Life & fun · December 16, 2025
A food guide that ignores Google and Yelp ratings
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…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
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 interviews. Surfaces spots generating real buzz. Demotes the ones coasting on old reputation. Filters out the famous-but-meh. Refreshed regularly. No paid placements. No sponsored content. *What's live* - 15 cities (SF, NYC, Paris, Rome, Tokyo,...) - 70+ spots per city - Walkable food crawls with specific dishes to order - Free, mobile-friendly We tested this ourselves in Lyon, Bologna, and Rome. In Rome, we skipped the long lines at a famous sandwich spot and ate instead at a quiet local place nearby. In Bologna, we found a bring-your-own-food Osteria where we picked up dishes from a nearby market. It ended up being my favorite meal of the year. Looking for feedback: what features would make this actually useful on your next trip? [1] https://gatherup.com/blog/online-reviews-study-restaurants-reviews/ [2] https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45151
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