I was pleased to sit down this week with Nina Zagat, who, in 1979, cofounded Zagat Survey, which compiles customers' restaurant experiences into dining guides. The vast majority of Zagat's current revenue comes from its sale of printed guides; however, the company appears to be well-positioned for growth in new media -- it recently took VC funds from Kleiner Perkins and from foodies Nathan Mhyrvold and Nicholas Negroponte.Over an exotic lunch at Boulevard (winner of Zagat's "most popular restaurant" award in San Francisco), Nina and I talked about her forays into electronic publishing. In 1987 Zagat made its content available on Prodigy. Today, restaurant-goers can contribute Zagat reviews via Vindigo on the Palm. Our talk reminded me that ConsumerReview, Deja, and Epinions were not the first publishing companies to collate user reviews.Unlike most contributed-content sites, Zagat does not run raw consumer reviews, at least not yet. Editors compile feedback into little one-paragraph morsels. You get less detail this way, but the opinion has a broader base. This type of content packaging is very expensive to produce; fortunately, revenues from Zagat's print products, plus a smattering of online advertising and syndication fees, are supporting the company's online expansion plans.