A new foodie website launched this week aims to shake up the food and restaurant industry in Bermuda.The website www.theblackburger.com, created by web designer Nicholas Hoskins and Spirit of Bermuda chef Benjamin Bernardo, contains restaurant reviews, food pictures, giveaways, cooking demonstration videos, recipes and more.“The culinary arts in Bermuda are dying here,” said Mr Bernardo. “I want to get it going again. I want to say to local restaurants it is not okay to not have seasonal menus, or to charge people what you want. We want to try to shake things up. If people don’t like it, they don’t like it.“We want to start outsourcing and promote local fishermen. We want to be harsher to the higher end restaurants. For the smaller ones, we want to highlight what they do best rather than focus on the negatives.”A tour of St George’s restaurants showed just how many were struggling to attract customers despite being located in a beautiful setting, Mr Hoskins said.“One of the problems we discovered on the Island is the lack of an accurate listing of all restaurants,” he said. “I went online and struggled for hours to find something. That needs to be available. It is no wonder these restaurants are struggling when there is no way for anyone to find out they exist. When I don’t know about these places and I have lived here my whole life that is a bad sign.”The poor economy was no excuse, he said.“You can still make it in this economy,” he said. “What the economy really does is separate those who can from those who can’t.”The idea for the website began when Mr Hoskins asked Mr Bernardo to come up with the perfect burger for Watford Sports Club in Somerset, where he was working as assistant manager. The burger turned out to be so delicious that people were still talking about it four months later. The main ingredients included Guinness and black pudding, which caused the burger to come out black.“I’m not giving away the recipe, though,” said Mr Bernardo.The success of this simple experiment encouraged the friends to develop the website. As part of that, three food lovers will review the Island’s restaurants, with the identity of only one of them made public Christen Burgess is working towards her culinary arts diploma at the Bermuda College.“One thing about Christen, we didn’t have to worry about having pictures to go with her reviews,” said Mr Hoskins. “We looked on her Facebook page and she had 700 pictures of just food. She is a real foodie. We are not looking for professional critics here. The idea is to try and keep it as grounded as possible so the average viewer who comes along feels a connection.”Mr Bernardo has studied the culinary arts and worked all over Europe. His Bermuda resume includes work with the MEF Group and Cambridge Beaches. He studied under celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay at his culinary school in Surrey, England.“I was fortunate that the first year I was there Gordon Ramsay had taken over the school,” said Mr Bernardo. “He was an awesome guy. He was not at all as angry as he appears on television.”For more information see: www.facebook.com/#!/theblackburger or the website www.theblackburger.com