In today’s Deseret (UT) News, food editor Valerie Phillips writes…

To me, the best perk is not the food I eat but the people I meet. The last weekend in June was a case in point. That Thursday, I’d gotten a call from Bonnie Tandy Leblang, co-author of Supermarket Sampler, the syndicated column that appears in our Food section.

She lives in Connecticut, but she and her two 20-something sons, Bryan and Eric, were in Utah for her father’s 90th birthday. The trio had just finished a segment on KSL’s “Studio Five” show about their new blog, Bite of the Best, where they review their favorite food products.

During lunch at Martine, I realized how seriously these three take food. It was amusing to hear them strategize over what each would order and share, to sample as many different dishes as possible. Leblang said she started Bite of the Best because after nearly 23 years of criticizing so many junk-food type products in Supermarket Sampler, “I want to talk about products that I really like.”

For Valerie’s complete column, click here.