Mike of The Food Monkey has joined Bostonist to share his thoughts about cooking, food history, restaurant trends, and any other Epicurean issues. He promises to discuss what tastes good, but not always what is in good taste. For more, go to the Food Monkey website. To contact Mike, go to the Food Monkey's contact page. In friendly competition, one attempts to best one’s opponent–so long as it doesn’t happen to cause too much of......

The mayor has opened his virtual food court so you can find out if your favorite Boston eatery is a squeaky-clean bastion of hygiene or a rat-infested hellhole. We wondered what happened to the swanky spots that Northeastern journalism students found to be filthy back in September, so we looked them up: Figs (As in Todd English's Figs) - Failed on Aug. 2, for many reasons, including "Management has not properly trained staff to use......

Word is out that there's a plague of rats in the city. Not that it's anything new. Rats fall in and out of vogue in Boston media all the time. Around this time last year, the Globe did a story on a rat invasion in the Back Bay. For the record, the Back Bay did not handle it well. In the latest story, David Abel at the Globe reports that rat complaints are up: "In......

"A size 12 Cambridge rat" from JawkneeP's photostream.......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

Boston just got its own food scare thanks to tabloid TV show Inside Edition. They brought their "Rat Patrol" into several restaurants, including the Quincy Market McCormick & Schmick's, Ruth's Chris, China Pearl, and other establishments. After having to sit through some crap about Anna Nicole's momma, we discovered that Inside Edition really does have a dedicated "Rat Patrol" of five people standing around and looking tough while they sniff out rats under the cover......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In......

--Just as another person was shot and killed on Blue Hill Avenue yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick weighed in on the city's violence. Some of his comments were memorable, such as "But every once in a while, when [an] adult says, 'You know what? You're not supposed to come to work with your pants down there,' ... even when that kid rolls their eyes, they hear you. It gets through." While it's easy to indulge our......

--A little while back, an angry dad entered the fray when his kid got in a fight with a 10-year-old after a hockey match. Not only is that embarrassing for the guy's own son, but it's really embarrassing when a 46-year-old man sees fit to wail on a little kid. Now the Hopedale dad has been charged for his actions. Let this be a lesson to any potential parents out there: When your kid gets......

We must have blinked and missed the two months of voting that went into selecting the 2007 AOL cityguide Best Of list winners. Starting in mid-November and wrapping up in mid-January, voting took place on line on the set of contenders who had been nominated by AOL cityguide for their best of rating – opportunity for there to have been a little pandering to sponsors, but we'll never know. The categories seem endless: 24 categories......

Three kids left alone in their Roxbury apartment yesterday started playing with matches and set the place on fire. The oldest of the children was six, which raises the question, "Where was Mom or Dad?" The good news is that firefighters and neighbors were able to rescue the children in time. The Country Club Owner Murder-Suicide that emerged yesterday really is turning into a TV movie of the week. Neighbors are suggesting that financial problems......

Nelson De La Rosa, the "world's smallest actor," passed away on Sunday at the age of 38. He may have been only two feet and four inches tall, but he was big enough to hang with the larger-than-life personalities of both Pedro Martinez and Marlon Brando. De La Rosa climbed from the schlockfest Rat Man to a role as Marlon Brando's sidekick in The Island of Dr. Moreau, and De La Rosa's character supposedly served......

While many argue about the discrimination in this city, this ideology is also affecting the vermin in the city sewers as well. As many shocked restaurant patrons came to find out last Thursday, rats do not add to the ambience when inhaling a filet mignon on Newbury Street. Louis J. Antonellis, a local labor union guy for Electrical Workers Local 103, decided he had had enough with the Capital Grille after fighting with them for......

Gearing up for July 4th festivities reminds us a bit of what it was like being a kid. The spectacular event that is the fireworks display has always been something Bostonist looks forward to every year. So maybe we're getting a little nostalgic for the backyard BBQ, sparklers and snakes, and slip and slides. And Summer Camp. But sometimes it rained; we couldn't go outside and play. Those times called for a little bit of......

Coming from someone who liberally threw around the "traitor" and "judas" labels, among others, Bostonist should probably be the last one to talk about how much of a raw deal Mr. Damon got from the crowd last night. But when you hear that one of the most beloved players on your team decided to sign with the enemy, of course there will be a knee-jerk reaction. Of course you'll call home names—and probably names worse......

Maybe you were walking by City Hall Plaza today and noticed a strange encampment of sign- and flyer-bearing, Spanish-speaking protesters on the traffic island where State Street meets Tremont. Perhaps you said to yourself, "What gives? I thought yesterday was the big day for immigrant protests!" Maybe you even took a flyer (see right). Still, you would likely have been left wondering, "Why are these people making such a fuss about UNICCO, the Mass.-based cleaning......

Although Bostonist has been pretty oblivious to the 2006 Mass. gubernatorial race thus far, a story in the Globe couldn’t help but reel us in. Apparently independent candidate Christy Mihos didn’t realize that when someone said a life in politics was for the dogs, they weren’t exactly advising him to get his favorite pooch involved in his campaign. Mihos isn’t just using his best pal, Reagan, as a photo-op but actually giving him a commanding......

It's turned a little bit colder these last few days. Bostonist takes the easy way out of the cold and takes the commute to the underground. Riding the T a little bit more frequently and we've heard a couple things we just kind of giggled to ourselves when we heard them. As always, send us those crazy mutterances you’ve heard around the Hub and we'll include them the next time we bring you "Overheard".......

With the release of their independent hit, “Swingers,” in late 1996, Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn introduced into our pop culture a new vernacular based on Sinatra’s Rat Pack. “You’re so money” became 1997’s biggest catch phrase, and swing dance lessons suddenly became a lucrative business. All of this boded well for the opening of The Good Life, a bar and restaurant seemingly ripped straight from Favreau’s screenplay and placed across the street from a......

With hardly a wasted day after the sad and unexpected death of State Senator Charlie Shannon (D-Winchester) earlier this week, the political rat-race to replace him has begun. Already some local politicians have been working phones trying to feel out their chances for that seat. Interestingly, though the 2nd Middlesex District includes parts of the late Senator's hometown of Winchester, as well as Woburn, Medford, and Somerville, most of the people around whom speculation is......

Who is a rat is the question asked by North Shore resident Sean Bucci that launched his website, www.whosarat.com late last summer. The website has a stated mission to help lawyers and defendants find out information about the people who turned on them in order to call their credibility into question. According to the Boston Globe this Monday the site was recently used for revenge. A Tewksbury woman publicly proclaimed the identity of an alleged......