Friday, April 30, 2010

Zach Golden: What the F@*! Should I Make for Dinner?

Posted by on Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 11:00 AM

click to enlarge New York City copywriter Zach Golden is one of the creators of the site.
  • New York City copywriter Zach Golden is one of the creators of the site.

We can check off one of mankind's greatest unanswered questions. What the Fuck Should I Make For Dinner? is a Web site that, with each click of your mouse, randomly generates a suggestion for what to cook. Advertising co-workers Russ Phillips, 25, and Zach Golden, 24, decided to tackle the question last Friday, and WTFSIMFD launched on Monday.

"It was our recurring sign off. What are you doing tonight? Fucking cooking some dinner -- but we never knew what to cook," said Golden, a copywriter living in Brooklyn, when Fat City reached him by phone yesterday.

The site pulls meat and fish recipes from Epicurious -- Golden and Phillips compiled the list -- and takes vegetarian options from recipe.com. It gives readers only three options: Accept the initial recipe, ask for a vegetarian option, or ask for a new suggestion. 

"People love swearing and people have proven to love food as well. But how quickly we've reached this level is probably not a good thing about our society," said Golden.

click to enlarge The site offers three choices: a recipe, vegetarian option, or the chance to play again.
  • The site offers three choices: a recipe, vegetarian option, or the chance to play again.

The site is addictive in its simplicity, and because it suggests dishes that are probably not in your regular rotation of meals. 


"My girlfriend and I sit at home and think about what we should cook at night. Instead of Mac n' Cheese seven nights a week, we're expanding our horizons," said Golden.

Though the site's just five days old, Golden said he is looking into a new host. The site hasn't been able to handle the traffic load -- it had 60,000 unique visitors by noon yesterday, according to Golden -- and has intermittently been displaying the error sign, "You broke the Fucking Internet." 

And, at this point, Golden can't have the site down. He's come to rely on it.
 
"It's scary, I love it as a tool. It just fucking works."

Home page image via Flickr: ReneS

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments (2)

Showing 1-2 of 2

Add a comment

 
Subscribe to this thread:
Showing 1-2 of 2

Add a comment

Latest in The Fast Pitch

More by Jonathan Bender

Slideshows

All contents ©2013 Kansas City Pitch LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this service may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Kansas City Pitch LLC,
except that an individual may download and/or forward articles via email to a reasonable number of recipients for personal, non-commercial purposes.

All contents © 2012 SouthComm, Inc. 210 12th Ave S. Ste. 100, Nashville, TN 37203. (615) 244-7989.
All rights reserved. No part of this service may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of SouthComm, Inc.
except that an individual may download and/or forward articles via email to a reasonable number of recipients for personal, non-commercial purposes.
Website powered by Foundation