Vacation is Officially Over, September 8, 2005 — Shockingly, some of you might not have noticed that tastingmenu remained unupdated for the month of August and well past Labor day. And the truth is that I'm not sure my malaise has retreated. I do know that I am determined to try and do something interesting and significant when it comes to expressing opinions about food.

In some ways, not much has changed. I still love to eat. I still love to go out to eat. I still love to share information about great places to eat with friends (and strangers). And yet, I still wonder if there's a way to have an impact beyond this site's barely perceptible micron-sized dimple of a footprint on the way people eat. Maybe it's too much to ask to be able to improve the quality of dining and diners in America through a blog. But that doesn't mean I won't try.

One thing I have done on vacation is read a lot of other people's websites. Mostly non-food-related. And one thing I've found is that the best of them share one key trait - honesty. Brutal, embarrassing, honesty. In a world where people are regularly full of crap, honesty is a rare commodity that is recognized and cherished.

So, while I still feel a little lost, and wonder how long I can keep up this crazy website for, I do have some degree of renewed purpose. I believe two things (for the purposes of this entry):

1. there are some basic tenets for people who eat and people who make food that if followed can improve our overall culinary existence in this country

2. there are people all over the world making great food that you should know about, and that I need to eat (the food, not the people)

I'm going to spend the next phase of this site focusing on those two things and we'll see how it goes.