The forum lets its readers perform various tasks while letting everyone voice their opinion- from the amateur individual, such as myself, to the professional diner review.
Forum
As the site notes, LTHforum is exactly as it sounds. A giant forum of restaurants within Chicago, as well as multiple areas outside of the city, or even state. While there is an abundance of information available, it can often be difficult to find a review on a restaurant you actually hope to go to. The site does offer a search option, but the results are few and far in between what you may be looking for. If the options to search were set in a different fashion than:
they may have a greater success rate or viewer ratings. I understood that in order to find Hot Doug's I needed to search Topic Titles Only, but someone who is more novice to the internet and the forums might have a more difficult time. Such as, my mom. Someone who is rather computer illiterate. She was up in arms when I told her about the site, but she couldn't navigate it to save her life. Unfortunate, but true.
Individual Reviews
The forum here is a nice change of pace and offers opinions from various sources. This may be an individual who simply enjoys a specific restaurant and wants to let the rest of the community in on their secret, or a professional within their industry giving their own wisdom and insight. Regardless of their title, the reviews are honest, and beneficial. The writing style within each entry is easily navigated and often contains pictures to assist their description.
One of the more enjoyable and detailed posts was on the Green Zebra.
The Review:
Which is further assisted by a multitude of pictures taken by the user at the restaurant:
Further pictures and reviews of the Green Zebra can be found Here.
I find that the pictures are an essential part to the reviews failure or success. If they describe something as being light and fluffy, and then the picture completely negates that opinion- they haven't done their job. I had hoped to use this tactic within my own personal blog, but in some cases I hadn't been to the restaurant the week of the posting. It may have been a prior experience, so I had to do some datamining and use pictures from a different source- same restaurant, but the picture was taken by a different individual. And often times, I simply didn't have the money to buy several entrées to show off to the blog . I should have taken this in to consideration prior to posting. Money is always helpful.
Conversation Aspects
Another meaningful or beneficial aspect to these forums is that everyone has the ability to voice their opinion and essentially create an ongoing conversation between users. For instance, the next review agreed with the post prior and added their own opinion of their Green Zebra dining experience. This gave the user, myself, the option of several more dishes to try when I head to the Green Zebra.
While this review lacked pictures, their description shows that they had some culinary experience or a mature palate as they described the dishes and its highs and lows.
Links
One area of LTH that can be extremely helpful is the Reference Forum. This contains links to various restaurants in and outside of Chicago, as well as translated menus. This actually came in handy as I had a second cousin from Sweden visit us recently, and he asked if I knew of such a place. His English is spotty, so the menu was extremely helpful to his adventure he took downtown with his girlfriend.
It's areas such as this that can make or break a site. In this instance, this was definitely a high-point for the site and its forums.
Heaven or Hell?
I suppose I should enlighten everyone on the chosen title. The user-generated content could make life heaven or hell for the reader. You may enjoy a particular restaurant and then read a review bashing its service and quality of food, making you less tempted to enjoy a second go-round at your own restaurant of choice. Or, you could attempt to dissuade the person from their high horse and share your own experience encouraging them to give it another go. Either way, this site could really either be helpful, or piss you off to the point of no return.
My Judgement
My overall opinion was that the reviews were honest and often greatly detailed to why the user did or didn't like the restaurant they reviewed. In most cases the reviews were extremely helpful, especially when deciding on whether or not I wanted to try out an Indian restaurant near my home town. I managed to find it within the forums and had reviews rating from both sides of the spectrum and decided it'd be worth my while to try it out and see which standards it lived up to.
So, the reviews do help, but it's up to you to make the final verdict. Check out the site and try out something unique and be the judge.
My son is all about this site; he claims that anyone in the "know" about food uses it--and shuns all others.
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