This morning, yours truly spent an hour-plus on Warren Rojas' hot seat over at Northern Virginia magazine. Truth be told, the mag's readers went pretty easy on me (far easier than the putzes on City Desk who seem to think I'm a traitor for pointing out the obvious).

The most pointed (and funniest) question I got had to be this one:

Why does everyone kiss Jose Andres' ass so much? He's never here. And it's all close quarters and a shoutfest at his best restaurants (minibar, Zaytinya).

Interestingly enough, the question came from "Penn Quarter," where all of Andrés' restaurants are located. Could it have come from some disgruntled soul within Andrés' THINKfoodGROUP empire? Now that would be funny.

You can read my answer to that question, and others, over at Grill Warren.

I mean, I must be crazy to subject myself to the grilling of another publication's readers. But there you have it: At 11 a.m. tomorrow, you can hit me with all the questions you've ever wanted to ask and were somehow afraid to post anonymously on the Y&H blog. And I'll be required the answer them with all the honesty of an anonymous reporter and critic.

The reason Rojas invited me to cop a squat on his weekly hot seat is because he just wrapped up a feature in which he polled food critics from across the country to speak out about anonymous dining. Is it important? Is it dead? Is it a joke? The feature isn't yet available online, which tells you something about Rojas' organizing skills, but trust me, it's a killer story. Look for it whenever the hell it appears in print or online.

In the meantime, feel free to send in a question here or just follow along at 11 a.m. on Thursday.

It was an honorable move on Yonan's part. It just came late in the game. By the time the two scribes connected yesterday, the Post's Food section had already gone to print with Klein's Gut Check column in it. Yonan proceeded to do the right thing and offered to change the title after the fact.

Rojas didn't think that was unnecessary.

"I didn't make a stink because I didn't make up the phrase," Rojas told Y&H this afternoon. "I'm fairly confident that no one will confuse [Klein's] academic style with our free-form blog."

So how did the near-snafu occur?

The name of the column was submitted by a reader via an online contest, which drew hundreds of responses, Yonan wrote me via e-mail today. Yonan thought Gut Check "fit really well" with Klein's concept; it just took some time to reach that conclusion.

"We were sifting through and tossing them around right up until deadline, and in that rush neglected to do our due diligence in the checking, which is how we ended up picking one that we later remembered was the same as warren's fun blog," Yonan writes.

Adds Yonan: "Since warren was so understanding about all this, no harm, no foul."

Sometimes Y&H doesn't know how he ever lived without food blogs. How else would he learn about the rotten-egg alternative to Viagra or read with fascination one woman's campaign to avoid meat for five weeks? You're not gonna find this stuff on CNN, people!

• Gut Check surveys the meat mongers popping up in Northern Virginia. Must...control...breathing...lest...I...hyperventilate...

• The Feisty Foodie chronicles Week 2 of her five-week campaign to go meatless, which would be more impressive if she actually excluded fish, too.  Mmmm, Cheez Doodles for breakfast.
• Epi-log tries to get a grasp on whether the recession has increased sales of small kitchen appliances as cash-strapped families stop eating at restaurants. Do remote control beer pagers count as appliances?
• EatWashington suggests an alternative to Viagra: eating stinky egg sandwiches inside a running car.  Lubricant already available.
• Sauce on the Side deconstructs the Cointreau pearls that float in Champagne at Adour at the St. Regis hotel. Sounds so much classier than Cointreau poppers.

Photo by dullhunk

Along with his reviews, his Tweets, and his weekly chat, Rojas now adds a daily blog, Gut Check, which launched today. He will share writings duties on the blog with an intern. At this point, I think you have to call Rojas the unquestioned authority on Northern Virginia eats.

So what will Gut Check cover? E-mails Rojas in response:

No set formula, really. I anticipate we'll use it to extrapolate on our regular dining coverage. But also envision it as a multimedia canvass for chef q&a's, video collages (a la today's mealtime mayhem round up) and other interactive content better suited to the web than the static pages of the monthly pub.

We're shooting for daily posts to start, but eventually hope/plan/expect to update throughout the [day] with breaking hospitality news, last-minute dining deals and any other hot button issues that come across the food desk.