Announcing ... The Westies!

Every so often we get out of town.  Sometimes, among ferns or sand dunes, I start daydreaming about moving somewhere where there are a lot more trees and a lot less trucks.  It all sounds great until it comes to food, and that's when I realise I couldn't be happy in a place without dosas and pho and with only one type of mint.  That whole thing about a way to a man's heart is through his stomach?  I may not be a man, but that is definitely true for me.

I've loved meeting fellow food bloggers along the way, doing crazy things like eating chicken embryos and doing blind banh mi taste testing, but my best blog bud is Kenny of Consider the Sauce.  It's brilliant to have a mate and blogging compadre to trade cheap eats war stories with.  We've both been running our blogs for three plus years, and with almost 1000 posts between us, we think we've really lit a fire under the media to get more attention on the western suburbs horn of plenty  ...  but there's always room for improvement.

To this end, Footscray Food Blog and Consider the Sauce are proud to announce "The Westies:  Dishes of Distinction" - the first food awards dedicated to celebrating the amazing food culture of Melbourne's west.  These annual awards will honour three dishes per year from three different eateries (as opposed to awards to the eateries themselves).  So we're talking maybe an amazing dal makhani, the flakiest cheese burek, and an epic soft shell crab banh mi.  Actually, I don't know who makes that - but can someone please start?!

The selection process will take into account taste, consistency, pricing, and a sense of uniqueness or tradition.  This year's winners will be decided after countless emails, Facebook messages, dining-out sojourns and an epic knock-down bar-room brawl  ...  followed by a steak and a dozen oysters, of course.

Each eatery will be presented with a commemorative award - initial designs included a Olympic donut cast in bronze.  That was scratched, but we promise it will still be awesome.  Eateries responsible for producing the winning dishes will be ineligible for further awards for the next three years.

The winners of the 2013 "Westies - Dishes of Distinction" will be announced and the awards themselves presented at the annual Footscray Food Blog/Consider The Sauce Spring Picnic, to be held at:

Yarraville Gardens, Somerville Road.

Saturday, November 30, from 11 am.

The Westies - Dishes of Distinction winners announced at noon.