Food is one of the most important things when you are traveling. But it is sometimes difficult to find the right restaurant when visiting a city or country you need to become more familiar with.
How do I find good food while traveling?
It is essential to do some research before your trip. Doing a season online for food bloggers and doing a search for the city you are visiting can help you get an idea of the cuisine. Once you get there, ask the hotel concierge or if you happen to go to the bar as a local or even the bartender for suggestions.
Which app helps travelers?
There are many apps besides apps for foodies. When we travel, we use FlightRadar24 to track all our flights, Google Maps to help us get around, Waze when driving, or even when we are in an Uber to know how long it will take to get there.
What is the app that finds restaurants while driving?
We covered that below, Highway Dining App is great to help you find a place to eat close to your location.
Here are the best food travel apps so you can always find the food you crave no matter where you are traveling. Added bonus: they are all available free in the app store.
LocalEats
LocalEats for iPhone and Android is a curated dining guide created for travelers and local diners who prefer local businesses rather than chain restaurants. You can filter your options by cuisine, price range, and meal type. Available in all 50 states and select worldwide cities such as Bangkok, Istanbul, and Tokyo. LocalEats also provides the top 10 lists for restaurants in each region. LocalEats is a great app for finding local restaurants recommended by chefs and food experts. They will point you to the best steak houses, great sushi spots, and down-home burger joints nationwide.
Michelin Guide
The MICHELIN Guide app puts the world’s best restaurants and hotels in your pocket and lets you book them. The entire global guide, every restaurant in every location, is together in one place. Use it to quickly find and reserve restaurants and hotels near you or in a future destination. Search all MICHELIN Guide restaurants near you or by location and get a table via Resy, Open Table, TheFork, and others.
Open Table
We love this app because you use it to make reservations to popular restaurants in advance while getting cash back the more you use it. OpenTable shows you which restaurants have availability for your party at the hour you want to dine, and it is easy to click to reserve your table.
Spotted by Locals
Spotted by Locals is a community of blogs and apps by volunteer locals in 82 cities. These Spotters live in the city they write about, speak the local language, and write only about their current local favorite spots. You can get some great sightseeing and restaurant recommendations from their city guides.
Yelp
If you are traveling in the United States, Yelp is good. It has a huge database of restaurants, bars, and other businesses, with user reviews and ratings to help you make informed decisions. Yelp has over 199 million reviews of businesses worldwide. It is your local guide for finding the perfect place to eat, shop, drink, explore, and relax.
Google Maps
Google Maps is another great option, especially if you’re looking for food close to your current location. You can search by cuisine, price, and other factors and see photos and reviews from other users. Just search for “restaurant” anywhere you are and filter by local reviews if you want to see what the locals suggest.
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor can provide reviews of restaurants, hotels, and attractions so you know what to expect before arriving at your destination. This is one of our favorite apps for finding good restaurants all over the world. Get real reviews from real travelers.
Resy
Resy powers the world’s best restaurants, using technology to imagine the future of hospitality. If you’re a person who loves dining out but hates hassling for reservations, download Resy now! Book sought-after seats at the best restaurants in 80 cities worldwide.
HappyCow – #1 Vegan App
A vegan and vegetarian restaurant guide that helps you find plant-based options anywhere in the world. HappyCow let’s you see food options as well as gluten-free menu items. They also give you reviews, directions, opening hours, and an interactive map showing all available options when you travel. They even have farm stands, plant-based food trucks, and grocery stores in their listings as well.
Roaming Hunger – food truck app
If you are obsessed with trendy food trucks, Roaming Hunger is the food travel app for you! Roaming Hunger links users with over 16,000 food trucks in different cities across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, UAE, Spain, France and many other countries. You can use Roaming Hunger’s interactive map to find nearby food trucks and food carts selling delicious street foods, or you can book a food truck for a private event or work catering.
StreetFoodFinder
Find your next meal using StreetFoodFinder! SFF helps you find and choose which food truck/cart to eat at! Please do keep in mind that many trucks close for the winter in many locations. SFF has officially launched in the following cities: Columbus OH, Raleigh, NC, Durham, NC, Cincinnati OH, Corpus Christi, TX, Cleveland OH, Los Angeles CA, Phoenix AZ, Nashville TN, Florida cities include Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Orlando, Naples, Jacksonville, and Pensacola
Highway Dining App
Highway Dining App is a mobile app that helps users find restaurants along their route. The app takes into account the user’s current location, speed, and direction of travel to provide a list of restaurants that are within a certain distance. Users can filter the results by cuisine, price, and other factors. It is available for free on the App Store and Google Play.
The Infatuation
The Infatuation is an excellent food travel app for looking for the perfect restaurant for your specific plans, such as date night, girls’ night out, brunch, etc. You can browse nearby options or search for something more specific. The Infatuation focuses on high-quality, honest reviews rather than quantity. The Infatuation brings you the most honest and trustworthy opinions on where to eat around the world. Find a restaurant that’s “Perfect For” every situation. Search restaurant recommendations in our curated guides & reviews, or via map & list views, in over 40 different cities. Coverage in: New York, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington DC, Atlanta, Austin, Denver, Paris, Mexico City, Melbourne, Rome, and Tokyo, and beyond with more on the way.
Specifically for Restaurant Recommendations in Europe & beyond
TheFork
TheFork is Europe’s leading restaurant booking platform, proudly bringing people together through unique and affordable culinary experiences since 2007. TheFork continues to be savored across the biggest foodie hotspots in France, Spain, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Australia. A diverse collection of over 60,000 restaurants and 40,000 photos, menus, and community reviews will satisfy any culinary mood and occasion.
Quandoo: Restaurant Bookings
With Quandoo, you can conveniently book tables at eateries in your area in no time. Michelin-starred restaurants, charming bistros, cozy cafes – you name it, Quandoo’s got it. Moreover, you can also manage reservations on the go and read menus and reviews before you dine. Quandoo is active in the major cities of 12 countries around the world: Australia, Austria, Germany, Finland, Hong Kong, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore, Turkey, United Kingdom.
OpenRice for Hong Kong
OpenRice is the most popular dining guide in Hong Kong. They have now expanded to various Asian regions, providing you with comprehensive dining information, restaurant reviews, and ratings. You can easily search and enjoy the best restaurants and local cuisines.
Chope – Dining Made Easy
Chope is Asia’s leading dining platform that makes restaurant reservations a breeze! With Chope, you can easily make online reservations at over 13,000 restaurants in Singapore, Jakarta, Bali, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Phuket.
Zomato
Zomato is another popular and easy-to-use food travel app for India and UAE. It no longer offers dining options for the United States. The app lets users search nearby restaurants by cuisine type and has menus, reviews, and customer photos. It has a user-friendly interface and a wide range of features, including the ability to book reservations and order food online.
Dining Experiences, Cooking Classes, and Food Tours
EatWith
EatWith is a great app for finding authentic home-cooked meals. Local chefs host meals in their homes, and you can book a seat to enjoy a delicious and unique dining experience. Dining Experiences, Cooking Classes, Food Tours, and more in major cities around the world.
Traveling Spoon
It is very similar to EatWith, where you put in your destination, and it lets you know what is available in terms of booking a private meal or cooking class with the best home cooks in their homes around the world.
Cesarine
Italy’s first nationwide community of local home cooks. Since 2004, they have organized authentic culinary experiences in hundreds of local homes throughout Italy. Connecting with locals gives you the chance to engage with the culture of a place first-hand, together with the people who know it best. Cesarine offers Authentic food experiences that let you dive into local life through food, including traditional lunches and dinners, hands-on cooking classes, and immersive market tours, which take place in towns and cities throughout Italy.
Withlocals
As its name suggests, this food travel app helps you book unique private tours with real locals at your travel destination. What makes Withlocals one of the best food travel apps is the unique, personalized experiences it offers to its users. The app connects curious travelers with locals and offers unique food experiences, as well as other customizable travel experiences in over 80 destinations worldwide.
