Chowhound (or chowhound.com) was a food website owned by

Red Ventures Red Ventures is an American media company, which owns and operates brands such as Lonely Planet, CNET, ZDNet, The Points Guy, Healthline and Bankrate. Red Ventures focuses on sites that dispense news, advice, and reviews. The company's corpo ...

. It ceased operations on March 28, 2022.

History

Chowhound was a popular online food community founded by jazz trombonist and food writer Jim Leff and Bob Okumura in 1997, known for its user base of food fanatics. Chowhound was formed in a very different cultural era, before Americans had a mainstream interest in seeking out regional delicacies and local favorites. As such, Chowhound served a very particular user base that was seeking delicious, regional and hard to find foods outside of the mainstream culture. It had an early influence in steering America's influence towards regional delicacies, as the future trailblazing food critics

Jonathan Gold Jonathan Gold (July 28, 1960 – July 21, 2018) was an American food critic and music critic. He was for many years the chief food critic for the ''Los Angeles Times'' and also wrote for ''LA Weekly'' and ''Gourmet'', in addition to serving as a ...

and

Robert Sietsema Robert Sietsema is an American restaurant critic. He wrote reviews and articles for the ''Village Voice'' from 1993 to 2013. He has also contributed to ''Gourmet'' magazine. After being let go from the ''Voice'' in a round of downsizing, he was hi ...

were early contributors. In 2006, Leff and Okumura sold the site to

CNET Networks ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

, which redesigned it and merged it with CHOW magazine, keeping its busy forums, grouped by locale. After CNET was merged into CBS Interactive in 2008, the original chowhound.com domain was restored and CHOW was eliminated. It was bought by

, in 2020. In March, 2022, Red Ventures announced the site would close after 25 years online. Its closure was covered by the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', among other media.

Book series

Penguin USA published two Chowhound restaurant guides, ''The Chowhound's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area,'' and ''The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area''.

References

Boston Globe article on Chowhound redesign

Village Voice article on Chowhound saleNewsweek article on ChowhoundForbes Magazine article on Chowhound

External links

* Former CBS Interactive websites Internet properties established in 1997 Websites about food and drink Red Ventures 2020 mergers and acquisitions Internet properties disestablished in 2022 {{website-stub

History

Book series

See also

References

External links