Mouth watering delights and the best of hotels, restaurants and local joints serving them to you is Chennai Food Guide, an online community on the social networking site Orkut.com, all about. Popularly known as CFG, is a podium for the food fans and is a dedicated Hotel and Restaurant guide of Chennai.
Chennai , formerly known as Madras, is the fourth largest metropolitan area of India and the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Pradeep Ragunathan, Is the proud owner of one of this most active and stimulating communities on Orkut. Pradeep became a part of orkut in early 2004. While finding out the communities of his interest, he saw many, based on a particular dish but none among them was a complete food guide. There the idea originated and Chennai Food Guide took birth. Initially the community had fewer members but they were focused and today everyone can see the outcome. “Once we were close to around 100 – 150 members there was no looking back,” says more then glad and blissful Pradeep in a discussion held on Rated-WOW! Community.
Maintaining the subject line and doing justice to the objective of a community is not that easy and CFG also followed a set of basic guidelines to run the community effectively. Apart from all the great features which are usually present in a flourishing community like CFG, like, zero SPAM, non-repetitive threads, constant and frequent updates, etc, what sets CFG apart from all the communities in the swarm is, the honest and authentic reviews of the restaurants, hotels and food joints. Their review is a package of detailed information including ambience, cost factor, taste, the location, along with the phone numbers to contact or do a reservation, all specified without any bias.
In the journey CFG also came across some of the disillusioned Restaurant owners who tried and build good relations in the community and thought of getting a nice review of their venture in return but got the candid remarks, which was actually not liked by them. Pradeep mentioned about how a set of people from press and some of the newspaper reporters they know personally took advantage from the community but never took an initiative to give the acknowledgement. However, they are not upset by the act but take it as a ‘not-to-bother-about’ matter, because CFG do not actually needs it. The statistics are enough a proof of their popularity.
The legitimacy and the pinnacle of the community could be counted by the fact that the members are often invited by the Restaurant Owners in Chennai to review their undertaking, sometimes even before the joint is yet to go public. So, any new place for food freaks is about to open, you will definitely get to know about it on CFG.
My visit to the community enlightened me about the hard work and efforts put in by the owner along with a dedicated team of moderators, who are working actively and are completely focused towards providing quick answers to the queries posted. We all know that the local cuisine of South India such as Dosas, Idli, Pongal, Sambar Vada, etc is known globally, but CFG is not merely about that, and also involves a wide range of variety from Rajasthani to Punjabi, Chinese to Continental food as well. Of course, the list doesn’t ends without the best of all times Coffee in it! While browsing through the forum ,you will get to see other relevant threads like, ‘Chennai’s online food ordering service’, ‘party orders’, ‘home made food for corporate’ etc, which is quite edifying.
The team, including the members like Vasishta, Bharath, Vidya, Tushar, Wasim, Vinay, Harsha, and many more who make a strength of around 5000+ food crazy people has made a winning effort in keeping the community a clean and happening place for anyone to visit, gain, enjoy, and feel tempted about every new stuff(which is food for sure!) coming up every time.
Not only online, but CFG is a package of fun and refreshment offline as well for the members. I got to know how they organize events like CFG Independence Meet 2008, CFG New Year Meet, to name a few. Other then such big ‘meets’ they often arrange get together and relish themselves with what else other then some awesome food!
CFG is honored here on flockpost.com as one of the best online community and grabbed the place in community showcase, but that is not for the first time, apart from other recognitions, they were invited by their local FM radio channel, “Chennai Live” and were obviously excited about it.
“Well, we plan to keep the community as active as it is today, and hope that the public in general get benefitted from it. This should also get the Restaurant owners to improve their quality of food and quality of service based on our constructive criticism.
Going forward, we might want to become like the official reviewers of the Chennai foodie landscape. More than anything, we would like to meet more foodies and generally have a great time eating 
”.says Pradeep, confidently, when asked about Line of action and the strategy for the future.
A community not only worth visiting ,but worth being a part of, consisting people full of zeal, passion and love for food, all filled with energy and enthusiasm to move further, taking all pleasure of eating good and involving others in this contentment altogether.
Request from the author: We constantly look forward for the orkut communities which are unique in concept and are performing exceptionally well. If you come across any such orkut communities or you are a member or an owner of such communities, please contact us through our community Rated-WOW! Community Show Case.
{ 16 comments }
Peep.. way to go… wishing you many more such 15 mins of fame
Good luck…
Hey Peep its nice to see this article. As good as that radio interview:) Keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!
quite informative.. keep up ur good work Tara..
Awesome!
I used to be a part of the Chennai Food Guide when I was in Orkut and when the group was about 20 threads old and 150 members strong. I remember reviewing tons of places with Peep. Peep and I used to call each other food partners because our views about the palate were mostly similar. Now I’m out of Orkut and CFG, and out of India too. I miss Chennai and the restaurants and reviewing. To see this community scale such new heights is a very remarkable thing and I’m sure it’s going to go multifold. Like Metro Food Guide. I’m sure a lot of people in the community have visited different restaurants in different cities, so… making a union of sorts to make it a bigger company is a good idea. Think about it guys. Missing the group.
Good one
Keep it up CFG
@Naeem.
Thanks for the appreciation naeem, I’ll take it more as a motivational drive!
Tara, very well written. It was a pleasure answering your questions and gave us a good perspective of our group.
Ramya, thanks and nice to see you here. Yes, I miss those good old days partner. Maybe when you guys decide to come back to India, we can start exploring new places again
.
This is awesome Peep and fellow CFGers
Awesome Peep!
Great job Pradeep! Proud to be your friend!
@Pradeep, this trip was indeed a pleasure for me Pradeep. All credits to you and your well deserved community.
Thanks for the appreciation, and all the best for future!
Hey Peep
Great machi…good work pays huh! congrats on this achievement. What’s next on the menu?
Way to go! Keep up the ‘food’ work, Peep!!
Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this also – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get anything done… Regards
Great article describing your location. Loved it
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