Last June I retired my A-Z restaurant directory after 25 years to instead focus on Featured content with photos, descriptions and web links that wasn’t really possible for all the 600+ listings in the directory. Since that time, what started out as a trickle of requests to bring back the comprehensive, cross-referenced restaurant guide has turned into a flood. Apparently not everyone prefers Yelp.

In July I created a backdoor web page to the directory that I only gave to people that contacted me but by October I was handing out a dozen links a day to this “secret” page which was kind of comical. So today I brought back the A-Z restaurant directory which contains numerous improvements that you probably won’t notice. The new Featured restaurants are in the guide as well.

https://www.santabarbara.com/dining/

The review system is still retired because it requires me to act as referee between restaurant owners and reviewers over accuracy disputes. The unmoderated wild west that is Yelp is a better place for restaurant reviews. To help bridge the gap, I added a link to the corresponding Yelp reviews to each of the 600+ pages in the directory.