Last week it was Tasting Table; this week it’s Grub Street Chicago. Even if the content’s staying pretty much on par, the universe of Chicago food blogging is really getting beautiful. Menupages.com, which was bought by New York magazine about a year ago, has now fused its blogs (including MenuPages Chicago) into Grub Street, the James Beard award–winning, New York magazine–affiliated site. The shift happened at 4am this morning, with the launch of a hit-baiting slideshow of the notable burgers.

Aside from the sleek look that’s the hallmark of New York magazine, most of the changes are relevant to geeks only. You can no longer view full posts in an RSS reader—the feed now sends only a headline and a one-sentence summary of the post. Helen Rosner, who’s edited MenuPages Chicago for the past year, remains at the helm at Grub Street Chicago, where she’ll be rolling out some new features such as today’s launch of “The Chicago Diet”—a peek at what Stephanie Izard ate this week that makes my weekend visits to no fewer than eight restaurants and five bars seem practically ascetic. Among other changes, Rosner notes that the commenting function can now “tell the difference between humans and spamming robots,” images have a higher pixel size, and the site can host slideshows. Integrated content from other city editors lends the site a more national feel—see, for instance, Ben Levanthal’s post on the five hardest reservations to get in the U.S., which includes one not-that-hard-to-guess Chicago spot. All that’s holding the blog back, in my opinion, is its lack of original photography—Rosner says there are plans for stronger photo content in the works.