Chowhound Guides to NYC and SF - coming April 26

As regular enrevanche readers know, I am a devotee of a food discussion board called Chowhound.

Chowhound has not only ensured that I eat well here at home, it has virtually guaranteed that I eat well when I travel, whether I'm going to major foodie destinations like Paris or San Francisco or more modest but stil chow-ful locales like Austin or Kansas City. (A Zagat Guide may be useful for rough planning and finding contact and location info for restaurants in major cities, but if you want the inside track on the best chow wherever you're going, go Chowhound.)

I am delighted to report, therefore, that on April 26, 2005, two new Chowhound Guides (published in paperback by Penguin Books) are hitting the street:

"The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area" and "The Chowhound's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area." ($18 retail; Amazon is selling them at the deep-discount pre-order price of $12.24 each)

They should be considered essential reading for NYC and SF area residents who like to eat well, or anyone who visits these areas frequently.

Buy a copy for yourself. Buy two (one for home and one for the office); buy extras to give as birthday and holiday gifts for your favorite nosher. They represent the distilled wisdom of one of the sharpest online food communities in existence, and at roughly $12 a pop from Amazon they are an incredible bargain.

Here's how Alpha Hound Jim Leff describes the process of creating the guides:

I read through the manuscripts on my couch back when I was editing the things, and got so ravenously hungry I would have been sorely tempted to rip a candy apple out of the hands of any passing girl scout. Then the books' agent read through them, and called me up like a starving man in a desert - literally wheezing from hunger, his voice unrecognizable. The Penguin editors and proofreaders all underwent similar crises. These books are like diabolical hunger pills from the Twilight Zone. It's sick, eerie, and slightly scary. The web site makes people pretty hungry, and is kind of addictive, but these books appear to be pure crack for the hunger reflex. They should come with a warning label. I'm kind of hesitant to unleash them on an unsuspecting world.

Newsweek magazine has noticed, and this Monday's edition documents a chowhounding expedition to Newark, NJ led by Mr. Leff (lucky reporters!):

Jim Leff speaks in a breathless staccato: "Incredible barbecue. In a shack. In Newark." He's raving about his newest restaurant find, which he says serves some of the best South Carolina-style mustard sauce in the Northeast. You may not think of Newark, N.J., as a culinary capital, but Leff has a knack for sniffing out great food in unlikely places. He shares his discoveries with readers of Chowhound.com, where thousands of food lovers swap tips on everything from which Queens street cart sells the best Indian dosas to how to get a reservation at Napa Valley's The French Laundry. Next week Leff's wisdom, along with that of his site's most loyal contributors, will be published in two new guidebooks: "The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area" and "The Chowhound's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area" ($18 each). We tagged along on a recent scouting trip to Newark to figure out how he can find a great meal anywhere.

(Read the whole thing.)

Full disclosure: in addition to being a happy and well-fed Chowhound user for years, for roughly the last year I've also been a volunteer at the site, contributing editorial and fact-checking support to the weekly ChowNews newsletters. Also, if you click the Amazon links above or below to purchase the NYC or SF Chowhound Guides, all commissions paid by Amazon will directly benefit the Chowhound.com site.