Restaurant Fuel began its life in 1996 as a print ‘zine. It covered such important topics as indie rock, the French New Wave, thrift stores, the mysteries of Japanese convenience stores, and socioeconomic class in America. Its identity was sort of all over the place, but it was almost always hand-bound with duct tape.
It continued its life in the 2000’s as a blog dedicated to complaining loudly about the George W. Bush administration, but collapsed as those things do. Someone tried to buy the domain to write food reviews on it (or something), but we just ignored the request and camped on the URL. It is now late 2015, and Restaurant Fuel returns once more. A blog without an identity in an era when blogs are dead. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.
Although many different people contributed to it over the years, it is the primary work of one Jeff Barrus of Washington, D.C. Jeff has worked in web design and digital marketing since 1998, and has been employed by organizations specializing in public broadcasting, higher education, international policy, and organized labor. He once worked for a German software company for nearly fifteen minutes, but most of his career has been spent in the very serious and important world of international policy.
He is, it is safe to say, disillusioned with the American foreign policy and political establishments, particularly the people who adhere to what the media refers to as “Beltway conventional wisdom.” One cannot be a witness to the creation of policy sausage for years without gaining unique insights into the dysfunctional and quite frankly unhygienic process of making U.S. foreign policy.
He is also the host of the long-running Television Zombies podcast, and formerly the creator and host of Joint Ops Monthly: The Unofficial Call of Duty Podcast, which for a couple of years in the late 2000’s was massively successful and made him famous on XBOX Live.
Other fun facts: His favorite band of all time is the Mountain Goats, and he has a tattoo inspired by the video game series, Halo, which means his right bicep is probably under trademark by Microsoft.
This is what he looked like in the summer of 2015 on a former fishing boat in the harbor of Reykjavik, Iceland:
He is an unapologetic liberal. Follow him on Twitter.