A year and a half after we launched our original website The Best of Food.com, we have launched a new, improved and updated website. Why so soon? Why, indeed!

When we set out on this path, we had grand plans of creating a website that would be a diners best friend, a non-diners guide to better food options, and an all around reliable “go-to” site for dining in the tri-state area. The #1 priority of the site was to be user friendly. In certain ways it was, but for the most part, not so much!

We wanted users to be able to pick as many features as they wanted and have our website “spit” out exactly what they were looking for. For example: The best French restaurant for outdoor dining, with kids, in center city would be ~ Click a button. In our old site, you had to look up outdoor dining and child friendly separately, although that was not what we requested.

In keeping with our theme of “local” businesses, we picked a web developer that was in walking distance from our homes. Great idea, right? Sure, if the developer had any interest in meeting face to face. We met once in a year and a half. After that, everything was via conference call or email. Nothing about the site ended up being what we wanted and after being live for 2 months, we started to search for a new web host/developer.

Thanks to twitter, we found a new web developer in Lancaster and they were willing to travel to Philadelphia to meet with us as needed. We now have the flexibility to do anything with the site we wish. On our old site we had to send an email to have them change everything. Talk about a complete lack of flexibility!

So, thank you for your patience with us for the last year as we have moved toward our goal of being the Philadelphia area’s most comprehensive restaurant guide for the BEST places to dine. We can now get back to the business of building our database to add, add, and add some more great places for you to visit. Please take a look around at our new search features, our new bakery, gourmet and catering pages, and know that we will be adding great new places each and everyday! Also, we now have restaurant’s specials on some pages and we are loading them daily too!

We would LOVE your feedback with ideas, suggestions or questions!

Have a delicious day!