Q:

ASP.NET MVC Entity framework how to structure this code

I have a few structures: User, Item, FavouriteItem. 
User has many items, and can have many faourite items (which just link to items). 
I've got the decision of either creating a model: "FavouriteItem" and give a user a list of these, or, store the favourite item ids in a column on the user table.  i.e favourite_items: "1,2,5,9". 
The latter seems like it will be a lot faster if the user base grows, but then I have the pain of having to split the string, create an array e.t.c, it's a bit more painful. 
What is the recommended choice to make here?  I've already done the earlier option and love its flexibility/ease-of-use, but a bit worried about its scalability. 

A:

How about User, Item, UserItem (link table which has a IsFavouriteItem bit field.  So UserId, ItemId, IsFavouriteItem as the columns)?