Aha!
Weāre going to Copenhagen later this year, I took a look at CH. Pretty much nothing new has been replied to in about six months.
Frankly, thereās a dearth of Chowhounds anywhere outside the United States. Eventhough Iām Singaporean, I became a Chowhound during the time I was working in Oakland, CA, a decade back.
I once posed a question about dining possibilities in Kaohsiung, Taiwanās second-largest city and main seaport on Chowhound, and ended up populating the thread myself.
Agreed. CH never showed any interest in cultivating local interest in its āforeignā boards. As such, it means most are really just places where Americans ask other Americans to tell them where to eat, based on where previous Americans had told them.
I first came across it when researching for a holiday in America and sort of stuck around. I regarded posting about my meals in northwest England was a kind of payback for the information Iāve gleaned for that and subsequent trips - even though it is extremely rare for an American tourist to venture to my region. In fact it seems rare for an American tourist to venture outside of central London. In its day, the egullet UK board was always more useful than Chowhound because, although there was a much smaller number of regular contributors, they were almost exclusively fellow Britons and, indeed, were eating all over the country.
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Thatās interesting because, while perusing the CH Latest feed the last few times, it seemed to me that there were more posts from outside the US than I recall from before the changes. That may be because of a general dearth there. Iād thought it could have been from a siphoning off of mostly US active posters to the new boards. I donāt travel much these days, so Iām mostly interested only in SoCal and SF Bay Area specifics and in interesting food/wine discussions. It seems clear that those areas (at least the regional stuff) are more active here and on FTC.
I think it depends on the region.
In Canada chowhound is pretty strong and in Quebec egullet has been dead for years.
Message boards tend to be living things. All it takes is a couple of fellow greybeard interacting together and new blood coming in to ask questions and staying because they found interesting information or they felt some of their feedback were useful.
That new blood becomes the new greybeards.
Where chowhound moderators are concerned I do agree I rarely interacted with one. It doesnāt matter one way or the other. I know publicities and troll posts gets cleaned though so there is some presence.
by the by ā Bill Hunt used to be on TripAdvisor ā Iād sent him a PM some time ago, but no response.
I looked a few days ago, and his account is now gone.
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Maybe he got lost in his vast wine cellar.
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Brilliant! In a Melvillian sense, is Marcella like a Penguin to Jake?
By co-incidence, only the other day, I was searching TA for some information on New Orleans and there was a comment on their forum from Bill
Good to know he is ok.
I hope he is (although the TA post was from a couple of years ago). I always appreciated his contributions to Chowhoundās UK board. He used to eat at quite a high level of London restaurant - the sort of places I consider when I visit the capital - rather than the more casual places that used to feature more often on the board (for which i had no interest).
Coincidentally, Bill showed up with a half-dozen fresh posts on TA today. Iāve sent him a new PM ā but heās Bill_Hunt_AZ if anyone else wants to pile on!
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Fortunately it is nice and warm in MontrƩal now. And we had visitors from Norway - though they arrived from a documentary project in Brazil, so they were cold here a few days ago.
Just looking at that clip makes me think the princess is nuts, though of course she has superpowers. Northern people dress properly for the harsh weather. I know Inuit, Northern Cree and Saami peopleā¦
Wellā¦ That kinda says it all, doesnāt it. In some ways I wish I had missed that first six months or so of frustration too.
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So a couple of days ago I did a drive by at CH and someone asked if she was in the right place for posts about Ossining, NY. I answered that she was on the right board on CH, but if she wanted to talk about food in Ossining to come to HO. Itās been up now for two days - they did not take it down. They are slipping!
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They take your post down, no oneās there. They donāt take your post down, still no oneās there.
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Chowhound is done. You simply canāt have a shit site and terrible moderators and then expect to succeed. I learned some things there and made some friends but they shot themselves in the foot.
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The only board at Chowhound that still has any activity on it is Manhattan.
If you check NJ or the Outer Boroughs and go down 10 posts the most recent reply is 2-3 weeks, if not several months, old. Outside Manhattan there is essentially no traffic and no new content, especially compared to even a couple of years ago.
And if you look at the traffic on the Manhattan board it mainly consists of three things:
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A post by some one from out of town who has only posted twice, or hasnāt posted in three years, asking for a restaurant that serves XXX, located close to YYY, and doesnāt cost more than ZZZ (or serves minors, gluten free bread, no aardvarks, etc).
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Where can I get an ungodly and strange ingredient that no usual store sells, or where can I get XXX ingredient close to YYY? (One of these was where can I get a flourless cake!)
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Etiquette threads including: is it rude to order the tasting menu 15 minutes before closing, did I tip enough at 18 %, is it rude to mention my butt crack is showing, or why were the waiters at the kosher restaurant rude to me (these seem to generate the most traffic).
It is usually the same 25 people or so on the Manhattan board that are always responding to each other and recommending the same places which I find hilarious.
Especially since they were all recently recommending the Luger Burger for lunch, and it was painfully clear that none of them had been to Luger recently, since they didnāt know the price.
Invariably the other recommendations are Gabrielle Kreuther, Le Coucou, Bouley, Daniel, Marea, and other trendy foodie/michelin star type restaurants.
And anything that is interesting gets jumped on immediately by the 25 as āwell weāve done that, see the thread.ā But if you actually look, most of the information in the threads over there is so out of date as to be partially, if not totally, irrelevant.
For example, the newest best burger thread on the Manhattan board is 6 years old.
Kinda says it all, doesnāt it?
Eater NY publishes new best burger lists every year, and they change.
I would say even the Manhattan board is a dead man walking. I donāt know how you can justify keeping a board that has so little real traffic. And absolutely no interesting content.
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