Cincy natives were livid over Y&H's Skyline Chili post.

Mother Nature dumped 30 inches-plus of powder on our heads this past week, so it goes without saying the most-read item was...Orr Shtuhl's Aug. 11 post on Budweiser's Select 55.

(Insert garbled invective here.)

Fortunately, we've stopped counting that post a long time ago. So here's the modified Top 5 for the week:

1. Who'll Keep You Warm, Fed and Happy During 'Cluster Flake'? The Working List.
2. A Tale of Two Restaurant Supply Lines During Snowmageddon
3. Sno'Body Knows the Troubles He's Seen: The Cost of Closing Down Restaurant Eve
4. Frozen Skyline Chili at Harris Teeter: Better Than You Think
5. Cabin Fever Setting In? Get to One of These Restaurants or Bars.
   

As the primary author of the Young & Hungry blog, I release a lot of gas into the ether. Sometimes you readers find it noxious enough to disperse with your own counterattack. It can make for an engaging round of online gasbagging. Just take a look at the four examples that Editor Andrew and I cobbled together for this week's Y&H column.

You readers are frickin' vicious. Thank your stars you aren't Barton Seaver — or Y&H for that matter.

Just for the fun of it, I also rounded up 22 other blog items that generated a lot of commentary last year. You can see them after the jump.

1. Five Guys' Supporters Rush to the Defense of the Chain Burger
2. Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?
3. Michel Richard Plans to Move His Home Base to Tysons Corner
4. The Latest on Roberto Donna and the Resurrection of Galileo
5. Orange Juice Should Never Include Ice Cubes
6. Former Used-Car Lot in Trinidad to Get a New Ride — a Diner Car
7. Are All Beer Taxes Bad?
8. D.C.'s a Great Beer City, Chapter 1
9. My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
10. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
11. Your Last Beer on Earth: What Do the Pros Say?
12. Does D.C. Have a Signature Dish or Not?
13. Minibar Would Be the Toughest Reservation in America, if D.C. Were a Foodie Town
14. Obama's Beer Meeting: Let the Lobbying Begin!
15. Beer Geeks vs. Beer Snobs
16. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
17. Top 5 Beer Menus in Columbia Heights
18. Not So Fast: There's No Deal for a Ray's Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
19. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants
20. Seeking Nominees for City Paper's Inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame
21. When Should a Critic Just Trash a Place?
22. When Should a Beer Critic Trash a Brew?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Below you'll find the five most-popular Y&H posts outside the U.S. — and the country in which the item found an audience. You know what? Some cliches are true: Canadians dig beer.

The list after the jump.

1. Vintage TV Beer Commercials — Croatia, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom (combined, these countries totalled thousands of page views)
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd — Canada
3. Flying Dog Receives Brewery of the Year: Catch Them Thursday at the Mayflower — Canada
4. Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House — Colombia (No doubt most of those clicks came from Mendelsohn's former landlords who are based in the country.)
5. Ritz Pastry Chef Jérôme Girardot Found Dead in Cameron Station Park — France 

Today and throughout the week, Y&H will be giving you a glimpse back at 2009, via the blog posts that most captured your attention. First up: the granddaddy of all aggregations, the 10 most-read items of  the year.

The list is after the jump.

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd. This page, posted by the Beerspotter in August, is the Michael Jordan of Young & Hungry. It performs at peak levels week after week. The page is also the holy temple of search engine optimization; future Web gurus will study its signs and contours to learn out how it has performed so well on Google.
2. Vintage TV Beer Commercials. I compiled this page as daily blog filler, no more important to me than some random fat dude screaming for his McDonald's chicken sandwich. But the internets has its own way of rewarding inanity.
3. Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House. The item that forever put Y&H on the burger man's shit list.
4. Ritz Pastry Chef Jérôme Girardot Found Dead in Cameron Station Park. A terrible, terrible incident that I still think about with equal parts wonder and sadness.
5. Another D.C. Beer Week? Yes, Please. Because it's always better the second-time around.
6. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What's Inside? The Logan Circle beer emporium has been a consistently strong performer on Y&H. It is, in fact, the only establishment with two nods on this list.
7. Nori Amaya's Friends and Fans Express Their Grief on Her Facebook Page. People were so desperate for information on this tragic killing that they turned to my shallow little effort — and sometimes expressed their anger at its lack of real info.
8. Birch & Barley Slated for Summer Opening. Maybe. More false optimism spooned out by Y&H.
9. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical. Excessive fruit flies! Dirty meat slicers! Operating without a license! Readers wanted to know all the icky details of Breadline's spectacular health inspection failure.
10. Michel Richard Plans to Move His Home Base to Tysons Corner. The maestro of D.C. chefs hunted for investors last year for a planned move to the former Maestro space in McLean.

If there's anything that grips Y&H readers, it's tragedy, and it doesn't get much more tragic than the homicide of Nori Amaya, the co-owner of Coppi's Organic on U Street. People were obviously desperate for information on the strangulation. Even our negligible little item was widely visited.

Here's how the week shook out:

1. Nori Amaya's Friends and Fans Express Their Grief on Her Facebook Page
2. A Certain Goddamn Budweiser Beer That People Can't Stop Reading About
   
3. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What's Inside? (This item is quickly entering Select 55 territory.)
   
4. Tom and Derek Brown to Channel Spirits and Iggy Pop at the Passenger
   
5. D'Acqua Shutters, Ping Pong Dim Sum Set to Open Next Month
   

What a finish! The competition for the top spot in the hearts and minds of Young & Hungry readers was decided by just a single pageview. Guess who won this week?

Nope, not Select 55.

Your fave posts this week:

1. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What's Inside?
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. Nick Cho's Tax Troubles: Where Does That Leave Chinatown Coffee?
4. Frank Morales Takes Over as Chef at Jackie's
5. Dupont BGR: The Burger Joint Set to Open Thursday or Friday [Note: Now scheduled for a Monday opening.]

Let's just call it Birch & Barley week, shall we? The new Neighborhood Restaurant Group establishment dominated Y&H this week, along with other beer-related posts.

Check it out:

1. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What's Inside?
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. DC Finally Getting a German Beer Garden? The Lagerheads Share their Outdoor Picks in the Meantime
4. Birch & Barley Opening Tomorrow?
5. Birch & Barley Slated for Summer Opening. Maybe.
   

This week's top blog posts feature a couple of hard-charging items published late in the week, including a campaign to protect Rock Art Brewery from corporate beer behemoths on the warpath.

Here's what you liked:

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Rasika Will Be the First Ethnic Restaurant to Earn 4 Stars from Tom Sietsema
3. Sietsema's 2009 Dining Guide Makes Premature Appearance on Web
4. When Should a Critic Just Trash a Place?
5. A True Monster Attacks Rock Art Brewery — Can Twitter and Facebook Help?
   

Controversy over Esquire's selection for Chef of the Year. The passing of Ben Ali. The New York Times' investigation into commercial ground beef. All of these have been major subjects on the blog this week.

And yet: The most-read item this week beat out Select 55 by a mere five clicks.

1. Barton Seaver to Be Named Esquire's Chef of the Year, Controversy Ensues
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. Ben Ali's Son: "We're All OK."
4. The Times' Shattering Expose of Ground Beef: Where Does It Leave Burger Lovers?
5. Despite Founder's Death, It Was Business As Usual at Ben's
   

Hey, look, a celebrity chef!

We're all slaves to celebrity — or at least celebrity chefs. This week's top item is devoted to a freakish coincidence: I happened to be at G Street Food right when Rick Bayless popped in for a sandwich to go, to take with him for his flight out of town.

How powerful is Bayless' draw? Powerful enough to knock Select 55 out of the top spot. Here are your faves from the blog this week:

1. Rick Bayless Drops by G Street Food This Morning
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. Terrible Restaurant Names: We Can't Live Without (Mocking) Them
4. Secret Fast-Food Menus: Truth or Myth?
5. Barton Seaver to Be Named Esquire's Chef of the Year, Controversy Ensues