I've rarely checked in on the old site since it lost its soul (and since I left Los Angeles), but finding this page greet me today was still a shock to my system.
I now understand what it means when old music fans talk about how they knew the band way back before it was popular. In our case, it was back before everyone took pictures of their food.
The archaic design of the old site was a feature, not a bug. It kept away casual readers, so only the most hard core among us would continue to slog through for the gems that lay just beneath. I was in my 20s when I was active in Chowhound, and it was formative to not just my palate but to my world perspective. It was very much because of Chowhound that I began traveling abroad, to eat the dishes natively that I came to adore from eating them in Los Angeles. I also hosted hundreds of foreign visitors and exchange students in Los Angeles during my time there, and in once instance a Korean gal who had been quarantined in rural Mississipi for a year began to almost cry when she tasted the really wonderful soontofu at Beverly Soontofu (RIP). And in a very real sense, Chowhound may have been responsible for my family, as I took my future wife (who is from Taiwan) on our first date to China Islamic (RIP), where we bonded over lamb with XO sauce and that thick, billowy green onion scallion bread.
Mr T The fact that we see all these points in precisely the same way reflects why I opened the damned thing and knocked myself out to maintain it (none of us at the time or since ever expected to run into hordes of kindred spirits; we were the impossible demographic of stubborn stray cats and skeptical iconoclasts). I knew in 1997 there were like-minded people out there, and wanted to gather them. For a while. Never permanent. Not my life's work. But I'm awfully glad you were there. You helped make it what it was. So thank YOU!
By the way, one of the most memorable highlights of my 2007 honeymoon in Japan was the quest you sent me on to find Volga, in order to see whether their junsai tasted anything like what I ate at Urasawa in Beverly Hills* (back when Urasawa's tasting menu cost a mere $250 per person). I'm a bit gutted that my detailed writeup of those experiences may be lost. One day when I don't have a 2 year old drawing my attention anymore, I'll dig around the internet archives for it.
I've rarely checked in on the old site since it lost its soul (and since I left Los Angeles), but finding this page greet me today was still a shock to my system.
ReplyDeleteI now understand what it means when old music fans talk about how they knew the band way back before it was popular. In our case, it was back before everyone took pictures of their food.
The archaic design of the old site was a feature, not a bug. It kept away casual readers, so only the most hard core among us would continue to slog through for the gems that lay just beneath. I was in my 20s when I was active in Chowhound, and it was formative to not just my palate but to my world perspective. It was very much because of Chowhound that I began traveling abroad, to eat the dishes natively that I came to adore from eating them in Los Angeles. I also hosted hundreds of foreign visitors and exchange students in Los Angeles during my time there, and in once instance a Korean gal who had been quarantined in rural Mississipi for a year began to almost cry when she tasted the really wonderful soontofu at Beverly Soontofu (RIP). And in a very real sense, Chowhound may have been responsible for my family, as I took my future wife (who is from Taiwan) on our first date to China Islamic (RIP), where we bonded over lamb with XO sauce and that thick, billowy green onion scallion bread.
It's been a great ride, Jim. Thanks for this.
Mister Taster
Mr T
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we see all these points in precisely the same way reflects why I opened the damned thing and knocked myself out to maintain it (none of us at the time or since ever expected to run into hordes of kindred spirits; we were the impossible demographic of stubborn stray cats and skeptical iconoclasts). I knew in 1997 there were like-minded people out there, and wanted to gather them. For a while. Never permanent. Not my life's work. But I'm awfully glad you were there. You helped make it what it was. So thank YOU!
JIM
By the way, one of the most memorable highlights of my 2007 honeymoon in Japan was the quest you sent me on to find Volga, in order to see whether their junsai tasted anything like what I ate at Urasawa in Beverly Hills* (back when Urasawa's tasting menu cost a mere $250 per person). I'm a bit gutted that my detailed writeup of those experiences may be lost. One day when I don't have a 2 year old drawing my attention anymore, I'll dig around the internet archives for it.
ReplyDelete*It didn't