If you've ever searched the
web looking for a good restaurant in the Bay Area, you've probably come
across a page at Chowhound.com.
A discussion board for people who are truly obsessed with good food,
this is the place I go to every time I'm looking for restaurant
recommendations.
Except I don't actually go directly to the site. See, it's kind of a big chaotic mess. You have to click through 4 pages of very long text to get to the Northern California discussion board. The site has two search boxes, for some reason, and browsing? Forgetaboutit. So I go to Google and type something like:
"dim sum" Oakland site:chowhound.com
This technique has served me well, many times, especially in Hawaii, when we were on Maui for only a few hours, and the only web browser I had handy was on my Kyocera Palm phone.
Last week I found out that Chowhound had published a book, and I scurried to pick it up.
If you read the reviews on Amazon, though, you'll find that half the people there love, love, love this book to death, and the other half are immensely frustrated with how hard it is to find the thing you're looking for in it. In short, not so different from the web site. And this was my take as well. So I didn't even try to look anything up in particular; I just enjoyed browsing it, marveling over the number of good taco stands on International Boulevard in Oakland, making a mental note to try some of the places in San Francisco Chinatown I'd never eaten in before, and reading the profiles of the major 'hounds.
All
well and good, but then I read the interview with the Chowhound
founder, Jim Leff, and he had this incredibly lame explanation for why
things are set up the way they are. If I'd been in the middle of
eating, I would have spit out my food in disgust:
Leff admits Chowhound is not an easy site to navigate, but he believes that the bad software and sloppy design act as a good interference, keeping out the chain-loving crowds.
"We're not trying to block non-expert eaters from eating well," Leff says, between mouthfuls of custardy buns at Gold Mountain in Chinatown. "We're trying to block them from posting about the Olive Garden." For him, Chowhound is about giving the mom-and-pop restaurateurs their due.
So, he thinks that computer-savvy people are more gourmet? That people who prefer good information design eat at the Olive Garden?
I
give him full credit for enabling a great community to spring up, and
for keeping it focused on good food. But this disdain for good design
leaves a bad taste in this food-obsessed webbie's mouth.
