Omnivore - Eater Atlanta launches today, with Jennifer Zyman at the helm

Eater Atlanta went live overnight, bringing a new voice to the Atlanta dining scene. And the woman to helm this venture? Jennifer Zyman, aka the Blissful Glutton, aka Creative Loafing writer extraordinaire.

Back in April, the site that started in New York in 2005 put out an ad for an Atlanta editor, alerting the rest of us that the organization was planning an Atlanta-specific site. Today, joining sites in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland OR, and Miami, Atlanta has its very own Eater site. Houston and Dallas are also getting new Eater sites today.

I spoke to Eater’s founder and president Lockhart Steele (did his parents want a dang soap opera star for a kid or what?), who explained the focus on Atlanta as a broader strategy to tackle the South in general. He also said that Eater National editor Raphael Brion (seriously? What’s UP with these dude’s names?) “came back gobsmacked by how good the food scene” is in Atlanta after visiting for the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival.

Steele said “The real challenge was finding a local editor on the ground, who knows the restaurant scene in and out.”