Definitions

If this has already been done, please spank me, but what are the definitions of:

Foodie.

(Chow)Hound.

Chowist.

Are they synonyms? Are they merely the names for different factions of the same movement? If not, what are the distinctions? I have a thought that all chowists are foodies but not all foodies are chowists. Yes? No?

Vital Information has disparaged the term "chowist." Why?

When I hear the term chowist I hear it like many things ending in ist.Elitist,racist,ageist.And never tell us to spank you.We,or at least I,will take you literally.

Well, one of the things about food sites is the question of identity, branding if you will, surely, the first thing they teach you in Marketing 101, differentiation.

So, Chowhound.com was the first to throw off the divisions. There were (chowh)hounds and there were foodies. Of course if you were on Chowhound.com, you were a hound and cool. And the rest of the world was foodies, well the rest of the food obsessed food world was a foodie. You can actually read Chowhound's worldview on the subject here:
http://www.chowhound.com/misc/faq.html

Now, I agree with Chowhound, that there are people who are as much into the scene of eating as they are into the food. That the chef's can be more important than the food, but I am not quite sure that Chowhound's definations, as linked, do that notion right. To me then, the terms Chowhound and foodie are roughly interchangable.

Chowist. Well, it was thought when people would not so much be hanging on a site called Chowhound, that perhaps there would be a better term to describe the denizens of such site. Chowist was one such word thrown out, but it is not necessarily one of huge use. It's not so much that I dislike the word per se, it's that I DO like the word Chowhound. Maybe it is sentiment, but I like the implication of hounding of sniffing out good food, and I like the implication of being in a pack, a pack of like minded folk.

That's how I look at the words.

Rob

Hi,

Chowist somewhat explained:

Until LTHforum.com began, (the royal) we generally referred to ourselves as Chowhounds. I know I considered myself a chowhound and I was not alone. When (the royal) we parted company with Chowhound.com, it didn't feel quite comfortable to refer to ourselves as a chowhound any longer. Now I didn't make a complete break, and never intended to do so, I still post on chowhound.com though mostly responses to queries or participate in interesting conversations.

At one point during the early LTHforum days (not so long ago, I know) someone coined the term Chowist, it kept with the chow-theme without the chow-hound, which no longer seemed to fit. I will use it to describe myself and have interjected it into some of my material. I use it because I like it better than Foodie. Foodie, at least the way it is often used and executed, does come across elitist.

I found Chowhound/Chowist is someone who delves beyond the polished, professional veneers of some heavily promoted restaurants to find those who put their heart and soul into food. We promote excellence: whether it is eminating from a humble establishment or someplace more well-healed as well as uniqueness: a one-of cultural and culinary experience. We are also interested in the authentic experience rather than one which has been dumbed-down or diluted to appeal to American or midwestern tastes. We are not usually represented in the 80% of population a restaurant wants to attract. We are that 1-2% who want to eat what they made for their staff dinner or serve at home for themselves.

In addition, Chowist may be uniquely defined to how we each approach our world of food and the choices we have available. Hammond and I are just jumping at the bit to try those bugs Tuesday. I can imagine most would be rolling their eyes. Yet your pursuit of the best-of X may be important to you and leaves me cold. We each pursue our exploration of the Chowist world unique to ourselves.

Actually, Chowist was a bit of a joke. In a post (which doesn't seem to exist now-- there was a bit of early discussion, including at another domain, which eventually got deleted) it was suggested if we intended to be more laissez-faire and less authoritarian than certain other sites, our slogan could be:

Chowist-- Not Maoist!

Any deeper meanings than that bit of humor are pretty much in the eye of the beholder. I never saw anything that bad in being a "foodie" (even a "Zagat-clutching" one-- because I don't agree that it means this caricature of the yuppie trendoid couple who only eats where they've been told to, if those creatures exist at all). Look at the way Rob describes that attitude and I think it's all wrong, it's reverse snobbery and anti-elitist elitism. The very act of sneering at Zagat, the democratizing guidebook (which yes, promotes a certain regression to the mean, but is certainly valuable as part of the mix) gives off a whiff of oneupsmanship that I can live without. We're much happier to share and to see others enjoy what we wrote about than to play games of I ate something you didn't get to eat.

So. Back to names. It seems odd to call myself a Chowhound, since that is in relation to a particular site which I'm not on any more, as anachronistic as referring to "America Online" when I mean "Internet." Chowist to me had the additional appeal of reminding me of the old restaurant Star Top on Lincoln, whose owners referred to themselves as "Alcoholists." Though if you made me think about that hard, I might also think that the whole use of the term "chow" is wrong because I think of "chow" and "chowhounds" as having to do with quantity, not quality.

I guess there is no perfect term. Frankly, when I refer to eating Thai food with folks I know from here, I tend to just say that I'm going to eat Thai food with friends, and my wife knows who that means.

Friends. Good enough?

Mike G wrote:Friends. Good enough?

Totally.

I guess I wasted 20 minutes defining the undefineable. Oh well, it was fun for the moment.

I've always admired the name Chowhound. As Rob points out, it suggests sniffing out the good stuff, traveling in a pack, but also a willingness -- like any dog -- to eat just about anything once or twice. It's also immediately understandable by most civilians, it suggests fun and, of course, it conjures a graphic (the grinning dog on the Chowhound logo).

To Mike's point about "quantity over quality," I would agree that quantity has been an aspect of most of our pre- and post-CH gatherings, but more often than not it's been a situation of quantity AND quality.

Using "friends" is a reasonable alternative. In my case, I've started telling the wife and kids that I'm going with with "food friends," just to distinguish that group from poker buddies, fellow gun-nuts, etc.

Hammond

I used a Chowhound-affiliated whiskey tasting as the jumping-off point for an article about the bar Delilah's in WHISKY Magazine, and this was the opening line:

"The Chicago Chowhounds are a group hedonistically dedicated to the passionate enjoyment of everything consumable."

Fair enough?

Quite, although I still gotta say, I react to being called a "Chowhound" about the same way I react when my high school's alumni newsletter calls me a "Crusader." There's an "ex" missing there...

By the way, everyone should check out the Reader this week, which has a review of the Slow Food guide and, right next to it, high praise for Bourbon, Straight: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey by one Charles A. Cowdery. (Section 2, page 4.) Even the 3rd book reviewed has an LTH connection of a sort, a guide by one of Cathy2's mushroom club colleagues. It's a Christmas list for your Chowist friends!

Since I have not posted on Chowhound although I have visited the site I have no negative reaction to the term.But to coin our own term, in the spirit of sniffing out tibits and my love of alliteration I shall think of LTH as the Dining Dogs! Or should that be Dawgs.Sung to the beat of a George Clinton tune.

Chuck,

Congratulations on the very positive review of Bourbon Straight in the Chicago Reader. I am quite looking forward to reading your book.

Congratulations are also in order to Leon Shernoff for the Reader review of his Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming.

Far as LTHForum names go, my only comment is call my anything you want, long as it's not late to dinner.

Enjoy,
Gary

Thank you for mentioning the review. I was quite pleased. Thanks to all, also, for making a newbee feel welcome.