Database Design Advice

I realize that this is better suited for the MySQL list but I've been unable to post there for no apparent reason. My emails to the list owner have gone unanswered as well, so I appreciate your tolerance with my posting here for the time being. I'm setting up a database for a new project and I keep wavering on one aspect of the design. The end result is to be a searchable menu for a restaurant's website and I cannot decide if it is best to simply use one table for all menu items (food) or use tables for each category (pasta, appetizers, etc). I currently have a table listing said categories (categories) but I simply can't decide which is better for this application. Thank you all for your advice. Below is some info from MySQL regaring the current design of the DB. SHOW TABLES; +---------------+ | Tables_in_tga | +---------------+ | categories | | drinks | | food | | specials | +---------------+ DESCRIBE categories; +-----------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +-----------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | cat_id | tinyint(3) unsigned | | PRI | NULL | auto_increment | | cat_name | char(100) | | UNI | | | +-----------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ DESCRIBE food; +------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | item_id | tinyint(3) unsigned | | PRI | NULL | auto_increment | | cat_id | tinyint(3) unsigned | | | 0 | | | item_name | char(50) | | | | | | item_desc | char(255) | | | | | | item_price | float(5,2) | | | 0.00 | | +------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ Thanks again. Edward Dudlik Becoming Digital www.becomingdigital.com