Best & Worst Food Magazine Web Sites?

[Mayhaw Man]

I use epicurious all the time as a recipe search tool. Can't say that I have ever spent much time investigating the rest of the sight, however.

[JennotJenn]

Holy crap. I'd never been to Saveur's site. I'm pretty impressed by both the content and design. Veeeeeerrrry slick. Maybe the best of the bunch. Thanks for pointing me there...I pick up the magazine quite often, but never even thought to check out the site.

I love Food and Wine mag, but the site can be hard to navigate and I've found some errors in the recipes on the site (namely the Jerk Chicken, which is one of the best recipes ever, and I don't even like chicken).

Epicurious gives me mood swings. I go between delighted by the fact that I can find all of their recipes, annoyed at the pop ups, and just generally disgusted by the user comments.

[tanabutler]

Star Chefs

Taunton Press: Fine Cooking

La Cucina Italiana (sensible database: check out the "personalized search" feature)

Donna Hay: She is the Australian Martha Stewart, and I know she's got a huge following over at Readerville. The magazine is beautiful but it's like Sunset: not so much content available online. Still, a lovely site.

Speaking of which: Sunset. Unfortunately lots of content available to AOL users, and purchasers of the magazine via subscription or newstand. I've got a photograph on page 28 of the May issue, woo hoo! My first sale!

[Atomic Lunch]

Funny, I never knew that epicurious had a forum, either. Could be just left over from the early part of this new millenium when the internet experts were realizing that online community was amazingly valuable. Alas, they never reported that what is valuable is good online community. I worked for the world's largest online community site during that time, so I have some insight.

We're lucky to have a site here where we have a relatively closed gate community (I said relatively) and good monitoring that goes on. Otherwise forums go to hell.

So, when we judge food sites, perhaps we should exclude their community holdings which are probably the result of poor planning and hasty launch that was never fixed.

By the way, for a quick smile, check out 8Legged

[Behemoth]

This isn't a web version of a print magazine, per se, but I personally really like the food section of the BBC website. There is tons of content, you can easily waste many hours in there. And then when you have worked your way through all the BBC stuff, you can click on "webguide" to find links to all sorts of other useful food sites.

I use Epicurious mainly if I have a specific ingredient and am looking for some ideas. The search function on recipes is pretty nice and ocassionally the little comments on the bottom of the page can be amusing. (aka "I used kraft singles instead of the chevre, crisco instead of butter and onions instead of the fennel and gosh, the recipe really wasn't any good!) I wonder how frustrating that must be to the writers?

Anyway, bbc food!

[chiffonade]

As much as I adore Saveur magazine, the website is pretty useless. I won't even visit the Cook's Illustrated website because I think they have plenty of gall to charge top dollar for the magazine and then not even let magazine subscribers enjoy the full benefit of the website without squeezing more money out of us.

[fresco]

Epicurious is great, a wonderful resource. You just have to ignore the user feedback idiocy and choose your recipes carefully. It does have just about everything, including a lot of stuff you (or I, anyway)would never want to try.

[Atomic Lunch]

By the way, I am officially DONE with epicurious. In the course of looking up a single recipe, I got six pop under ads.

These things are so obnoxious and the only reason they got clickthrough is by people accidently clicking on them when they try to close them.

Argh!

[alacarte]

I wish Saveur would update its website content more often. Or ever.

Much as I love the magazine, it's disheartening to click through to the "Fare" section and read the note at the bottom --

This article was first published in Saveur in May/June 1997.

[marinade]

May as well throw in Art Culinaire.

Art Culinaire

The site basically contains a bit of rah-rah stuff but does have indices of past recipes and chefs.

[Arey]

I won't even visit the Cook's Illustrated website because I think they have plenty of gall to charge top dollar for the magazine and then not even let magazine subscribers enjoy the full benefit of the website without squeezing more money out of us.

That makes two of us.

[laurenmilan]

I do really like their "recipe box" but that may be because they were one of my first food sites and I had no idea how to cut and paste. I find them pretty easy to navigate. I think Martha's forums are incredibly lame, as are food tv's. Zzzzzzzzzz.

yeah, that's my problem... my abilities, knowledge, and taste are a few steps above the majority of TVFN's forum users, but are still quite a few sublevels BELOW the majority of EGullet users... hey I'm working on it...

And since I'm not a manic-depressive, so I have no interest in Epicurious.com's forums.