Awards Season Heats Up: Where The Mags Stand And Voices From The Blogs

Regular visitors to this blog (or readers of the Beijinger's print edition) will already be familiar with what went down at the Beijinger's 2012 Reader Restaurant Awards in March. If not, click here and here to get up to speed on the results. (For a teaser/reminder, our readers voted Home Plate and Da Dong Beijing's best non-Chinese and Chinese restaurants respectively.) However, restaurant awards season doesn't stop with us handing out the gongs, so we're here with a roundup of what the other English-language magazines are getting up to, and what the bloggers have been saying.

The Time Out panel has closed its deliberations and announced the results of their 2012 Food Awards at Brasserie Flo on April 24 (the big winners were Maison Boulud with four outright wins). For a head-to-head comparison of our results alongside those of Time Out, click here.

Voting is ongoing in City Weekend's Readers' Choice Awards, which covers both the restuarant and nightlife scenes - you've got until April 30 to lodge your preferences with them.

That's what's been going on with the magazines, but the bloggers have been weighing in as well.

The Noodle Diaries published two responses to the Beijinger Reader Restaurant Awards, one a general overview and discussion of what Home Plate's win represents, the other focusing on Chinese categories - the latter offers up some interesting alternative picks (go Najia Xiaoguan!).

Kristen Lum was close behind with her LumDimSum blog, giving a personal take on the Beijinger results and her own alternative list of winners.

Beijing Boyce (one of the esteemed members of the Expert Panel for our Reader Restaurant Awards) didn't get into alternative winners, but did pen this defence of Home Plate's right to be crowned the restaurant to rule them all for 2012.

All this award-bestowing is infectious. At least, our Expert Panelist, former Dining Editor and longtime contributor Tom O'Malley seems to have caught the listing-Beijing's-top-restaurants bug - he's back on CNNGo this week rounding up "20 of Beijing's best eateries to match every budget." Find out what Tom has to say here.

Awards fatigue? Pull your socks up - there's still two weeks of voting to go in the Beijinger Reader Bar & Club Awards!