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Comment by proverbialbunny | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have an alternative to Yelp. What I care about:

- Open Now (Optional)

- Sort by Rating

- Search by food category, not name of restaurant.

Part of the problem is I have a food allergy. I'm highly allergic to soy, so I can't eat all dishes at most restaurants except their drinks. The few I can eat at tend to be very high end or very highly rated, because the alternative to ingredients that use soy is almost always better tasting (eg, they make their own bread from scratch at a sandwich shop), so if I sort by rating I can find restaurants I'm not allergic to. I still have to ask 20 questions when I call in. Flavor is not enough alone, but it's a surprisingly accurate indicator. I use Yelp for this reason and feel disgusted when doing so.

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I built an alternative to Yelp called TasteJury.

It doesn't give you an answer to your food allergy, but it is more about the food and rating/ranking than Yelp.

It's also sorted by dishes/food category. It aims to answer: "Where is the best place to get X dish in Y city?". Service, ambience, etc don't matter. It's only about where to get the best food.

https://tastejury.com

This is awesome and I wish you the best of luck! Someone needs to take over this business.

I don't live in the heart of a big city. I live about an hour away from SF. Furthermore where I live is not at the heart of the city my address is at, due to unusual city boundaries, so services like grubhub and other delivery services do not work to my address, but if I put in my neighbors address they get a bunch of options I do not that are walking distance to me. My point is, it helps to center restaurants by gps or similar, not to address, not to city. Good luck! :D

Foursquare! I prefer it to Yelp, and the people running it care about making a good, non-scammy product.

EDIT: It's mostly a mobile app, and their web version is here: https://foursquare.com/city-guide

Thanks, but is it https://foursquare.com/ ? I don't see a search bar.

Here you go! https://foursquare.com/city-guide

(I mostly use the app. It also keeps track of everywhere I've been, and I can see my history over the past decade.)

Thank you! (And thanks for the info of a mobile map!)

One more question: Does it have a sort by ranking? I can't seem to find it on the desktop site. I may need to run it in Chrome. On Firefox it may not be displaying properly.

I know it sounds silly, but I really do need a sort by rating. This is still far better than nothing. Thank you. ^_^

I haven’t checked the website, but I confirmed the app has it as an option!

It does on the mobile app, nice. Thanks.

I decided to test it and started with pupusaria (there are tons of them walking distance to here) and sadly it found none.

I then decided to try mexican food, the next most common restaurant out here, and I got Sonic's Drive in, McDonald's, and Subway. ... And I'm in the SF/Bay Area, so it should be easy. ... D:

One day Yelp will die, but for now it's a necessary evil. :(

My reaction was the same. Maybe Google Maps? Not that I want to send more of my data to Google, but this is totally unacceptable.

Especially during COVID, I'm trying to make sure that as much of my money goes to the restaurant as possible when I call in a takeout order. It would be one thing if Yelp showed me an advertisement and I clicked through and placed an order. But when I'm using Yelp just to look up a phone number, there's absolutely no reason for a commission.

Currently what I do is I look resturants up on Yelp, due to my food allergy mentioned above, then I go to google for the phone number. Problem is, Yelp delists companies that do not pay them.

I'd second Google Maps, unless you need to get realllllly granular with food category. My primary search for restaurants on Google Maps is "chinese food" or "hamburger" or the like and I always get appropriate results without being limited by business name.

TripAdvisor

Thanks for the reply. Any idea how to sort by rating? It's not giving me the option and is recommending food I'm allergic to. I searched for Mexican and got, Chili's, Chipotle, and Taco Bell, instead of listing hole in the wall places near by me, which are the restaurants I can eat at.

Sorry. I see it doesn't go to that detail. I usually use TripAdvisor when traveling, and appreciate the reviews - which don't have a vested interest as far as I can see. Possibly it isn't detailed enough for big cities with lots of great hole in the walls. Maybe we should suggest it to them? They used to have a great section where you could ask locals for advice and suggestions - which led to great ideas when traveling. I just checked, and it's called the travel forum. That would be interesting, to post there, with a specific question, and see who answers? I just checked locally, and people are still monitoring, so it may work. Good luck.

Thanks for info. I'm going to have to check TripAdvisor every so often and see how it grows. I like the site.

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