If you do any sort of research before you go out dining about town, then you're probably familar with Chowhound, a collection of messageboards focused on various geographical regions with
thousands of users who read and contribute opinions about food and restaurants.
Well! The Alpha Hound himself, Jim Leff, has announced that CNET has agreed to purchase Chowhound and will be rebuilding the online chow community on new software and giving it a badly-needed facelift. Just how soon it'll all go down isn't clear, but thank God. If you've actually used the messageboards, whether to find out information about the "must order" or "stay away from" items of a menu, or to contribute or own $0.02 about horrible service at the newest joint on the corner, then you know that the site is an atrocity from a user's perspective, still maintaininng an all text, 1980s bulletin board look and feel without even a simple search functionality.
LA blogger, Professor Salt, has posted an interview he did with Jim Leff, in which the founder answers some questions about the deal.
3-10-2006 @8:58PM Ed said... I really don't like chowhound. The moderators go out of their way to keep it from being easy to arrange local get-togethers with other hounds. It's pretty lame to want to build a community without building a community.
Regardless, they do have a search function built-in if you go to the main page. It's pretty awful, though. Google sometimes helps, too, but not always.
And, as you said, the interface sucks.
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3-12-2006 @8:55PM Don said... Hmm, I think I asked them about 2-3 years ago if they were planning on upgrading the site, and I was scolded for posting in the wrong forum (general) and was told they were working on it.
Ah well. I don't think it's a matter of cost, a "lifetime" licence for vBulletin is like $160USD.
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3-16-2006 @2:56AM Stephanie Shawn said... "I really don't like chowhound. The moderators go out of their way to keep it from being easy to arrange local get-togethers with other hounds. It's pretty lame to want to build a community without building a community."
If you think that is bad, you should see what the Chowhound spinoff, eGullet does! The members are forbidden to discuss get-togethers. Any get-together planned on the forum has to be approved by a moderator! And at the event all kinds eGullet propoganda has to be read out! I wish I was joking.
The most fun place for smart people to talk about food and other things these days is Mouthfulsfood.com
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3-16-2006 @2:42PM Phil Bert said... Chowhound is very useful for quick restaurant recommendations. The answers are varied and sometimes contradictory. :-D I find that preferable to the oftentimes cliqueish agenda driven recommendations on egullet.
Egullet is fun for homecooks if you can suffer through the air of superiority that quite a few of the dedicated homecooks have. I can for laughs when I see photos of half-eaten food. The cook-offs are a blast. They have fabulous podcasts about sandwiches and sandwich meats! For travel advice and culturally specific content there are many other forums that are more vibrant. Anyone notice most of the writers and chefs bailed on egullet?
Mouthfuls is great if you want to talk to the same 10-15 people [most seem to be over 50] about the art of shaving, constantly gossip about eg and chowhound, "meet me at the coffeshop" sort of thing.
Discusscooking is one of the best for friendly homecooks.
Virtual tourist has about 600,000 members. A huge database of photos from far off places.
chef2chef and cheftalk are for mostly American chefs to talk shop.
There are even more country specific forums in other languages.
The internet is a big place. If you don't like chowhound don't read it. Pretty simple. Obviously a lot of people do.
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3-16-2006 @2:43PM Phil Bert said... Chowhound is very useful for quick restaurant recommendations. The answers are varied and sometimes contradictory. :-D I find that preferable to the oftentimes cliqueish agenda driven recommendations on egullet.
Egullet is fun for homecooks if you can suffer through the air of superiority that quite a few of the dedicated homecooks have. I can for laughs when I see photos of half-eaten food. The cook-offs are a blast. They have fabulous podcasts about sandwiches and sandwich meats! For travel advice and culturally specific content there are many other forums that are more vibrant. Anyone notice most of the writers and chefs bailed on egullet?
Mouthfuls is great if you want to talk to the same 10-15 people [most seem to be over 50] about the art of shaving, constantly gossip about eg and chowhound, "meet me at the coffeshop" sort of thing.
Discusscooking is one of the best for friendly homecooks.
Virtual tourist has about 600,000 members. A huge database of photos from far off places.
chef2chef and cheftalk are for mostly American chefs to talk shop.
There are even more country specific forums in other languages.
The internet is a big place. If you don't like chowhound don't read it. Pretty simple. Obviously a lot of people do.
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3-17-2006 @2:46PM Phil Bert said... The wretched interface on Chowhound probably helps keep the post count high and the reviews more immediate. CH has a pretty exhaustive listing of eateries in some regions that are in some ways more useful than a phonebook [I know that speaks volumes about the depth of CH, LOL]. The poor search function possibly provides an excuse to publish the CH guides, buyers like myself are too lazy to search and write down the information.
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3-17-2006 @2:53PM Phil Bert said... The wretched interface on Chowhound probably helps keep the post count high and the reviews more immediate. CH has a pretty exhaustive listing of eateries in some regions that are in some ways more useful than a phonebook [I know that speaks volumes about the depth of CH, LOL]. The poor search function possibly provides an excuse to publish the CH guides, buyers like myself are too lazy to search and write down the information.
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5-10-2006 @11:58PM elston said... It's May and things have not noticeably changed at Chowhound. Still the same old interface, still the same old dodgy deletions.
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