Yes! He was the diner in Eataly who was offered a tasting of “vintage” olive oil!
I don’t remember any of his posts, but the screen name stuck with me.
He is still posting on his blog Endo Edibles
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Allende was super reliable and went on for several years reporting on the top places on his regions, despite feuds with one person or another… Im just sorry I havent been able to get to piemonte or some of his places on the tuscan and ligurian coast yet…Id like to think he is still enjoying Italy.
Yeah. Several of us did a couple of pizza crawls with uhockey, one in Brooklyn and one in lower Manhattan quite a few years ago. Around the time that Lucali and the 1st Paulie Gee opened up. The guy could eat! I think Roz still keeps up with him
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I seem to recall when I first started going to CH that Jim Leff had created a card you could show to staff at restaurants where English may not be their first language with something like “I’m a Chowhound and I really want the authentic stuff” or something similar, translated into a number of different languages. Does that ring a bell? Or did I dream that?
It was called the Chowhound Passport. A sleeve with a card you could slide to show the message in different languages.
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According to one of the resto owners, he’s still very much enjoying Italy and believed to be writing for some wine publication
I’m trying to continue the legacy with our once a decade visit to Piedmont!
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Yep, that was it!
I still have my CH t-shirt and the fridge magnet. The latter holds up my Excel spreadsheet for upstairs and downstairs freezer contents.
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I have the fridge magnet, and a couple of years ago, I found the CH Passport in a box of random stuff.
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Chowhound got me into forums–I was a late bloomer, started reading when it was diminishing and never contributed. I loved the voluminous, specific ingredient and technique information. And the funny posts!
Is there a way to resurrect the passport? My searches show (what might be) a purchase page. I found no images. I don’t eat out much these days but would love that for later, and for gifts.
yes, it’s called a phone and google translate 
ain’t that the truth
the history I captured to file…accurate?
1997 - founded
2006 - sold to CNET
2008 - CNET merged into CBS Interactive
2020 - sold to Red Ventures
2022/Mar 21 - folded
2023/? - new
I was, and met great people, had wonderful crawls. I’m also still bummed that it was destroyed. Love seeing some names I know here on the onion though. I was Pastrytroll, because I felt like a troll working in the basement at Maison Robert!
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Pastrytroll is an admirable username.
it seems to me Leff presided over the Enshittification of the platform. I’m sure it wasn’t his intent, but a better course would have been to turn off posting and let the platform live as a read-only archive.
we had a number of offers to sell our company, it took exactly five minutes of conversation for us to realize we were either going to retain majority control or sell 100%.
best,
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I assume he made some money when he sold the platform
as often is the case with tech platforms, founders core competency is around tech, building community and content, not negotiating the sale of a platform. We hired an investment banker and an M&A lawyer.
