Stepping out onto the Ave for a meal, the options are almost endless — a smorgasbord of flavor. From Middle Eastern cuisine to the greasy hamburger joints, hungry patrons can find almost anything to fit their tastes.

After living in the U-District during his college career, UW graduate Mike McEvoy decided to embark on the challenge of eating at every restaurant on the Ave over a nine-month span.

However, this voyage is not like your everyday Ave challenge. McEvoy, along with colleague Tom Noble, a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate, maintain a Web site, voyagetotheave.com, where each Ave restaurant is reviewed and given a grade.

The restaurants are judged on a 30-point scale that is broken into three categories: taste, value and the “intangibles.”

“The intangibles are the tough one,” Noble said. “It is the service, the ambiance or the crowd, that kind of stuff.”

McEvoy eats at the restaurants and then shares his story with Noble, who documents it for the Web site.

“He’s a lot funnier than I am,” McEvoy said. “That’s why he writes.”

Since October, the Web site has reviewed more than 50 restaurants, and has fewer than 20 to go.

The venture started as a kind of joke, Noble said. Both McEvoy and Noble work at a Christian college ministry called The Inn, through University Presbyterian Church, and started the Web site at the office after lunch one day.

McEvoy came back to the office from lunch on the Ave that day and was telling Noble and other people in the office about his experience. While he was talking, Noble began taking notes and set up a blog with the first review.

The blog has had more than 1,950 views since it began late last year.

McEvoy said he liked the idea because, though he went to school here, he only frequented three or four restaurants on the Ave.

After eating lunch on the Ave at a restaurant he had never tried, he realized he was probably missing some little gems hidden right in the U-District.

“After that, I set a goal for myself to eat at every restaurant on the Ave before the end of the school year,” he said. “It’s good to have goals. Some people have loftier goals, but this was mine.”

McEvoy said that aside from the food, the cultural experience is also important to him.

“I want it to have a little culture to it,” he said. “If it’s Chinese food, I want it to feel at least somewhat Chinese on the inside.”

McEvoy and Noble hope they have given people a little something to laugh at, as well as created a resource for students and others who frequent the Ave for meals.

McEvoy and Noble are considering expanding the Web site after this challenge is complete, and taste-testing other restaurants ­— and streets — in the U-District.

“Everybody can relate to eating,” McEvoy said. “We are about bringing people together and creating community.”

Reach reporter Celia Hunko at news@dailyuw.com