Eating and Drinking Sydney Guide

Who said food blogging didn't get you anywhere?

I was pretty taken aback when I was approached to be one of the editors for the new Eating and Drinking Sydney guide earlier this year. It's the kind of offer a food writer dreams about, and then freaks out over, when you realise the magnitude of responsibility this position entails.

As editor for the Cheap and Cheerful section, I was entrusted with creating a list of 170 best budget feeds from all over Sydney. This was tough. There are so many amazing places to eat, and culling them down to get a good representation of cuisines and suburbs was excruciating.

Thankfully I didn't have to visit and write about every single venue, but I did submit a significant proportion of reviews as chief contributor. I also had to come up with several themed Top 10 lists - all good fun. Juggling deadlines with a full-time job and blogging was definitely a test of endurance, but like so many things in life, it all came together in the end. It's still rather surreal to see my name on the front cover of a Sydney eating guide!

Professionally, I found it was a fascinating and incredibly illuminating experience, particularly working with the book's editor and project manager, Clare Brundle, who had the herculean task of overseeing the text and writing style of a team of 40 contributors across all three sections: restaurants, cheap eats and bars. That's more than 700 venues in total!

My fellow editors for the guide are Elizabeth Meryment and Anna Fedeles. Our contributor biographies are below:

Elizabeth Meryment (Editor - Restaurants)
Elizabeth Meryment is Sydney's only food critic in stilettos. Her irreverent restaurant reviews appear each week in The Sunday Telegraph and she occasionally 'gets serious' by writing old-fashioned long-form journalism for the brainy likes of The Weekend Australian. In her spare time, she co-authors the much-loved Foodies' Guide to Sydney and does yoga to ward off the evils of over-eating.

Helen Yee (Editor - Cheap and Cheerfuls)
Helen Yee is a freelance food writer who counts fried chicken as an essential food group. She writes a monthly suburban eats column for Time Out Sydney and is a contributor to the Foodies' Guide to Sydney. Follow Helen's eats on her popular Grab Your Fork blog.

Anna Fedeles (Editor - Bars)
Genetically cursed with a low tolerance to alcohol, this thirsty food writer overcame her disability and evolved into a bar-hopping butterfly with a penchant for Prohibition-era cocktails. Rather partial to cooking too, Anna has been blogging at Morsels & Musings since 2006.

Eating & Drinking Sydney will be released in Australia on September 1, 2011 with a recommended retail price of $29.95. An iPhone app will be made available shortly afterwards.

Thanks to the publishers, Hardie Grant, five lucky Grab Your Fork readers will win their own copy of the first ever Eating and Drinking Sydney.

HOW TO ENTER:

Option 1:

1. Leave a comment on this post and tell us: Where is your favourite cheap eat?
   
2. And then send an email to grabyourforkfreebiefriday@yahoo.com.au with the subject heading "Cheap" and include your full name and a copy of your published comment from this post.

Option 2:

1. Enter via the Grab Your Fork facebook fan page. Simply leave your answer on the event listing here.

The winning entry will be decided on honesty, creativity or entertainment value. Don't be shy! You've got to be in it to win it! Readers may submit multiple entries as long as each answer is different.

The Eating and Drinking Sydney competition closes on Thursday 8 September 2011 at 9.30pm AEST. The winner will be announced on Grab Your Fork on Friday 9 September 2011.

Thanks everyone for your entries. This competition has now closed. The lucky winners have been announced here.