There are dozens of city dining guides for restaurants. The best-known is Zagat’s for major cities. Hungry? is now publishing city guides for Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and most recently, San Francisco.

As a travel writer and editor-in-chief of Vagablond.com, I’m proud to be a contributor to the latter for a number of restaurants in Marin County, north of San Francisco. This one, 300+ page book covers the City, the North Bay/Wine Country, the East Bay (Oakland), the Peninsula, and the South Bay Area all the way down to Santa Cruz. It’s available now at bookstores for $14.95 and Amazon.com for a bit less.

Hungry? City Guides are different kinds of dining guides. Instead of sending out endless surveys or filling in pages of matrixes, Hungry? enlists published travel and food writers like myself to tell it like it is after a visit or two.

Other ways why Hungry? is different:
• We think and eat like locals because we write about the neighborhood eateries that we frequent.
• We’re more than just reviews because Hungry offers sidebar essays.
• We root for the little guy and gay with mom-and-pop restaurants and neighborhood joints.
• We support nonprofits that feed the hungry and encourage that our readers do, too. (For the San Francisco edition, Hungry? City Guides support St. Anthony Dining Room, San Francisco Food Bank, Project Open Hand and Haight-Ashbury Food Program.)
• We go beyond the book with updated Website content to tell you about restaurant closures, management changes, and more.

Plus, Hungry? City Guides is planning more editions, with Hungry? Healthy edition for Los Angeles, as well as planned Hungry? City Guides and Thirsty? Drinking Guideseditions for Boston, Las Vegas and Miami.

And don’t forget to buy Hungry? Decks for 2008 for Los Angeles and Chicago, a card deck with dozens of dining discounts worth $520 for only $24.95.

For more info or to buy Hungry? books, visit their Website today.