, if there are problems, I think it’s my job, in a way, to report that too. But I try to do it in such a way as to make a suggestion about how they could improve, so it’s not just a slamming."

Remaining impartial is another concern. "If [I'm] really behind the place and would like to see them succeed, is that going to color how I report on it, if something is cold or I didn’t get good service?"

Finally, there's the problem of budgeting for frequent dining out when your blog doesn't bring in any income. "When I go out, I always spend the most of everyone I know," Morgan said. "I want to try things. So it’s usually not an inexpensive thing for me to go out."

Somehow, despite the hurdles, Morgan cranks out multiple detailed posts each week, including frequest reviews of new restaurants. Occasionally, the response to her restaurant reviews surprises her, like when she reviewed Cakes on Walnut last April. "I just had no idea that people were so interested in cupcakes, it was remarkable," she related. "People were leaving detailed comments, their experiences of the tastes of the cupcakes and the various textures of the icing and so forth. They just had opinions about every aspect of the business." And the feedback continued for months afterward; the post has 87 comments as of Monday evening.

Then there are other posts that are just plain fun, both for the reader and the writer, like Morgan's trip to the Maid-Rite restaurant in Springfield. "It was a fun road trip," she recalled, "and interesting to learn about the history of M-R's, which I had never heard of till I lived in the Midwest." Her enthusiasm comes through clearly, which keeps her readers coming back for more.

But her readers are insatiable. "People will write me, like, 'I wish you would write on so-and-so place,’ or ‘I can’t believe you haven’t written about so-and-so place.’ And I’ll usually say, ‘It’s just me. Just little ol’ me.’ It’s gratifying that people are looking to me for that info, but I just can’t be everywhere."

Morgan always has copious photographs to accompany her posts, but she didn't have much digital photography experience before she started Taste. "When I got excited about the blog and I thought ‘I can really do this,’ we just had an old-fashioned camera," she recalled. But her husband surprised her with a digital camera as a gift, she took some classes, and soon she was producing quality images.

Smile Politely isn't the first local media outlet to recognize Champaign Taste for its coverage. Morgan has recently appeared on both WILL and WICD. The exposure has aided in introducing to the greater C-U community a great resource for foodies of all stripes. Here's to hoping that Lisa will remain inspired for many posts to come.

(Photography courtesy of Champaign Taste.)

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There are many tremendous bloggers in Champaign-Urbana, and this column will recognize them one blog at a time. Every other Tuesday, we’ll shine a light on a different outstanding local blog, explaining how they got started and revealing what keeps them going and where they’re headed. If you know a local blog that you’d like to see profiled in this space, send me a tip at joelgillespie [at] smilepolitely [dot] com.

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If you enjoyed this article, Smile Politely also recommends:

+ Going it alone
+ Meet the little blogger on the prairie
+ Zealous about Illini baseball