Eating with Crowdsourcing

May 24, 2019

by LIOR ZOREF @lior

Whenever I travel for business or pleasure, I always look for nice places to see and eat. I use crowdsourcing to get to the best spots and eat the best food.

Here’s an example with screenshots on how I found an amazing small Japanese restaurant during my recent trip to DC:

Google has been making great efforts to become the dominant platform for crowdsourced recommendations about local businesses. This includes restaurants, stores and any business with a physical location (they even rank cemeteries!).

This is useful globally wherever Google is popular (not useful in South Korea for example). I use it frequently on my business trips.

That’s how I discovered the Daikaya Ramen Shop in DC, which has one of the most amazing ramen dishes I have ever tasted.

Here are a few more advanced tips:

* Cross-check with TripAdvisor and Yelp. Open Table is also very useful for reviews in the US.
* Remember Foursquare? A few years ago, they created a new version called the “Foursquare City Guide“, focused on best places to eat, drink shop or visit. Many people say that their recommendations are excellent
* On Google maps, next to the score and number of reviews, they recently added a colorful circle with a number. This number is an estimate of the likelihood that you will like this place by analyzing your past choices.

That’s my advice. But with all due respect to crowdsourcing, sometimes it’s best to turn off our phones, get lost and simply become fully aware of what’s happening around us.

Bon appetit!