What Happened to Slashfood.com?

Slashfood.com was a website dedicated to food and food culture. When it appeared on the 25 Best Blogs 2009 list, Time.com described Slashfood.com as “a site for people who are serious about what they put in their bodies.” The site was packed with many helpful food tips.

If you are one of the people who are serious about what they put in their body and you hope to gain some tips from Slashfood.com, we have some bad news: the site hasn’t been publishing since 2014.

What could have happened to a website that once attracted 1 million visitors per month and was described by Boston.com as “an edgy site that peppered recipes with food scandal and gossip”?

In this article, we find out what happened to Slashfood.com. We follow the history of the site, its content, and the key people behind it.

The History of Slashfood.com

Slashfood.com appeared for the first time on the internet in 2002. However, it looks like the domain was parked for the first three years. Serious activity on the site only appeared in 2005 after Weblogs Inc. acquired the domain.

Slashfood.com was one of Weblogs Inc.’s most popular websites. Weblogs Inc. owned several other sites, including Engadget, Autoblog, TUAW, Joystiq, Luxist, Cinematical, TV Squad, Download Squad, Blogging Baby, Gadling, AdJab, and Blogging Stocks. Today, Autoblog and Engadget are the only sites that remain active.

Key People

While we can’t get much information about who started Slashfood.com, we have been able to find some information about some key people in the organization.

An article published by Thedeliciouslife.com reviewed Slashfood.com and described it as having “a huge team of contributors who range in background from stay-at-home kitchen cooks to professional chefs, from amateur blog-for-hobby-ers to professional food journalists.”

The founding editor at Slashfood.com was Deidre Woollard. Woollard appears on the list of 30 of the world’s top bloggers. She was also the founding editor of a Slashfood sister website Luxist.com, which she describes as “a luxury goods blog which was on the vanguard of luxury websites in the early blogging era, helped to fuel the trend for luxury real estate blogging.”

At one time, the editor at Slashfood was Marisa McClellan. She holds a master’s degree in writing and is the author of three books. Faith Durand of Thekitchn.com, a kitchen tips website, describes her as the owner of “a wonderfully funny and interesting video blog called Fork You!”

Another famous individual linked with Slashfood is the investigative journalist Allen Salkin. He hosted Slashfood’s video series. Salkin is also the author of the book From Scratch: Inside the Food Network.

The Content

Slashfood.com’s huge team of contributors ensured that the website had everything a reader would aspire for in the world of food. Visitors could find information about holiday cooking, seasonal recipes, reviews, tips, trivia, and similar topics.

An analysis of the content on the site’s archived pages shows that it attempted to cater to all tastes, not just the top-end cooks.

Trendhunter.com gives an idea of what you would expect to find at Slashfood.com: “When you have the feeling that your food isn’t any more like it was, have a look at Slashfood, and you will get your hunger back.” It adds, “Sites like this are an important resource for companies who operate in the food industry.”

Food Tips

A popular feature on Slashfood.com was the Tip of the Day. In this section, you could find tips on things like how to grill pizza dough. A typical tip here would be, “If making a homemade pizza dough, make it a little less wet than usual – meaning add a drop more flour or a bit less water.”

In the same section, you could also get tips on dealing with some difficult to prepare foods like brown rice. The section also had tips on everyday challenges, such as how to keep lettuce fresh. On another day, you would read about how to clean a cast-iron skillet.

Recipes

Slashfood.com’s recipe section did not just list ingredients and the steps on how to cook something; the writers often provided context about the food and the recipes they were describing in their posts.

For example, a writer posting a recipe on how to make jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) starts by saying, “There are many foods that are traditionally served during the Chinese New Year, all of which have some symbolic meaning, sometimes because of the ingredients, sometimes because of their physical characteristics, and sometimes because of the way they affect health.”

Mixed Reader Reviews

The article on Thedeliciouslife.com calls Slashfood.com the “uber blog that covers all things foodie.” The article’s comments section shows that it was not all rosy on Slashfood.com. When one commenter says, “Oh my! These guys [Slashfood] are prolific!” Another retorts, “And not particularly generous to their contributors!”

Another commenter on the Thedeliciouslife.com article indicates that she had lost interest in Slashfood.com after she “realized a lot of the posts were just summaries of posts on other food blogs.”

A user called Kevin S. posted a review on Yelp.com where he seemed to have issues with the content. He complains that within a single week, he had read two posts on Slashfood.com about animal heads found on prepared foods, which he believed was inappropriate content for a website focused on recipes and delicious food.

He writes, “I’m all for comprehensive bloggage of the food realm, but I can’t really handle moving from a recipe for pork chops with dried cherries and rice to an image of grey-brown curry that may or may not have a mouse head in it.”

What Then Happened to Slashfood.com?

On May 16, 2011, Slashfood’s editor published a message telling readers that things had changed. She wrote, “Slashfood has a new home: HuffPost Food.”

The editor adds, “When AOL acquired the Huffington Post, it was clear that certain sites overlapped. Instead of running two separate sites covering the same food news and stories, we decided to join forces at HuffPost Food.”

Eater.com, a food news website, cites an internal company memo, saying, “While their standalone URLs will be phased out, content from this category of sites will be integrated into other existing brands.” Slashfood.com was among these standalone URLs referred to.