ottawa foodies

Are a lot of people here members of chowhound, restaurantica or restaurantthing? Just wondering...

I'm going to answer your question with a question: Is there a chowhoud for Ottawa, or do you mean the Toronto one?

But, no, I'm not.

I was a member of eGullet during the early care-free days. It lost its zest around the time the owners ditched the contentious "off-topic" forum and started imposing a more corporate feel to the site. I haven't been back in years.

I read Restaurant Thing when I'm really bored but am not a member. Questionable reviews aside, I used to really like the local feel when it first started but then they expanded to other cities and the charm was lost.

i too used to frequent Restaurant Thing in its early days. there's a couple OF usernames i recognize from there (saurian, kmennie). for those in the know - i'm starting a campaign to convert user "norman" and bring him to Ottawa Foodies hahaha

never got into chowhound. the Ontario board is very Toronto centric...

anyhow i'm quite content with OF. the reviews here are of a higher caliber and the forum is an excellent source of discussion, information, and drama! i tip my hat to Fresh Foodie once again. great site!

Nope. I used to do RestaurantThing before OF existed. Now I don't even bother.

I also frequented RestaurantThing, and then OF came along and blew my mind.

If I'm researching a place, and it isn't Ottawa, and I don't have a Fodor's/Lonely Planet/Zagat Survey for it, then I try eGullet.

And that's about it, really. I never got into RestaurantThing or Chowhound.

I belong to chowhound. I get annoyed with the Ontario(including Toronto) forum. Should be either renamed Toronto(including Ontario) or Toronto and environs.

I almost feel like answering posts that make the assumption that everyone is from Tdot with locations in Ottawa- Where to get batava- Produce Depot.

I like it for the discussions on cooking, general food topics and general discussions.

It is also useful to research food for trips. I do that for myself and my parents because they are always looking for good food but can't be bothered to do the research.

Other than that I go to restaurantthing for s..ts and giggles
I go to menudb.com to check out Ottawa restaurant menus when I am trying to choose a resto to try.

I used to use RestaurantThing too. It was useful to me but I didn't like the lack of community (one post per person per vendor eliminated any opportunity for back-and-forth conversation) and the out of date vendor info.

I have accounts on Recipezaar and Group Recipes but I don't use either very much. I use Google search a fair bit to look up information but of course 99% of my online foodie activity happens right here. :)

My first stop when I want to do 'quick' research on a recipe is Epicurious.com ( mmmm, Ginger Molasses Cookies ) I've found many gems there, and like the fact I can have a account to save all the recipies that I liked. I do not rely on them 100%, and have a dead tree recipe book that I write my old faithfull's in.

I did/do chow hound when travelling. Its usually a good place to start, and you can figure out pretty quick who are the good posters - oddly enough they usually have a blog listed somewhere too, and then you can really get going. I don't use chowhound locally because of the mostly TO representation. This is a drawback to CH, as the quality of info you pull out is often represented by how they break down the geography.

I think I'll have to check out eGullet, sounds promising. Roadfood is another source I've used, but it was mainly to get a feel for bbq joints while travelling down to florida. (I cross referenced with chowhound).

Well, now that Pete has opened up the discussion to non-community websites...

-Epicurious (hosts Gourmet, Self and Bon Appetit recipes)
-Martha Stewart Living
-cannelle-et-vanille.blogspot.com (baking inspiration!)

I'm a huge fan of ApartmentTherapy and their food blog, TheKitchn (www.thekitch.com). Yup, that pretty well covers it. And the FoodNetwork.com for watching food video. mmm. food porn.

SmittenKitchen.com is DANGEROUS. She posted a recipe for pretzels the other day - I saw it at 10pm and stayed up til like 1am just to bake them that night!

Snoopy Loopy - Back before I joined Ottawa Foodies, I checked out the "competition"... at that time Restaurantthing looked interesting (can't believe now that I thought that)... then one day I somehow accidently found OF and I was hooked... it was a total no-brainer, I didn't even question the concept of opening an account (which I had done with the others). Within a day or so, I knew I had made a great choice, everyone was so welcoming, and the atmosphere so great... I've never looked back.

That said, sometimes I do check out the other sites (mostly when I'm looking at a new place with very few Reviews on OF) or if I am of course looking for a Restaurant out of town (Toronto, Montreal etc.) then most often my go to is Chowhound or Restaurantica.

I am a member of Chowhound. I tend to use it mostly for researching out of town places and occassionally for cooking advice. With the latter I tend to come here more though as I recognize the names and have an idea of people's reliability/expertise (which for the most part on this site is very good).

Cheers

also a fan of smittenkitchen, and of bitten (mark bittman's blog).