New portals are popping up to show people where and what to eat with rich descriptions and mouth-watering pictures of food.
New portals are popping up to show people where and what to eat with rich descriptions and mouth-watering pictures of food
AMSTERDAM: Finding fellow gourmands, good restaurants and exotic dishes is becoming easier, as websites focused on eating well and discovering flavours become must-have destinations for food lovers.
Recipes have long been available on the Internet at websites, but now new places are popping up showing people where and what to eat with rich descriptions and mouth-watering pictures of food.
Slashfood.com is one such destination, gathering anything and everything to do with food and eating.
Recipes only appear on the site if they are unique or offer a twist on an existing dish.
Typical, recent postings at Slashfood reflect its eclectic culture: “A turkey that can go straight from the freezer to the oven,” “Yup, it’s another beef recall” and “A tale of two pastry blenders”
“Everyone is a critic,” said Jane Goldman, Lifestyle Editor at CNET. “People photographing and talking about their food experiences is different from the days when reviewers had the only say on food experiences.”
CNET brought together Chow magazine, and the food-obsessed online forum Chowhounds into a single destination (www.chow.com) that offers recipes, restaurants, and tips such as “How to open a bottle of champagne.”
The Chowhound message board also lives on at the site, retaining most of its word-of-mouth flavor as a place for people to find and share information on restaurants and eateries that haven’t yet been discovered by mainstream reviewers.
“There was no medium that addressed the subject with energy, life and gusto,” Goldman said. “Food was either a domestic chore or an elite epicurean hobby.”
A good example of this shift in food culture can be found at The Pioneer Woman’s site (www.thepioneerwomancooks.com) which has attracted a following with decadent, butter-laden American dishes such as “Beans and Cornbread,” “Marlboro Man’s Favorite Sandwich” and “Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce. Brace Yourselves, People.”
“I’m teaching people to embrace gravy and to embrace the pot roast,” said Ree, who would not give her last name, but described herself as “food snob” from the city who married a cattle rancher and took to country cooking with religious gusto.
Ree’s recipe postings aren’t merely instructions and a list of ingredients. She uses carefully shot and edited photographs to guide readers through the steps of making a dish, featuring her star ingredient, butter.
“I live in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing to do but have babies and teach yourself Photoshop,” Ree said.
“A lot of my dishes are man-friendly and man-pleasing.”
Turkey dishes currently top the sites ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, showing how the phenomenon is still very much US-focused.
International sites are driven by bloggers, and information on these sites is geared for travellers seeking places to eat.
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