He used rootcandy as an admin theme. This is only used for admin pages/paths. I don't know what theme it was with the menu, sorry.He was using rootcandy.
I don't think there is something wrong with your database. You just don't have a drop-down menu ;) If your theme doesn't have this feature the easiest way to get it is probably to install a module like https://drupal.org/project/nice_menus.However, I had a look at the data in the table menu_links and that does make sense and looks wholly consistent with what I expect.