We may have become very sophisticated about food these days, but we’re very childish about dining.

Wherein guest blogger Bene finishes her Roman adventure on a fishy note — and regrets missing out on fried artichokes.

Bene’s next installment finds her vistiting Ristorante L’Arcangelo. I’ll spare you puns about the food being heavenly, but I couldn’t resist thisFra Angelico fresco of The Annunciation. (The Archangel Gabriel — get it?)

Italian Wine Week ended on a strong note. (It also ended a week ago, so I’m taking a very Italian approach to deadlines here. What can I tell you, it’s August.)

Eric Asimov’s recent article about sommeliers who taste wine before serving it has sparked a lot of discussion in the wine blogo/Twittersphere. The practice doesn’t bother me, but the piece, and the reaction it provoked, got me thinking a lot about my sommelier pet peeves. The majority of my encounters with sommeliers have been positive…but I’ve had my fair share of negative experiences. And when things do go bad, it usually plays out a little something like this.

Happy anniversary to me and Paul! We celebrated with a fantastic dinner at Blue Hill Stone Barns, where we ate and drank well — and did a little inter-species mingling.

I’m about to turn 37 (yikes), and the older I get, the less tolerance I have for bullshit — especially when it comes to restaurants. I was really looking forward to our trip to France as a return to restaurant sanity.