Dear 10 Degrees South,
As a highly-trained and well-versed internet technologist, I take great interest in any restaurant’s web presence. Though it is an oft abused topic – great website development, as with any skilled form of labor, is in short order. As many will lament, the restaurant and food industry is a wasteland of digital vomit. In that respect, I must commend you on the recent changes to your website; however, I must now ask that you change it back to the way it was.
Again, let me be clear. Your new website layout, design, and code structure is vastly superior to what once was. Unfortunately, the site still suffers from major usability issues, rendering problems, and so forth. Although, even if it was a perfect example of “best practices,” I would still be writing you this letter.
Why you ask? Because I visited the previous version of your website far more often than I will this one. The number of websites who can reasonably justify the use of music, especially music that automatically starts upon a visitor’s arrival to said site, is beyond slim and barely more than none. Yours is and was no exception. However, I found myself repeatedly returning to your old site simply because of the included accompaniment of ‘Forgot About Dre’ rendered as one of the silkiest examples of muzak the world has ever seen. I shit you not – it truly was awesome!
That there was no logical or reasonable purpose for that song to be the audio file of choice simply added to the charm. Sure, I often visited with the intent to coax out my inner Nelson Muntz, point at you and laugh at your plight isn’t really the point. At least I was there. Sure, your inane web developer who agreed to or perhaps suggested that you include some muzak should be flogged for his transgressions, but again … I was there. Of course, I repeatedly shamed you publicly for the decision … but at least I was driving traffic to you.
Now, that is all done and gone. Instead of being a noticeable piece of what not to do with a high degree of “entertainment value,” your website sits as a modicum of “slightly better than not horrible” web development and design. You went from being a big fish in a big pond to being a small speck in a river of constantly moving waste.
Whatever you believe to be the tone and intent of this letter, I can assure you this is a most honest plea. I want that turd of a website back because it brought with it this awful clash of cultural themes (Elevator Music, Hip-Hop Culture, and South African cuisine) and a pleasantly humorous amount of shock value. And though I will even go a step further and assume that you did not have license for said song – continue to break all the rules and put it back in action!!!!!
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t be making this request if you happened to have a stellar example of competent web work … but I’d bet I’d still be less inclined to come look at your site on a semi-regular basis. And in the world of the web, it’s all about the eyeballs baby!
Yours in food,
Foodie Buddha
When discussions of deconstructed food and molecular gastronomy occur, rarely do concepts like sustainability come to mind. People (like me), who eat food from the admittedly quirky chefs that make these whacky concoctions, are almost always focused on the hedonistic experience of this type of consumption. This is obviously not lost on Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche, who serve as the executive chef and the executive pastry chef of Moto Restaurant in Chicago respectively {Homaro is on the right}.
