"chowhound" news and stories

A S'more cereal sounds campy and kind of heavenly. And you can make it yourself with Kellogg's new corn-based Pops MiXit cereals: Just blend three single flavors (Chocolate, Graham, and Marshmallow) to create one brilliant bowl. Problem is, says Chowhound writer James Norton, it's one bland breakfast. Norton taste-tested all five Pops flavors (the others are Strawberry and Double Fudge). Visit Chowhound to get the scoop.

As someone who owns an unseemly number of waffle irons, I'm always looking for new ways to use this particular appliance, in order to better justify the fact that I possess so many. A few weeks ago, I discovered (thanks to the Kitchen Chick) that you can use a waffle iron to make French Toast (I haven't actually tried it yet, but it's on my list).

Chowhound has taken the concept of multi-tasking appliances a step further, using a waffle iron to cook up brownies, hash browns and breakfast muffins, as well as a slow cooker to make duck confit and a tender, fluffy soufflé.

What's your favorite appliance that you use in a way that is different from it's designed application?

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The concept of a restaurant guidebook is becoming increasingly outdated. The books are rarely up to date and, although they can be carried around by travelers easily, just can't offer the user the same kind of immediate response - and an interactive one, at that - as online, user-driven restaurant guides. Chowhound, Yelp and Citysearch are some of the leaders of this genre, along with similar user-review driven online forums. Zagat, which was unique in the restaurant guide book field in that it based its "reviews" on user commentary, recently decided that it needed to move to a similar online format, where users could offer real-time opinions, in order to remain competitive.

Or, at least, to attempt to remain competitive.

Is there any more room left in the restaurant discussion board field for a newcomer? Given that people have expressed dissatisfaction with the way that Chowhound is run (and they way that the site looks), there just might be.

[via eater la ]

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It's like a never ending food saga with Chowhound. First, Chowhounders worry about the purchase by the "big guy, CNet. Then when the extreme makeover on the antiquated site actually launches, they complain about the interface. Then Chowhound gets a little too Draconian with their post-moderating and sends some Chowhounders the way of K-Fed -- "ex."

The latest chapter in the Chowhound melodrama is that it has officially merged with its sibling site, Chow.com, and gone through a second makeover. Chowhounders are again, none too pleased. Occasional Chowhounder, EatingLA, short-lists a few pros and cons of the new layout, but a comment from LA Chowhounder Silverlake Bodhissatva seems to be the general feeling: "I haven't felt this bad about a piece of media since Whole Earth Quarterly went belly-up in the middle of my subscription."

Hey, I was just happy that they finally got rid of that pixelated logo of the dog.

Even before Chowhound became a part of the Chow network, users frequently had problems with deletions. Controversial posts and less than glowing reviews of certain restaurants were deleted without explanation and some users found that their posts were deleted with a high frequency, regardless of the topic. Since the message board is a public forum, it is perfectly appropriate for moderators to remove offensive content, but when non-offensive reviews of "off the table restaurants" and other posts relevant to the website were taken down without explanation, many users grew frustrated. The problems persist with the new Chowhound, leaving many former contributors to head to different, more open minded, websites.

It appears that Eater is one such site because they have just offered to post anything that has been inexplicably removed from the Chowhound site. They are able to do this because the "offending" posts are not removed from the Chowhound feed as quickly as they are from the site, so there is a window of time where it is possible to retrieve the posts. Of course, you will have to contact the staff to let them know if your post was stricken, but it will be interesting to see what types of pieces are selected for removal.

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