In 2006, when the biggest names on the internet still included MySpace and Geocities, a new site burst onto the scene that promised to be bookmarked by food nerds across cyberspace: Ed Levine — perhaps the ultimate food nerd — and his team of happy-go-lucky writers unleashed Serious Eats, and it was, in many ways, the “food blogger” trope made manifest. It didn’t take long before the site became a one-stop destination for the original deep-dive into In-n-Out’s secret menu; an exhaustive guide to Sri Lankan food on Staten Island; a column in which Levine grappled with dieting for 182 weeks; and 5000 words on perfecting chocolate chip cookies. (I interned, for free, and then freelanced for the website, though I try not to think about how little I was paid.) Now, Levine has released a new memoir and, to celebrate the site’s 12 (frequently cash-strapped) years in business, Grub Street talked to the culinary obsessives who toiled away in the site’s dumpling-strewn content mines during its earliest years.

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