That’s about the closest you can get to a post that combines everything this blog is about.

For those of you who might not be aware of it, Chowhound is a site that allows people to trade information about restaurants and related topics. A very popular site with over 800,000 monthly visitors, it features a passionate community with a lot of dedication to the site and the topics it covers. And the unique personality of the site gives you a very different take on things that mainstream food critics and food magazines. Yet even with all those advatanges, only a few months ago, I would never have recommended it–it was near-impossible to use. It had a single nested page for discussions about each city, or in the case of New York, each borough. The page linked thousands of posts and took an eternity to load. The site lacked advertising and its owner, Jim Leff, had to ask for donations from readers to keep it running. His ability to contribute writing suffered because he was spending so much time running the site.

Now, all that’s changed. CNET bought the site in March, and they launched a redesign in June. Because of the new design, I can recommend it wholeheartedly. Here’s why:

No more threaded discussions. I hate threaded comments, because I like to skim the entire thread, then concentrate on the most interesting comments. A quick glance at the text lets me know whether or not I’m interested in reading further, and I don’t particularly care about what comment another comment is responding to. It’s also difficult to discern when something is a new thread rather than a reply. On the old Chowhound, you had to click on a link, and load a new page, in order to read a single comment. This was frustrating and time consuming. Now, you see all comments in a given thread at once.

Isn’t this easier to read than this?

Manageable page sizes. The new Chowhound presents only the 40 most recent threads. If you need to find an older one, you can search for it, or click through to the page with the 40 next oldest threads until you find it. This just makes much more sense to me. It’s also easier to navigate among many different pages, since you’re not waiting ages for the page to load.

Beautiful new design. Whoever did the visual design for the site did a great job. It’s clean and easy to use, but also has a nice use of images to spice things up. It’s far less intimidating than the old site: the top menus are clear and let you know where you’re going, and the few visual doodads (like a panel that slides in and out to let you select a board) are actually useful. The code is pretty elegant, so they should be able to add new features easily when needed.

So check it out. There’s an argument about burritos waiting for you.