"Jim Leff" news and stories

As an old-school Chowhound, cut my teeth as Canchito and then changed my identity to Joey Deckle, I was glad to hear months ago that Jim Leff found an angel in C-Net . Now the site that started as a sprawling food forum and evolved exponentially into a labor of savor would now be recognized and monetized by an organization of like mind and like palate.

I knew that Chowound 2.0 was about to hit the street any minute thanks to my fellow Slashfoodies' coverage. But nothing prepared me for clicking on a familiar link at 3AM yesterday and seeing something completely different. A mere six hours earlier, I was scrolling through the site's old-school bulletin-board listings.

I guess never got the press release. All of sudden I found an alien universe looking back from my monitor. As a benchmark, I entered a smorgasbord of topics that had been written about into the site's search field. Sure enough, natto, churrasco and vestedde all turned up. So far so good. But it took me more than a few minutes to find the regional boards and ultimately realize that  the hot  posts (a summary of all the boards' latest posts)  had been folded into the front page.

More than anything my late-night  discovery of CH's new launch reminded me of my first experiences with the site. There's a lot of delicousness to be discovered/shared here, I just need to figure out how to serve it up.   

 A Boston Globe reporter was recently treated to a two day food tour with Jim Leff, founder of Chowhound.com. Joined along they way by a few other chowhounds, the pair made their way around the city, sampling everything they could get their hands on, from ackee with codfish, the national dish of Jamaica, to Brazilian feijoada.
Chowhounds are notorious for their persistence in seeking out great food, particularly at restaurants as opposed to preparing it at home, and Leff is the self-proclaimed "Alpha Dog" of the bunch. Some 800,000 people frequent the site each month and post their opinions and reviews of various restaurants, as well as posting recommendations in response to the queries of others. While it may seem to be just another random online bulletin board, some of them take their duties as a chowhound very seriously, including the 'hound known as Limster who accompanied Leff and the Globe's reporter, and cover their faces to protect their identity from restaurateurs. Leff himself has a dog mask that he wears when appearing in photos or on TV.
Though there were a few allusions to Leff's obsession with finding food that is better than the best and the rest of the chowhound community is referred to as a cult, the article was, by and large, a fun and flattering account of their excursions. Because Chowhound is a free site with no advertising, they have had some money problems in the past, running servers to keep the site operating for its regular users as well as the thousands of visitors that stop by for recommendations. Leff revealed that he had some plans as to how to make the site more self-sustaining, but has not yet revealed what they are.

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