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Gladys Herman, a waitress there, said she was drawn to the place by the atmosphere as well as the food. Herman has never heard of Chowhound.com, but she understands the power of food to connect people. After her husband left her a few years ago, Herman, who works as a park programmer during the day, was depressed. She started taking long walks from her place in Tribeca. When she ended up in the neighborhood, she was hungry and stopped in for some rice and beans. She started coming back every night to eat until they offered her a job.   “You’re here with family,” Herman said. “You laugh, you cry. For me, it’s therapy.”

When chowhounds find a great spot to get lamb testicles and lamb fat kabobs at Cheburechnaya, an Uzbek place in Rego Park, or a $3 Indian meal at Punjabi Deli on the Lower East Side, they are happy to pass the information on. Unlike the people who want to keep the spot for the most delicious lamb testicles in town to themselves so the masses won’t flock there, the site users are happy to help connect people to their cravings.

Leff, who has a series of Chowhound books coming out in the spring, attributes the chowhounds’ desire to help each other to the general community spirit of the Internet.

“It’s not unique to Chowhound --  it’s true of the online community,” he said. “We have routines and have social patterns that keep us apart from each other and keep us from being kind to each other, but when a big shift happens, those patterns change. Like on Sept. 12, 2001, everybody was really nice to each other. It’s like when the Internet came along, it loosened people up and let them be what they really are.”

Saw agrees that site users want to help each other.

"People genuinely want to share what they know about food,” he said. "It’s not some weird hyper-competitive thing like on a theater of ballet site, where everyone is trying to prove ‘I know so much more than you.’ Here it’s not like that.”

Chowhound.com has 740,000 visitors a month and Leff says that the site’s growth made him reread Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with a new set of eyes.

“I’m a writer and a trombonist,” he said. “I’m a creative person. It was not my goal in life to be a janitor for a Web site.”

Long-time users like Flom point out that the site has changed substantially over the years, as more chowhounds have entered the discussions.

“Before, it used to be that it was almost entirely very knowledgeable people posting —people who were predominantly food experts, restaurant critics and such. Now many of the people don’t really know anything about the cuisine in question.”

But, like most other chowhounds, Flom doesn’t mind the site’s increasing democratization.

“Most posters today don’t really concern themselves with such questions as, ‘Which region of Italy did the sauce ingredients come from?’ and ‘How were the dishes prepared?’ But that’s okay. They eat too and the more people participate, the more information is out there.”

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As you might expect, Chowhounds are an opinionated lot. Here are some restaurants some posters recommend as the best place to get:

Sicilian spleen sandwich
La Focacceria
128 1st Avenue
Manhattan
212-254-4946

Boudin noir (blood sausage)
Salumeria Biellese
376 8th Avenue
Manhattan
212-736-7376

Gang som (sour curry)
Sripraphai
64-13 39th Avenue
Queens
718-899-9595

Roast suckling pig
Rolf's
281 3rd Avenue
Manhattan
212-473-8718

Paella
Bolo
23 E 22nd St
Manhattan
212-228-2200

Congee (rice porridge)
Hing Won
48 West 48th Street
Manhattan
212-719-1451

Pizza
DiFara's Pizza
1424 Avenue J  
Brooklyn
718-258-1367

Chocolate Babka
Russ and Daughters
179 E. Houston
Manhattan
212-475-4880

Chocolate Covered Caramels
Li-Lac Chocolates
40 Eighth Avenue
Manhattan
212-242-7374