Blogging for Dollars: Chefs.com Review

This is a PAID REVIEW for Chefs.com

For years now, I’ve been waiting for a community-driven cooking and food website — one where users and professionals can submit recipes and share ideas. So when I found out about Chefs.com, I got excited. Could this be the site I’m looking for?

The good

Chefs.com has hundreds of recipes, most of which seem fairly easy to make. Searching is simple. And Chefs.com has the same personalization and community features — a recipe box, comments, and forums — of larger sites like Epicurious.com and FoodNetwork.com.

The awkwardly-named Kitchen Sink feature is pretty cool. Every time you click on the Kitchen Sink link, you receive a listing of 10 randomly-selected recipes to choose from. It’s cooking inspiration.

The bad

Unfortunately, the site has more wrong going for it than right. Usability issues can be found throughout the site, usually in the form of poorly named or poorly thought out sections.

For example, the ‘Explore’ section looks like a rehash of the ‘Recipes’ section, just with different dishes. Feature articles are buried within.

Submitting a recipe is not as smooth a process as it could be. First you must enter your recipe, tag it and assign categories, and mark a check box granting permission to include it in the Chefs.com recipe collection. A more streamlined process would assume that all recipes submitted are for sharing and use tags as a category system with added classification by users or Chefs.com staffers.

One other annoyance: user-submitted recipes don’t carry any credit information and submissions become Chefs.com property. Think very carefully before submitting your great-uncle Clarence’s barbecue recipe.

The conclusion

Chefs.com as a concept has the potential to become a premium food destination. But the site experience is marred by usability issues and mediocre content.