ChowhoundReviews 23

Useful Forum for Foodies - Chowhound is very useful for finding advice from local foodies on specific restaurants. The restaurant search functionality is acceptable (e.g., you can enter a city name in the search box and find all references to that search term). However, the site would be even more user-friendly, and it would be easier and quicker to find restaurants, if the content was organized in more detail, or in a more logical fashion.

Here's an oblique analogy: I see Yahoo as a "Table of Contents," whereas Google is an "Index." Most often, I search using Google because I find it easier to search for specific words in an Index, rather than browsing through a Table of Contents. Chowhound's search functionality is index-based, which similar to Google, rather than Yahoo. Having said that, when I search for restaurants, I would prefer to look through a Table of Contents. For example, I would prefer to browse through a category of "Restaurants in San Jose - Average cost per meal under $15" (a la Table of Contents) rather than digging through a list of numerous results when I enter the search term "San Jose." Bottom Line: I wish that Chowhound's search was more like Yahoo, rather than Google -- given the nature of local restaurant search.