Alternatives
Products that do what A food guide that ignores Google and Yelp ratings does
My partner and I (ex-Googlers) plan our trips around food as a way to connect with local culture. Before every trip, we'd spend hours digging through Reddit threads and local blogs, filtering out sponsored noise to find places worth eating. So we built CuriousSpoon, a food guide we could actually trust. *Why ratings fail* - 51% of negative reviews cite service, only 31% cite food [1] - Google removed 170M fake reviews in 2023; Harvard found 16% are suspicious [2] *What we built instead* An engine that does what a local food nerd does: reads city newspapers, local critics, subreddits, chef…
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2024 · askbutler.ai
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- 5IW
Hey HN! I built this over the weekend. It is basically an extremely rudimentary crowd sourced recommendation system for anything in any city. I know that I could easily look this information up on Yelp but I thought it might be nicer to simply look up something like "the best steak in new york" and get that information. The database is almost empty but if you look up the "best coffee in ann arbor" you'll get a result which I seeded. Go ahead and contribute what you can. Ill be adding CAPTCHAs soon to prevent spammers. Here is the link: http://www.krowd.me
2011
- 6IM
Hi HN ! I made a web app to check if an item on the menu is potentially spicy ? Problem: I recently arrived in Korea, and I quickly realized that if my girlfriend is not with me, I don't know what would try to kill my tastebuds. I could ask, but I'm shy and my broken korean wouldn't help much. And trying to find an answer online is time consuming, navigating between 10 paragraphs blogs. Solution: So i made this simple gpt wrapper that takes in a dish name in any language, and gives you a clear answer right away. Keep in mind that this is my first app and an mvp, to validate the idea. But I'm…
2023 · dieornot.com
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I created a rating benchmark for restaurants and hotels in each state of the US scanning over 3 million reviews from Google. You can see 2 geo charts with the states with the best food and the best accommodation
2024 · feedcheck.co
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This is my MVP. It's not quite really ready to unleash, but what the heck. http://cilantrosites.com SHORT PITCH: About.me for restaurants LONGER PITCH: Single-page websites for restaurants that don't suck. Instant setup. Hours, map, menu, contact/social, email list, mobile version. No Flash. No PDFs. KNOWN ISSUES: (a) can add menu items but not edit/del. (b) additional settings (mainly domain mapping) are turned off (c) if you're editing colors, make sure to scroll to the top of the page, (d) many others FEEDBACK WELCOME: I have tough skin. Also, I know much of the design is average. I have…
2011
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Hi hn! It has always annoyed me that recipe websites are so cluttered and have so much (in my opinion) useless fluff, so I made a little website to solve that problem! One good thing about SEO for once is that Google has pretty much forced the internet to adopt JSON-LD for recipes so many recipes are directly extractable and for others I have several fall back parsers including an indieweb parser :) If you do find a website that is broken feel free to click the flag button or share it as I would love to fix any edge cases
Apr 2026 · tangled.org
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2017 · dishesnearby.com
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If you guys are interested in high-quality food products please let me know what you think of my website prototype. 1)Do you understand immediately what the site is about? 2)Is it easy enough to understand how it works? 3)If ready to roll in your neighborhood would you be interested in subscribing to a service like this? I am in the process of getting a closed-beta off the ground in Brooklyn and I am really interested in all kinds of feedback about the idea, the design, UX. Thanks. http://www.the-local-kitchen.com
2012
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Hi guys, Lately, I’ve noticed myself searching for things in Google and then typing Reddit (e.g. “opinion on Liz Truss reddit.”) I tried to work out why I was doing this, initially thinking that I just wanted to enjoy the social aspect of the internet, but now I think I do it because, sometimes, I want to see results which have been filtered down by people, not by the Google search algorithm. One of the many examples of where I think this can be useful is when searching for products or services. I know that if I Google “best laptop for gaming,” the results will be the products of large…
2022 · crowdsearch.xyz
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I love culture + travel, and one of my favorite pastimes is dropping into random streets on Google Street View. I just LOVE getting a tiny snippet into how people live, the architecture, and discovering hidden corners of places I'll probably never visit. I'm kinda weird like that. When AI came along, I started asking it to explain what I was looking at - and I learned a ton. I couldn't stop using this combo. So I built Streetwhip. It's kinda like reverse Geoguessr - instead of guessing where you are, you get educated about places as if you had a smart local guide with you. What used to be…
2025 · streetwhip.com
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Today we've launched happytables ( http://www.happytables.com ), a squarespace / wordpress.com for restaurants. I had posted on HN before about a previous iteration we performed ( http://bit.ly/sn0FWc ), and am really satisfied how far we've gotten with it all. The entire solution is built on top of WordPress, it's allowed us to quickly prototype and build various components. It'll be interesting to see if other solutions pop-up for unrelated niche markets using WordPress too (i.e. real estate, sports clubs, etc.). Would love to hear your feedback on our concept and would gladly answer any…
2012
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Wanted to get everyone's feedback on the web app my startup has been working on for the past few months. (didn't want to tweak it anymore before getting feedback from viewers who weren't my friends/family). http://www.foodia.com Would definitely love feedback on the UX (which needs work) and whether this is something you'd use before shopping/deciding what to buy. I'd also love to hear what food problems (if any) you all feel need solving. Thanks.
2011
- 18IB
I recently built an iOS app called Settld: Group Restaurant Finder that helps friends decide where to meet by finding restaurants that are roughly equally far from everyone’s location, and displaying information about them. We’ve all been in chaotic group chats where no one can agree on where to eat — this app cuts through that by calculating a “sweet spot” for the group. For 2 people, it’s the midpoint. For 3 people, it’s the circumcenter. For 4–6 people, it uses a minimum enclosing circle approach (Welzl’s algorithm). It then shows the top 15 nearby options so there’s no more “where do we…
2025 · settld.space
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hey Everyone, I built FeedRebel [ http://www.feedrebel.com ] partly because I needed a feed reader myself but mainly because it ties in nicely with an idea that I've been working on. For those of you that are still on the fence when it comes to choosing a Google Reader alternative, I would love it if you could give FeedRebel a try and let me know your thoughts. I realize that there are quite a few options out there already with some big launches yet to come. I look forward to your comments and thoughts. Thank you
2013
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2015 · eatkeep.io
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Hey HN Community, This is my first submission, so go easy on me. I'm launching Hotspot Robot (www.hotspotrobot.com) which provides a new way to find the best restaurants/bars near you. Right now, we're launching in NYC, Philly, DC, LA and San Fran. Here is a 60 second video intro which hopefully makes it clear how Hotspot Robot is different than alternatives like Yelp: http://www.vimeo.com/18023901 For those of you who can't watch the video, basically Hotspot Robot works by aggregating professional content - specifically "best of" & "top 10" lists - from trusted sources (e.g. Zagat, the…
2011
- 22IB
So I've been obsessed with a weird question for the past 6 months, what happens to SEO when everyone starts asking ChatGPT for recommendations instead of Googling? The answer, apparently, is chaos. And maybe opportunity? I built FirstClick because I noticed something strange. My previous startup was getting zero traffic from AI assistants, but our competitor (objectively worse product, sorry not sorry) was getting mentioned by Claude and Perplexity constantly. It drove me crazy. So I reverse engineered why. Turns out there's a whole new game being played and most founders don't even know it…
Dec 2025 · firstclick.so
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Hey HN! I built a recipe search engine that lets cooking enthusiasts easily find and filter high-quality recipes from top sites like Serious Eats, ChefSteps, and StarChefs, all in one place. Completely free and more sources (including cookbooks) coming soon. Would love your feedback—thanks!
2025 · chefcodex.com
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https://blendful.com Hi everyone. I'm a technical founder who's built a MVP of a crowdfunding product intended to fund spectroanalysis testing on popular foods for contaminants, pesticides, herbicides, etc. Right now food products are a sort of black box, and consumers don't really know what they're getting. I'm looking to elucidate those details. Warmly looking for feedback and/or ideas if you find this useful. Also would be interested in partnerships/cofounders (biz dev/marketing help especially). Thanks so much for reading!
2020
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