Hi,
I use the 'Open Recent' menu a lot (actually I have a plugin that modifies the 'Open Recent' menu of TextMate, Xcode and some others to retain 50 files instead of just 10).
Seems TextMate has a bug though: The 'Open Recent' menu only contains files that were opened AND SAVED with TextMate. If I just open a file, look at it, then close it, TextMate's 'Open Recent' menu will NOT contain the file.
TextEdit's 'Open Recent' menu will also list files that just have been 'viewed'.
Gerd