What you don't seem to be getting is that posting and reading posts about food has become dramatically more cumbersome and user-unfriendly under the new format. Without that getting fixed, and with many very valid concerns being ignored and/or condescendingly dismissed by the designers, many of us no longer want to bother.

It is a testament to the community that you created that so many people actually care about this to the point of being upset. Those people are the backbone of the site, and without them, it's nothing.

It is pretty astonishing to me that after hundreds, if not thousands, of posts in the last week from people who are utterly flummoxed by the new format, requiring lengthy explanations to tell them how the site should be used, the designers have still not cottoned on to the fact that something is seriously wrong. It is the main job of a web designer to make a site intuitive, easy to understand, and facilitative of the needs of the user. Mods, do you really think that is the case, given the amount of time you've had to spend explaining how to use all of the new functions, cajoling contributors to "just do some work to figure it out," and vainly attempting to convince everyone that this is in their best interest?

I am glad that there are (now) other options available.

One challenge with finding good Russian restaurants is that Russian food really isn't that great (I lived in the country for 3 years and have been traveling there almost annually since 1988). It's generally heavy, flavor-deprived, and lacking in creativity. That's why restaurants serving the cuisines of other former Soviet nations--Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia, etc.--tend to proliferate. Their food is NOT Russian--but it's a lot better than Russian food. So if you want good food from the former USSR, by all means, eat at these places, but don't think you're eating Russian food.

Re: 1, the search box always remained at the top of the screen before. Now it is hidden unless you scroll all the way to the top. On the iPad, this is a chore. Speaking of real estate, acres of it is wasted in the new format. There would be plenty of room for a search box if that were not the case. (One way a search box would be smaller is if it were actually labeled as "Search" instead of "What are you hungry for?")

Re: 2, that's not correct. Search results come up with any category that contains that search term: "entire site," "recipes," "articles," "photos," and "posts." (Mystifyingly, "posts" is last on that list, when I suspect it's the most-desired category for searches--it is by far the largest category of search results.)

Another issue is that the tags system only works when posts have actually been tagged, and when they have been tagged correctly. There are tens of thousands of posts that have only a tag for the (previously existing) board in which they were created, NOT the location for which CH now appears to have tags. So if you're looking for a restaurant in Delaware, you'll never find it--even though a Delaware tag now exists--because over the entire CH system, when you search for that location, a grand total of 6 posts come up! (One of those posts is also, bafflingly, tagged as "Houston.") New user? Old user who can't recall if a years-old post appeared in the Mid-Atlantic board or the Philadelphia board? Sorry, you're SOL.

So in other words, you now have to go through three totally non-intuitive processes to find what used to take typing one word.

1. Why is search confusingly called "what are you hungry for?" What the heck does that mean? And why do I have to scroll all the way to the top of the page for the banner with the search box to even appear on my iPad?
2. Why can't I just search for posts instead of having to do the search, THEN filter it for posts?
3. Why can't I just search for posts on the Philadelphia board instead of doing the search, THEN filtering for posts, THEN filtering for the Philadelphia tag...which is located so far down the page that it's barely findable?

In short: why has a perfectly functional, simple system been made dramatically more complicated and less intuitive?

When I hover my cursor over the tags as per your instructions, I'm not getting anything--follow or unfollow. So that didn't work. With some more trial and error, I did manage to unfollow the tags that CH had me following by clicking on the tags, going to the page that the click took me to, and then hitting "unfollow" on the top right of that page.

BUT...now there is a ridiculous (and now even larger) box of "trending tags" on my profile page that appears above the "My Communities" list, pushing it right off my screen in the process. I don't ever want to look at tags, trending or otherwise, and it's just blocking my view of the things I do want to see. Is there a way to get rid of this? (I am not hopeful.)

While I am grousing, may I also just make the comment that semantically, I don't see the difference between a "Community" and a "Location"? And I also don't see why the "Community" links are big, space-devouring photos, while "Location" and "Tag" links are reasonably sized words? Consistency and intuitiveness are good things in website design, guys...

I looked at it when it was in beta version, hated it, and went back to the old format. Now the old format is gone altogether. This one is absolutely awful--visually cluttered and unreadable, too many clicks to get to what took maybe one or two clicks before, and the less said about those awful tags, the better. And is it just me, or is the search function pretty much the most important one on Chowhound? Why the heck would they leave that "for later?"

I will be looking for a new home for restaurant and cooking research. This is disastrous.

You may want to look at the DC/Baltimore board. People who live in that area are most likely to visit St. Michaels. Search for threads using the search terms St. Michaels or Eastern Shore on that board.

I was in the area (Cambridge) recently and can recommend two places south of St. Michaels: Schooners in Oxford, which is a casual place with a nice deck right on the water where you can sit and eat uncomplicated seafood and drink decent beer, and The High Spot in Cambridge, a good-quality gastropub. Not everything was fabulous there, but I was deeply impressed with a bowl of crab soup we had, and the menu has lots of very tasty options.

I have never had issues with bugs eating my garden basil. What I tend to do is buy the hydroponic kind with the roots on that they sell at Acme, then just stick it in a pot full of dirt outside. It grows just fine out there, and I end up with 10x the amount of basil that I purchased. I've got a boatload out on my patio now. I get a plant or two every month, more or less, and I get plenty of it before it bolts. I just wish cilantro was sold with roots on, because I'd do the same thing with that if I could.

This has been a very prolific tomato-growing year for me, so I am glad I have basil on hand!

You didn't have your eyes open in the kitchen, then. A half-eaten basket of French fries? A couple of shrimp left on a plate of pad Thai? A few spare Buffalo wings? I have seen all of that, and much more, go into the mouths of kitchen and wait staff once plates get brought back to the kitchen. (And I have also seen plenty of things go out from the kitchen to the dining room that were cooked/plated in a manner that would curl the hair of many home cooks--then eaten with no ill effects for the customer. It is quite liberating, really.)

Good to know. The Downingtown location has pretty blah food and is also deafeningly noisy at peak times. Add to that the fact that there's really not a single Victory beer that I like (I find them all too hoppy/bitter), and you realize why I go there only under extreme duress. I guess I won't be switching my loyalties from Two Stones anytime soon.

On another KS topic, what (if any) are the good places to eat in that Marketplace thing? I never knew it was there until a few months ago, and I happened to go there after I'd just eaten, so was not in a mood to try anything.

You can take a look at the bus schedules at http://www.dartfirststate.com. There are maps here: http://www.dartfirststate.com/informa... and here: http://www.dartfirststate.com/informa...

I will mention that downtown Wilmington, including the Riverfront, is pretty dead on most weekend nights after 7 PM or so. There are some good restaurants there (plenty of CH threads discuss Wilmington dining), but there's not a whole lot else to see/do unless you are going to a show at the Grand Opera House or the Queen Theater. Also, the bus schedules slow down dramatically outside of peak commuting times, so you may find yourself waiting quite a while for a long bus ride. For better or worse, the area you're staying in is very car-centric. If I were you I would suck it up and rent one. You will be stuck eating chain food otherwise, or taking very inconvenient bus rides into downtown Wilmington.