Recipe Archive and Organization:  

Looking for a recipe but don’t quite know the name? Have a favorite chef whose recipes you want to try out? Or maybe you just want to search for recipes by ingredient, by course, by season, holiday, event or any of the other dozen criteria possible? Well, with Food & Wine’s impressive search features, you can. You can even use additional criteria based on speed, dietary need, preparation method, staff favorite or even publication date. No other Online Recipe and Entertaining site goes to such great lengths to find you the perfect recipe.

Culinary Appeal:  

Forget the few token gourmet or exotic –seeming recipes most Online Recipe and Entertaining sites offer. Food & Wine has taken the opposite route, amassing a treasure of mouth-watering, work-of-art recipes that you would have thought only existed in high-end restaurants. But, if you want to try these dishes in person, or perhaps compare your results against the professionals’, Food & Wine offers extensive listings and reviews for restaurants, bars and other establishments where you are likely to find some of these items. Best of all, with due attention given to home, entertaining and travel matters, Food & Wine keeps you living stylishly and eating well wherever you go.

Community:  

The one aspect of foodandwine.com left wanting is its online community. Offering neither discussion forums, recipe boxes, member profiles nor other features, leaves some room for improvement. However, in Food & Wine’s defense, the extensive restaurant, bar, wine-tasting and other event listings takes the community offline and into the real world.

Resources:  

With articles, how-to guides, trend reports, news, reviews and other matters coming directly from its widely-read and increasingly popular magazine, Food & Wine, there is little else an Online Recipe and Entertaining site could need. But, going the extra mile, foodandwine.com features in-depth technique videos, helpful and informative photo slideshows and host of additional cooking guides, blogs and other resources exclusive to the site. Though the recipes might seem like miles apart from everyday dishes, Food & Wine sees you through the entire process, from page to plate.

Help/Support:  

Though foodandwine.com is still relatively new, it does feature a site map for enhanced navigation, as well as a customer service telephone and email lines for magazine-related assistance. Though foodandwine.com currently lacks a FAQ section, site feedback can currently be given through the site’s user feedback section, with additional technical support features likely to appear soon.

Food & Wine is almost a complete package, expanding its scope beyond food recipes to include recipes and resources for wine and cocktails, tips, how-to and style guides for home and entertaining matters, as well as in-depth reviews and listings for bars and restaurants around the world. However, lacking some commonplace and advanced community features is the one fault in an otherwise flawless site. Though the lack of community might not be a drawback to some, others might want to look to other sites, Epicurious and Chow, which offer advanced, participation-oriented community features that allow members to submit recipes, build profiles, chat, discuss and share their love of food together.