Table Talk atLarrys.com – your online food magazine – is one year old and we want to brag about some of our successes and tell you of changes that will make the magazine even more interesting and attractive in the year ahead.

The actual anniversary of the launch of Table Talk atLarrys.com is April 26. What started as a modest effort to provide a platform for essays and articles about food and restaurants grew quickly. In its first year Table Talk atLarrys has attracted readers from 920 cities in 69 countries around the globe.

Now, as we begin our second year of publication, we are making some important changes to improve your enjoyment of Table Talk atLarrys.com.

• Most dramatic is the new format for our expanded index of articles. We have upgraded the index to make it more reader friendly – to make it easier for you to browse through the archives of recipes, featured restaurants, travel articles and other features you may have missed during our first year or want to read again.
• We have eliminated the roster of authors and the number of articles each has written. It made us feel good to see our names up there. But you, our readers, were not using the listing for anything. We also eliminated the listing of archived articles by the month in which they were published. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but again, our readers were not using it.
• We’ve changed the size and color of some of the type fonts to make them easier to read.
• To provide funds that will permit us to expand the number of authors writing for the magazine, we have begun to accept a limited
  number of advertisements. Be assured we will not accept advertising from any restaurants, which we believe would compromise the integrity of our sister web site – the restaurant recommendation site at Larrys.com.
• Finally, we are beginning to offer a small stipend to freelance writers who are published in Table Talk atLarrys. By attracting more writers from a wider range of backgrounds we hope to make the magazine even more interesting and appealing in the next year than it was in the last year.

As we think back on our first year of publication it is clear that one of the highlights was the publication of “Will Your Sushi Glow in the Dark”, an article about the impact of the Fukushima nuclear power disaster on the world’s food chain. When we launched the magazine, we never could have predicted we would be writing about nuclear power and radioactivity. But we wound up publishing the first article anywhere on the subject and it became the single most read article in the magazine for the year.

What were some of the other hits of the year? Here are the top 15 most read articles from among the 155 pieces we published.
1.    Will Your Sushi Glow in the Dark
2.   Al the Wop’s – Restaurant of the Week
3.   Sacramento – California’s Other Great Restaurant City
4.   Hoppin’ Down the Wienie Trail (A visit to the world of hot dogs)
5.   Roaming Pit Row – (A travel piece about barbecue joints)
6.   Cooking for a Beautiful Woman – Chapter 13 / Judy Garland
7.   Philippe vs. Cole’s – A Downtown French Dip Showdown
8.   For Jim (A tribute to a lost friend and atLarrys.com co-host)
9.   A Comeback for the Perfect Manhattan
10. Cooking for a Beautiful Woman – Introduction
11.  Salt Rant II (One of two articles on the high levels of sodium in restaurant food)
12.  Cooking for a Beautiful Woman – Chapter 1 / She Made the Music Start
13.  Was It An Orgy or an Odyssey (A 16-year-old’s food journey through California)
14.  When the Beef Meets the Bun (It’s about burgers)
15.  Skiing in Aspen – An Insider’s Guide

And the most visited recurring features from our first year of publication:
1. Recipes (including Kitchen Quickies)
2.  Restaurant of the Week
3.  Cooking for a Beautiful Woman
4.  A Food Lover’s Trek from L.A. to Fairbanks and Back

All of these articles and features are still available in the archives of Table Talk atLarrys.com . Look for the topic in our new index at the top right of the home page and take a browse through memory lane. Then tell a friend, or colleague, or relative about Table Talk atLarrys so they can share in the enjoyment. There are food lovers all around you. Invite them in.

Thanks for your support.
LARRY LEVINE