Washingtonpost.com Food and Dining

[Malawry]

Washingtonpost.com seems to have relaunched with a new design today. Of particular note is the newly revamped Food and Dining page, which appears to combine the weekly Wednesday print edition of the Food section and the restaurant coverage appearing in Friday's Weekend section and Sunday's Magazine. I am thrilled to see this integration of cooking and dining features on the site. The previous setup, where restaurant coverage served as a channel of the Entertainment page and Food section stories appeared on a page as part of the print edition, could be confusing at times. (For example, those interested in restaurant coverage might not have known about Tom Sietsema's Weekly Dish column or the special culinary events listings that run in Food every Wednesday.)

I am curious to see if the Food section is being revamped as well, or if this is only a Web-based shift. I am also curious to see if washingtonpost.com will bring back some of the Web-only coverage they have provided in the past...Kim O'Donnell's cooking chat and video series used to be regularly augmented by Alexa Beattie's capsule new-restaurant reviews. I always enjoyed Beattie's writing and would love to see more of it.

[vengroff]

With eGullet's software upgrade and redesign, the Post had to do something to keep up....

[Malawry]

Well, that goes without saying.

[morela]

]...and then they rearranged all the furniture in the lobby of my apartment building

It's only a Web-based shift for Post.

wash post web redesign

I love how rolley eyes guy is looking up the webpage; he's looking at redesign of site. Very cute.

Can we have a few more clickable smiles in conjunction with the redesign? :tummy hurts guy:, :drunk guy:, and :hypnotized guy: would be fun. he he

Also, we need the :foie gras happy: clickable smile.

Edited November 18, 2003 by meaghanfitzgerald (log)

[JennyUptown]

I have to say how much I am disliking the new entertainment guide. The only real improvement IMHO is the reduction of the disconnect between the EG and the Food section.

Otherwise, the whole thing feels slapdash and poorly conceived. There are oversights galore on the navigation (e.g., when you are on a search results page, you can't click to the next set of results without scrolling back up to the top of the page) and the layout, other than section main pages, is horrible.

Although users have made comments - such as when restaurants or bars have been closed for more than a year - old entries have not been removed. Reviews of restaurants such as Bacchus/Bethesda no longer make sense - the link to the DC branch that used to be there is no longer.

Anyone else feeling my pain?

[JennyUptown]

Were my prayers answered? The entertainment guide appears to have returned to its past format (or very close to it).