As for the SITE, says Leff, it grew organically from the seeds of "online discussions I’d been leading for years" on CompuServe and other bulletin boards. The participants, he began to suspect, were "alienated, disenfranchised people who loved good food but didn’t consider themselves" you-know-whats — and, above all, who "never realized there were others who shared their lifestyle." So in 1997, says Leff, "I decided to build a clubhouse."

And one heck of a clubhouse it has become, virtual and otherwise. The message boards constitute Chowhound.com’s foundation. There’s one for each area of the country (although several major metropolises have their own). There’s an international board, soon to be converted into several more specific geographical boards. There’s even a kosher board. Upon this foundation, Leff and site co-founder Bob Okumura have built numerous rooms to explore. "Recommended Chowbooks" lists must-reads for the growing Chowpup. "Downhill Alert!" identifies once-chow-worthy eateries that have sunk into mediocrity. "When Bad Food Happens to Good People" is Leff’s guide to food-borne illness — the price occasionally paid for culinary adventure. There’s even a "Radio-Free Chowhound" for users with Net-audio capabilities, broadcasting special reports and shows such as Ask the Chowhound. (The diary-like page "What Jim Had for Dinner," meanwhile, has morphed into a subscription-only newsletter.) And the clubhouse members? Three hundred thousand per month on the roster, according to Leff, "and that’s with no advertising."

No advertising, but plenty of press. Articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and more. In fact, it was Calvin Trillin’s piece in the New Yorker last year, profiling Leff and promoting the Chowhound cause, that inspired a number of Boston hounds, and presumably many more across the country, to make that initial visit. Still, the ball had already been rolling — and fast, despite Leff’s self-description as a "cyber Sisyphus" engaged in an uphill battle to repel advertisers and maintain the site’s integrity without going into debt. (The on-site ChowMarket, selling T-shirts, newsletter subscriptions, and such, raises modest funds.) Any other publicity is, fittingly enough, word-of-mouth.

In fact, given their loquacious enthusiasm about their thriving "community" (their word), one might suspect that the Chowhounds are really a cult, bonding to the point of conformity. I confess to having harbored such suspicions when, recently, I crashed one of their parties, a 12-course affair at a Thai restaurant held in celebration of a recent milestone — the Boston board’s 10,000th hit. About 20 hounds showed, the biggest local gathering yet. Many were meeting in person for the first time, and were thrilled to finally attach faces to user names. Over platters of green-papaya salad and sleeping shrimp, catfish and yum nua, they proved a gregarious, "eclectic" bunch. And for the most part, my doubts were dispelled.

For one thing, the Boston Chowhounds come from a wide range of professional backgrounds; only a small minority seem to work in food-related fields. That night alone, I met, among others, a math teacher, an illustrator, a molecular biologist, and a married pair of sales reps. The female half, who logs onto the site as Coyote — and who, as a former restaurant critic, happens to be one of the aforementioned minority — was a regular on the LA board until her husband broke the news of a pending relocation to Boston. "In a panic, I logged onto the Boston board and asked, ‘Where are the areas with great places to eat?’" she says. "And as we traveled across the country, each night I’d log in and ask [a different] question: ‘Okay, where are the good farmers’ markets?’ ‘Okay, where are the good gourmet stores?’" As is usually the case, she received a slew of informed opinions and gestures of welcome. Another attendee, the dramatically jewelry-clad Galley Girl, underwent her own conversion to Chowhoundism by chance encounter. "I worked with this woman who was very high-maintenance, and one day she turned to me and said" — she imitates a voice full of distaste — " ‘Oh, you like holes-in-the wall, don’t you?’ — she preferred, you know, No. 9 Park — ‘You should visit Chowhound.com.’"

Galley Girl is among a handful of hard-core Boston regulars who not only log on constantly but meet frequently as well. Although they know each other’s real names, they’re inclined to refer to each other by their user names. It was Galley Girl who summed up succinctly the magic of the Chowhound community: "There is a very strange thing that happens when you eat with people — they’re not strangers anymore." And, on that note, it was Galley Girl who invited me to lunch, along with four other regulars, at Peach Farm Seafood in Chinatown, a hound haunt.

So two weeks later, here we are, a group of twenty- and thirtysomethings seated around a large table: 9lives, a cheerful gent in investment banking; Yumyum, a software consultant with a wry sense of humor; a gracious woman involved in medical transcription who answers to Rubee Kiss; Michael, the soft-spoken member of both a film crew and a university-library staff; Galley Girl; and me. As Galley Girl places our order — steamed oysters with black-bean sauce, spicy-crispy squid, and dry-fried eel (fresh, not frozen), for starters — the waiter gives her a perplexed look and says, "You know Chinese food very well." She beams.

Meanwhile, since Leff had explained to me so clearly what, in his view, Chowhounds aren’t — passive, gullible, pretentious — I ask my companions for their perspectives on what Chowhounds are. Their answers have less to do with food or eating per se than with consciousness, a pioneering spirit, and stamina. While Yumyum speaks half-jokingly of "thinking about your next meal while you’re eating this one," Galley Girl pictures someone who "would go hundreds of miles out of the way for a really good hot dog." (In so doing, she sends Michael off on a rapturous tangent regarding a recent trip to Speed’s Hot Dogs, where the elderly proprietor "gets it really crusty. Then he grills the bun. Oh, he bastes it, too"; his loving details regarding the "snap" of a properly done dog garner knowing murmurs.)

I wonder then about the nature-nurture proportions that go into the making of a Chowhound; again, the answers run a gamut, from Galley Girl’s account of a mother from the "eat to live" school of cookery to Yumyum’s assertion that in her household "food was love": "My mother was a Chowhound; she just didn’t know it. I grew up in Salt Lake City — which is not a chow capital — and she was always making things like tea-smoked duck." And they run the spectrum back again. Rubee sheepishly admits that "when I was young I wouldn’t eat anything, even though I would always watch the cooking shows on TV. My mother was this Vietnamese woman who couldn’t make finnan haddie or meat loaf. We rarely went out to dinner, and I didn’t eat my mother’s food, so I really limited myself. I’m making up for that now." To that, 9lives responds with surprise, "I liked interesting foods when I was a kid. The more exotic the better."

Somehow, in the course of this discussion, a debate arises over the merits of Iggy’s baguettes relative to those from Clear Flour Bakery. While the group remains good-humored, they’re as serious as philosophers or politicos — the adjective "profound" is actually uttered — until Yumyum announces: "Sucky bread sucks. You can quote me on that."