Who is Eater AZ?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I’m one of those people who pays attention to bylines and actually reads those goofy contributor bio pages in the front of magazines. So when I came across a local food blog called Eater AZ — where there are no bylines — the first thing I checked out was the “About Us” part of the site. Alas, there was no human connection, not even a personal email address.

There was a rumor a few months back that local restaurant critic Nikki Buchanan was starting her own website, but when I asked her if she was Eater AZ, she said, “Nope, not me.” After reading the blog a bit, I could tell it wasn’t Nikki’s writing voice anyway.

So who is Eater AZ? The website is registered to a marketing/advertising company called 21 Bond St. Turns out, it’s the one-man-show run by Rick Phillips, former publisher of Item Magazine, among others.

Phillips told me that since selling Item a couple years ago, he missed media, so he started Eater AZ for fun. Phillips, his friend David Tyda (editor of Desert Living), and some other unnamed contributors write the posts. Although the site has an archive going back to May 2008, Phillips say he hasn’t “officially” launched Eater AZ — something he plans to do in the next few weeks.

There you go.