Incredible that this issue has still not been dealt with 15 months after the initial post.
I love Evernote but this is the sort of thing that kills applications and there is too much of it in Evernote - people will just drift over to new apps which offer the facilities they want.
Having "recent searches", and "saved searches" instantly there when you click on the search box is what people expect to see in even fairly basic web sites these days and not to have it in an app as sophisticated as Evernote is kinda shocking. It's only a small issue, but it matters. (And keyboard shortcuts