Taxi Gourmet Set to Jet to Berlin

Online, June 8, 2010 (Newswire.com) - In her Taxi Gourmet blog, New York cabbie Layne Mosler seeks out food recommendations from other Gotham cab drivers then treks to the city's far reaches to see if they ring true, documenting the highlights of both journey and destination.

Mosler has already spent three years doing restaurant reconnaissance by getting into random cabs in Buenos Aires and New York, connecting with characters and flavors that have earned her her blog a cult following. In the summer of 2010 she will travel to Berlin, Germany to embark on a string of taxi adventures, making up the third act in her series of international culinary expeditions.

Why Berlin?

Mosler says that since the Berlin Wall came down, the city has gone from a place where people avoided restaurants to one where people actually travel to eat out. She says she's looking forward to investigating the city's emergence as an unlikely culinary hotspot, as well as exploring the theory that there's not a single traditional Berlin recipe that hasn't been modified in some way by foreign influences.

Mosler writes, "While the cab culture isn't as well-developed as Buenos Aires or New York-there are only about 7,000 cabs in Berlin total [as opposed to over 13,000 in New York]-it will be a fascinating place to explore how taxi culture has developed in a city that was once divided."

Utilizing the online funding platform Kickstarter.com, Mosler raised over $3,000 for the project. The funds will pay for her to journey to Berlin and a series of 15 taxi adventures. The resulting research will be used in a proposal for a book based on the Taxi Gourmet blog, which will go behind the scenes of her food escapades in Buenos Aires, New York and Berlin.

Though the project is fully funded, there's still time to contribute-for as little as $10, you can guarantee yourself a copy of the Taxi Gourmet book upon publication. Find out more and view a video at Taxi Gourmet's Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laynemosler/taxi-gourmet-the-berlin-chapter-and-the-book.

About Taxi Gourmet®

The three-year-old Taxi Gourmet blog has led its creator, Layne Mosler, to souvlaki in Queens, fufu in the Bronx, and borscht in the far reaches of Brooklyn, while opening the door to interactions with priests, sculptors, ex-chefs, political exiles from Mauritania, and DJs from Togo, among many others.

In May 2007, while working as a journalist in Buenos Aires, Mosler left a tango club, hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take her to his favorite restaurant. When she ended up with a plate of transcendent bife de lomo in front of her, she knew she was on to something. She made a project out of it, and her weekly taxi adventures led her to some of the most soulful places to eat in Buenos Aires, while giving her an intimate glimpse into the realities of life in Argentina's capital.

In 2009, Mosler transported the blog to New York and became a licensed yellow cab driver herself. When she's off duty, she asks willing hacks to introduce her to their favorite restaurants and dishes, and then shares her finds. When she's on duty, she searches for cheap, delicious eats near taxi stands.

To learn more, visit http://www.taxigourmet.com