Everybody who wanted the applications menu back could do this easaly by dragging the Applications folder into (or is it onto?) the Dock. This has a slight downside -- the speed of the menu is not what you would expect of a real menu. So I created a folder (with subfolders) with aliases (links) to the original items in the Applications folder, and dragged that folder to the Dock. This menu works a lot faster. I think it has to do with caching and that the Aplication folder changes to often.
It's also a nice way to order the aplications different from your real Application folder.
[Editor's note: The above is a good general hint for those of you new to OS X. There's not much point to putting your entire Applications (or Utilities or Documents, etc.) folder in the dock, as you probably only use 10% of their contents at any one time. Instead, create folders of aliases of your most-used items, and add those to your dock. I actually keep only one folder in my dock, and it contains 40 or so of my most-used apps and documents, organized by type in sub-folders.]

