Dames hate leftovers.

According to a new poll* from ShopSmart magazine, from the publisher of Consumer Reports, a surprising 10 percent of women say they categorically won't eat leftovers. And only 29 percent of women say they budget or estimate how much a weekday dinner will cost.

According to this poll, seventy percent of married women do all or most of their household’s grocery shopping. And while we think we're being more abstemious than in years past, the average weekly grocery expenditure is $115, only $1 less than in November 2007.

Huh. We all feel like we're tightening the belts, spending less, making better choices, but that doesn't sound like it. As someone who could accrue a refrigerator stacked full of doggie bags at an alarming rate, I do have to reveal my own anti-leftovers bias. I'll bring home certain things (pastas in a tomato-based sauce; most Asian dishes, from kung pao to pad Thai), but I usually end up guiltily tossing those Styrofoam clamshells if they contain seafood of any kind, meats in creamy sauces, salads or desserts. My uncles end up making hash with doggie-bag steaks and chops, and I've been known to have quesadilla night with leftover restaurant flotsam and jetsam.

What are other people's strategies for incorporating restaurant leftovers into family dinners?

*The Consumer Reports National Research Center conducted a telephone survey of a nationally representative probability sample of telephone households. 1,001 interviews were completed among women aged 18+. Interviewing took place over April 23 – April 27, 2009. The margin of error is +/- 3.2% points at a 95% confidence level.

The Renaissance Vinoy offers "vintage price"

The Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club in St. Petersburg has just launched a new “classic dining” menu in Marchand’s through November 1. It's a three-course meal offered for $19.25 per person (plus tax and gratuity) to celebrate the year the original Vinoy Park Hotel opened in 1925. It's good nightly from 5:30 to 7 p.m., and every guest gets an old-timey souvenir menu. For more information, call (727) 894-1000.

Here's the menu: 

• Starter--white gazpacho or classic wedge 

• Choice of Entrée--free-range chicken breast, pork tenderloin, Atlantic salmon (all with choice of sauce: bordelaise, bernaise, citrus beurre blanc) 

• Choice of Side--asaragus with hollandaise, cauliflower gratin, butter whipped potato

• Dessert--key lime pie, tropical compote with whipped cream

Dine and ditch

Last week in Memphis a couple ate $100 worth of food at Buckley's restaurant and then skedaddled. The restaurant owners promptly sent out an e-mail blast to its electronic mailing list that contained photos taken by security cameras. It turns out that the couple returned the next morning to pay the bill, claiming they'd just forgotten.

But it got me thinking about dine and ditches--I'm wondering if the phenomenon has gotten more common as the economy has worsened. As a waitress I was stiffed a few times--devastating after a couple hours of serious work, but even more so for the restaurant that has to eat the cost.

I do have my own dine and ditch experience to come clean about. I was 12 years old, on a ski vacation with my parents and brother in Cervinia, Italy. We went for a late lunch, during which the waiters all went off duty and stood around drinking and guffawing in their undershirts, while a truck pulled up with its motor running and unloaded crates of produce, exhaust fumes filling the dining room. An excrable lunch and miserable service culminated in being presented a bill that reflected a number of mysterious extra charges. My dad, not a patient, long-suffering man, asked us to quietly stand up and walk to the door without looking back. Outside, when my mother realized what had happened, she bolted, running down the snowy street and leaving me and my six-year-old brother to potential run-ins with the carabinieri.

But that's my only time, I swear.

More fast-food navigational strategies

I thought this was a pretty good piece on which dishes to get if you're trying to eat healthfully at the big chains (dishes under 500 calories). And I haven't put a ton of stock in the Pollo Loco/KFC grudge match, but it did make an eyebrow heave skyward when I heard that KFC is flavoring its grilled chicken with--wait for it--beef. Specifically beef powder and rendered beef fat. That seems nearly as bad as way back when McDonald's was flavoring its french fries with beef extract. I'm an inveterate omnivore, but this stuff still doesn't sit well with me.

Best happy-hour snacks?

I'm contemplating doing a story soon on the area's cheapest, free, most lavish or best happy hour snacks. I'm interested to check out Fleming's 5 for 6 til 7 deal, and I've heard Marchand's and Ceviche put out a nice spread. What are the other ones that I've got to pull up a stool for?

Iconic restaurants are online now

UPDATE: We've now posted the list of our Top 25 iconic restaurants older than 25. You can read the story or look through our slideshow And remember to check back tomorrow (Thursday) at 11:30 a.m. for a live chat about our choices. We know we have some passionate fans out there who want to present a case for their own favorite.

EARLIER: The finishing touches have been put on the slideshow, the story has been edited and designed with grace and style--now gentle reader, you must merely fritter away the evening before all is revealed tomorrow morning. Check back here, or at our home page for a link to the slideshow and story.

Want a little hint about what you're going to find on our "25 Over 25" story? Hmm, there are two famous for their hamburgers and two for their hotdogs; two for their grouper sandwiches and one for its ribs; there's one place you'll find older ladies in orthopedic shoes peddling cake; three out-and-out fancy places; two where you can eat Spanish-Cuban food; one with bathtubs; one that donates lavishly to breast cancer research; one where the tagline might as well be "smoke 'em if you got 'em;" one room with a view and one deck with a view; one where you might yell "opa" and one where you might have to yell to be heard over the music.

Any ideas? And once the dust has settled and you want to give me a firm talking to about my choices, tune into the blog on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. for a lively live chat.

How to be a restaurant critic in twenty easy steps

Famed resto critic Gael Greene wrote this letter to a 10-year-old restaurant critic hopeful on the Huff Post. Most of it is firmly tongue in cheek, but it's still depressing as heck, expressing precious little hope about the future of restaurant criticism. Like, there won't be any in magazines and newspapers. Just bloggers. Hmm, maybe I should be thinking about Plan B.

Zagats think service is the weak link in the restaurant industry

Nina and Tim Zagat wrote a kind of crabby piece about restaurant service in the new Atlantic Food Channel here. It starts like this:

"Over the years that we've spent surveying hundreds of thousands of diners, one fact becomes clear: Service is *the* weak link in the restaurant industry. How do we know? Roughly 70% of all complaints we receive relate to service....Moreover, the average rating for food on our 30-point scale is usually two points higher than the average rating for service. Given the fact that identical people are voting, and that there are hundreds of thousands of them, this deficit is dramatic."

I think there's some truth to that, although it may be that generalized dissatisfaction with a meal (the decor, the pacing, the food itself) may get pinned on the service staff. So someone doesn't enjoy dinner--maybe it's too loud, or the food is too froufrou, whatever--and it's easy to distill more esoteric complaints into one about service. On the other hand, the Zagats may just be right.

Alan Richman's favorite pizzas (Florida gets stiffed)

From guest blogger and fellow foodie, Peter Couture of *TBT:

In the June issue of GQ, the celebrated food critic Alan Richman writes about his search for the top 25 pizzas in the country. According to Richman, he sampled 386 pizzas at 109 different pizzerias. “I traveled to ten American cities, the ones I knew had a lot of pizzerias or a lot of Italians,” he writes. “They seem to go together, although less so anymore.”

And a newcomer was Richman’s No. 1: Chicago’s Great Lake. Of its Mortadella pie, he writes: “This pie — creative, original, and somewhat local—represents everything irresistible about the new American style of pizza-making.”

On the pizza blog Slice, Adam Kuban says of Richman’s undertaking: “It’s a refreshing list. ... I’m tired of seeing the same old boring Top X-many lists held down by the same old stalwarts in NYC, New Haven, and Chicago. Richman’s list has just enough old-school places on it to lend it credibility and ward off any accusations of blatant pot-stirring.”

To read Richman’s pizza story, go here. By the way, his Top 10 pizza towns in America are: 1. New York; 2. San Francisco; 3. Detroit; 4. Chicago; 5. Providence; 6. Los Angeles; 7. New Haven; 8. Philadelphia; 9. Phoenix; 10. Boston.

Alan Richman’s Top 25
1. Great Lake (Chicago)
2. Lucali (Brooklyn, NYC)
3. Pizzeria Delfina (San Francisco)
4. Pizzeria Bianco (Phoenix)
5. Bob & Timmy’s (Providence, R.I.)
6. Sally’s Apizza (New Haven, Conn.)
7. Tomato Pie (Los Angeles)
8. Co. Company (Manhattan, NYC)
9. Tacconelli’s (Philadelphia)
10. Totonno’s (Brooklyn, NYC)
11. Tarry Lodge (Port Chester, N.Y.)
12. Frank Pepe (New Haven, Conn.)
13. Luigi’s “the Original” (Harrison Township, Mich.)
14. Gialina (San Francisco)
15. Buddy’s (Detroit)
16. Antica Pizzeria (Marina Del Ray, Calif.)
17. A16 (San Francisco)
18. Al Forno (Providence, R.I.)
19. Galleria Umberto (Boston)
20. Famous Joe’s (Manhattan, NYC)
21. Tomatoes Apizza (Farmington Hills, Mich.)
22. Osteria (Philadelphia)
23. Santarpio’s (Boston)
24. Niki’s (Detroit)
25. Una Pizza Napoletana (Manhattan, NYC)

The Modern: food porn from a reader

Ron and Lonni Whitchurch, former owners of Lonni's and now owners of Loon Lake Cafe in Westshore, Tampa, were in NYC last week and ate at The Modern, which I wrote about here. Their meal sounded just spectacular, and they sent me this luscious photo of their amuse bouche as proof. Salmon mousse, cucumber panne cotta, and cavier--snapped on Mother's Day.

But just how do you eat this puppy? Pick it up and slurp?

[photo Lonni Whitchurch]