Welcome To The New Food Republic

Today marks an exciting turn in the brief history of Food Republic. As you can see, we have redesigned the site, upgrading the overall aesthetic and experience, and emphasizing video as well as thematic series. It's of course necessary to stay current in an ever-evolving digital world, and we want nothing less than to connect on a deeper level with our regular readers and a dramatically increasing group of new visitors, which is why the site is now optimized for these mobile-obsessed times.

So what's new, besides the sleeker look? There are faster load times, dynamic search with photo-driven results, mobile- and tablet-friendly design and an awesome recipe feature with an ingredients list that stays static while you scroll through the directions. We've recently introduced several short video series, including New Chefs Rising and Design Details, and next week, we'll premiere a documentary series, Food Crimes, produced by Food Republic's parent company, the Emmy and James Beard award-winning Zero Point Zero Production. More on that very soon!

We're well aware that our readers expect exceptional quality from Food Republic. Over the past few years, we've avoided chasing clicks or jumping on sensational story bandwagons in order to focus on probing the minds of the culinary community's most creative, charismatic personalities. We've drilled down on technique and sought out inventive, challenging and satisfying recipes. We've traveled around the world in search of delicious food and memorable experiences. We've thrown a few curveballs. (A design section, on a food site? Yup.) We've sought out the farmers, purveyors, craft-spirits distillers, vegan bass players, rogue winemakers, knife-forging blacksmiths, restaurant-obsessed architects and anyone else who plays a part in the food world — this Food Republic, if you will.

This mission will continue, but with an added emphasis on photography, on video and on themed packages. Today, we debut a series called "Asian Food in America," a thoughtfully planned, seriously reported collection of stories and videos about the kaleidoscope of cuisines of the East and how they translate to the West. From Sri Lankan specialties on Staten Island to pho strongholds in SoCal and Texas to the dishes that make San Francisco's Chinatown so iconic, we'll look at how Asian cooking, ingredients and chefs are influencing how we eat here in the U.S.

All that said, I hope you enjoy the new site — more on its functions below — and I invite you to email me personally at richard@foodrepublic.com with your thoughts, comments, rants or raves (and bugs, too — we will be working out any issues that arise in the postlaunch phase, as they do). I also encourage you to sign up for our newsletter for weekly roundups of our best stories, videos and recipes (the call to subscribe will disappear once you're subscribed). Lastly, I'd like to thank Food Republic's dedicated team and our wide-ranging contributors, the extended family at Zero Point Zero, the designers and engineers at Alley Interactive and you, for following Food Republic here and on our social media channels.

A Guide to the New Food RepublicGENERAL

We've de-cluttered. You can now navigate the site via a dropdown menu on the left. You'll also notice "hot" topics across the top of the site on desktop; these special pages are accessible via the dropdown menu on mobile.

There are a few new elements on the site I'd like to point out. You may notice a tile motif, which is a nod to kitchen design and which is used to set off recipes from text, as well as to spotlight pullquotes on the homepage and landing pages. Knowing that our audience remains committed to the written word, we've interwoven notable comments as another entry point to new and recommended stories.

Lastly, we're Instagram addicts, so we've decided to share our feed across the bottom of the site on both desktop and mobile.

HOMEPAGE AND SECTION PAGES

The homepage will feature a mix of the latest stories and videos from Food Republic, as well as specially arranged packages.

The Food, Drink, People and Design pages are designed to showcase the latest trends, personalities, ideas, products and more. Our new Recipes section features the sticky ingredients function, as well as icons denoting dietary restrictions for the gluten-free, meat-averse, nut- and shellfish-aware among you. And Video features our growing library of original short features, plus, as stated above, Food Crimes, a new documentary series launching next week.

TOPICS PAGES

Across the top banner on desktop (and in the dropdown menu on mobile), we'll highlight "hot" topics. Clicking on these will take you to a page devoted to a series of articles or related posts. For instance, over the next few weeks, the term "Asian Food in America" will appear, and that page will feature all of the stories in that ongoing series. Eventually, that term will give way to other timely topics or thematic series.

SEARCH

Our upgraded search results appear as images and text rather than solely as text, and the database is searchable by articles, recipes and videos.