2 New Food Web Sites Creating a Big Stir

By Michael Hastings WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL

The Internet is full of food sites, but the founders of two sites are hoping that it isn’t quite stuffed yet.

Chow.com and bakespace.com both deal with food and offer free memberships, but the similarities just about end there.

Chow.com, which went live last month, emerged out of a failed magazine, Chow, which lasted about a year. The resurrected Web version is owned by CNET, which also owns chowhound.com, an established reader-driven forum for food fanatics.

Chowhound focuses on restaurant food. Chow focuses on cooking — for a hip audience of 25- to 45-year-olds. As Editor in Chief Jane Goldman said in an introductory letter to site members: “What we consider a lovely meal or lovely surroundings or even lovely people is considerably different from the fantasies of other food magazines. We like fun. And we like real.”

The implication is that the big, established food magazines are out of touch and just a tad dull.

How much more real and exciting Chow will be remains to be seen. But initial stories on the site do reveal a different perspective. One article deals with the discriminating palates of dogs. An article on table manners is titled “Am I Being Petty? Or Are My Friends Thieves?”

The site also has video clips with such titles as “How to Seat Your Dinner Guests” and “Cutting a Chicken Into Eight Serving Pieces.” People can also read about the culinary adventures of Jeff Leff, the founder of chowhound.com, on his Chow Tour.

Viewing all the recipes, or even all the recipes in one category, is not easy the way the site is designed. But the search works well to track down such recipes as gin fizz or tilapia green curry.

The site also has a blog called The Grinder. Recent topics include a PBS reality show called “Wine Maker.”

The Chow site feels a bit thin, but that may change as its archive grows. The challenge will be to keep coming up with distinctive material.

Babette Pepaj, a television producer and director in Los Angeles, started bakespace.com on Aug. 22 to create a “grass-roots” site for amateur cooks like herself. The key to its appeal is the interactive design, which encourages likeminded cooks to make friends over the Internet. Bakespace, Pepaj said, is her take on the Internet social- networking concept pioneered by myspace.com, and it attracted 2,500 members in it first 30 days.

Once you register, you become a “chef.” You can enter recipes. You can assemble a virtual cookbook of other members’ recipes. You also can ask other likeminded members to become your friends or “kitchen helpers.” When other members view a recipe of yours, they will be given suggestions about other members’ recipes. You can also create a network where you can send messages to all your bakespace friends. Members can share their recipes and rate others’.

Despite the name, the site is not limited to baking. It has tons of main dishes, salads, soups and just about everything else, too.

Other sections deal with community events, grocery-store coupons, members’ cooking tips and restaurant and cookbook reviews. A chat room is in the planning stages.

In short, Bakespace is one big recipe swap that’s driven by passionate amateur cooks. The site is easy to use, and it’s full of dishes that everyday cooks might actually want to make. The space may be virtual, but the food is real.

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