New year's food notes (* updated)

→ Los Angeles magazine's January Restaurant Awards issue proclaims Hatfield's the best new place in town, Bottle Rock the best new wine bar, Square One the standout breakfast spot, Swinging Door Texas BBQ the rockingest rib joint and Social Hollywood "the warmest staff in the coolest place." Plenty more and the feature is online, a breakthrough of sorts. There's even a semblance of an archive of the recent year's issues now on the website.

→ USC sociology professor Barry Glassner's new book, The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong mentions a bevy of L.A. food figures, from Suzanne Goin and Wolfgang Puck to writers Ruth Reichl, S. Irene Virbila, Jonathan Gold, Patric Kuh, Leslie Brenner and Emily Green. Deborah Vankin's Sunday LAT review concludes, "For such a negative book, The Gospel of Food is actually quite uplifting. Glassner may be an iconoclast, even a bit of a contrarian, but for all his obsession with fear and failure and false food facts, he's an optimist."

→ Du-Par's at the Farmers Market reopened Saturday morning, after a lengthy closure and remodeling. They're open 24 hours like any good coffee shop. Besides great pancakes, Du-Par's has tradition: it's been in Farmers Market since 1938 and is run by the same family that previously gave us Tiny Naylor's and Biff's.

→ The Original Pantry's sandwich annex closes for good January 7 to make way for a steakhouse/bar that will join the Richard Riordan culinary empire, according to a sign in the window.

→ Chowhound L.A.'s Ultimate Restaurants of 2006 have yet to be announced but are coming any day now.

→ Wednesday's Times food section does a feature on local food blogs, focused on new entries Eater LA and The Knife. While the company behind the more gossipy Eater says traffic is already about half what the New York version gets, Variety says The Knife is getting just 250 page views a day.

Updated