In late July, 7x7 food editor Sara Deseran made waves by posing the question (on her food blog) – does the Bay Area have too many food blogs? It was a great blog post, filled with detail about the current full-time players in the food blogosphere (Eater SF, Inside Scoop, Grub Street, Tablehopper, Bay Area Bites, SF Foodie), those with extensive food coverage (SF Appeal, Mission Mission), the daily newsletters (Tasting Table, Blackboard Eats, Urban Daddy, Thrillist)... and that's not even touching the print publications with restaurant offerings, either. 

Exhausted? Hungry? Or maybe you're one of the people who salivate over the possibility of getting "first review" on Yelp. As Deseran writes, "Being in-the-know is a sort of social currency in a town where dining is one of the main forms of entertainment," a statement that gets more true by the day. Gorging on food coverage can be edifying and interesting but, as Deseran says, only to a point. 

Not every food blogger felt so introspective. Grub Street, an offshoot of New York Magazine, wrote in a response, "Some of this starts to smell like sour grapes from Old Media, but we'll try not to go there."

But that's not the only issue at play in a region whose food interests go way beyond just restaurant opening information. Street food events are overrun, the Underground Farmer's Market keeps moving to bigger venues, pop-up restaurants seem to pop up everywhere, and, as we reported, high-minded places like Bi-Rite are in a phase of great expansion. What happens, asks Lessley Anderson of Chow in a post from Friday titled "Dreading a Sustainability Backlash," when the food fever dies down? Do sustainability and urban homesteading and backyard farming and all the good, responsible things get thrown out when "first reviews" are no longer the hot thing?

It all reminds Anderson of her days reporting on the tech boom — and bust — for the Industry Standard. "What frightens me is not that this will one day happen to the food fetish movement, but that when it happens, we will lose some of the exciting gains that have come about as a result of local/sustainable sourcing becoming 'cool.'"

What will we do, indeed. Seems like one of the first victims of a potential foodie backlash would be the highly developed online blog world, but the bubble hasn't quite burst. NBC's Feast is launching an SF version soon. It remains to be seen how long before the public fills up on the constant snacking of social networks, blogs, Twitter feeds, print stories and e-mailed newsletters.