Seven Apps Every Foodie Traveler Needs
For those wanting to discover, track, and rank places to eat at home and abroad.

Don’t you just hate traveling to a new city and not knowing where to eat? Hell, sometimes I run out of ideas in my own town. And as much as I use TripAdvisor to get ideas here and there, I really like tapping into what locals eat, places my own friends recommend and expert suggestions. Or how about keeping track of the places you already love and the ones you want to try? For all that, here’s a short list of apps for foodie travelers that I’ve personally used to help make my culinary explorations a little easier:

the PAO app

What it does: Finds hidden gems in whatever city you’re in. Events, food & drink, lodging, seeing; if it’s unique or off the beaten path, you’ll find it here. Save your favorites, follow others and share your own hidden gems.

Best features: The Explore tab. It’s organized in a way that helps you discover things even if you don’t know what you’re looking for. From generic suggestions such as Coffee Spots to hyper-specific ones like Black-Owned Businesses to Support in Denver, there is something to uncover every time. When you hit Go on any post, it brings up all the other people who have posted at that location, website, phone, address, hours, and directions.

Price: Free!

My rating: 5/5 forks. I truly love this app. It’s like a food/travel-centric, simplified, ad free version of Instagram. 

Website: The Pao App

Find me: andreawm19

Happy Cow

What it does: Helps in finding vegan and vegetarian food wherever you go. It’s a veggie community-building space and food map all in one place, covering over 180 countries.

Best features: The map view. Offers a quick and simple view of nearby establishments, their price range, if they are currently open or not, their rating, and what category they belong to. You can also save your favorite places for offline use.

Price: 3.99 USD.

My rating: 4/5 forks. Restaurants that only have one or few vegetarian options are put into the same category with fully vegetarian ones, which really should not be the case. (Huge thanks to @reginamarie94 and @jenny.from.the.hawk for their insight!)

Website: Mobile Edition Vegetarian Restaurant Guide – HappyCow

Mamakoo

What it is: A collection of curated destination guides put together by local insiders, so you can experience authentic food. The guides cover everything from street food to fine dining.

Best features: The worthiness index. Such a simple thing, but it really helps clarify what you’re looking at: Neighborhood gem, detour-worthy, or bucket list-worthy. Eat-ineraries also take out a lot of the guesswork of building a trip centered around food.

Price: app is free, each guide is 19 USD for one-year access.

My rating: 4.5/5 forks. The guides are beautiful, the recommendations are rock solid, but the map is kinda useless unless you’ve purchased one of the guides.

Website: Mamakoo | Discover local foods

Find me: andrea-2

Eaten

What it does: Rate and review food, making it easy to find dishes that are worth trying wherever you are. You get recommendations for what to actually eat at a place, not just where. 

Best features: The thoroughness. There’s a restaurant view that lets you see all the dishes that have been reviewed for that location and their average rating, along with photos and general information; dish view shows all the reviews available for that dish at that location, rating, and rank within the city. Profile view has all your reviews, a map, and lists that you can customize to better organize your reviews.

Price: Free!

My rating: 4/5 forks. There’s no widespread use just yet, so for many dishes it’s hard to find more than a single review or rating. The app in general is slooooow.

Website: Eaten – The Food Rating App

Find me: andreawm19

to Eat list

What it does: Keeps track of the places you want to eat at in a much more organized and visual manner than just a random note on your phone. You can add friends and follow others to see what’s on their restaurant wish list. Favorite places to add a quick comment about them.

Best features: The simplicity. It’s fast, uncomplicated, and visually appealing. It automatically updates with your location to show you which places from your list are closest to you at any given time, so you don’t forget about a specific place if you’re in the vicinity. The search tab uses emojis to identify filters, which I find hilarious and 100% appropriate for this day and age.

Price: Free!

My rating: 4.5/5 forks. It does what it’s supposed to and does it well. Still waiting for V2.

Website: To Eat List | A To-Do List For Your Food | V2 Coming Soon

Find me: andreawm19

World of Mouth

What it is: an independent restaurant guide put together by a global community of industry experts and insiders, like Ana Roš and Phil Rosenthal (❤️).

Best features: The guides themselves. There are WoM Guides, “Highly curated eating & drinking guides to the world’s most interesting culinary destinations” which are stylish, thorough, and well organized. Then there are MyGuides, “Created by the World of Mouth community and our editorial team” which are more informal but equally interesting. The library organizes your own guides, which you can keep private or share with the community.

Price: Free!

My rating: 5/5 forks. It’s a serious app that doesn’t mess around and goes beyond just the restaurants, offering bite-size insights to the destinations themselves.

Website: World of Mouth – the world’s most reliable restaurant guide

Find me: Andrea Wintergerst

BELI

What it does: Keeps organized lists of the places you want to try and ranks the places you’ve already been. It then generates recommendations made just for you based on your dining history. You can follow your friends and see what they’ve liked and what they haven’t and get recommendations from them too.

Best features: The lists. There’s a “Been” list (like Eaten) and a “Want to Try” list (like To Eat List), as well as “Recs for You”, “Recs from Friends”, and “Trending”. You can switch to Map view and see them all, or filter by category, score, location, cuisine, price, and more.  And you can opt-in to Reservation Sharing, which is a tool to snag hard-to-get reservations and give away those you can’t use anymore.

Price: Free!

My rating: 5/5 forks. A real powerhouse, it combines the best parts of some of the other apps on this list, all while remaining easy and fun to use.

Website: Beli App | Restaurant List Keeping

Find me: andreawm19

Are there any other apps you like to use for your culinary explorations? Let me know in the comments!