6 Best Apps for Food-Loving Travelers
Finding great food on the road is a strategic endeavor—part art, part gamble. Sure, there’s always the chance you’ll stumble onto the odd gem, but you’re more likely to have memorable meals if you do some research and planning in advance, like reading local reviews, cross-checking against Yelp and Google, and combing through relevant social-media posts to find those can’t-miss destinations and experiences. Once you’ve got the entry-level stuff down, these five apps (plus one bonus resource) will take your game up a notch.
1. LocalEats
Looking to elevate your dining experience from generic to hyper-local? An offshoot of a long-running series of guides called Where the Locals Eat, the LocalEats app curates the best restaurants in your vicinity—no chains allowed. For a plethora of options, search by cuisine, price range, and neighborhood, or enable GPS location services to discover recommended establishments nearby, like a vegetarian-friendly dumpling house in Little Rock or Ann Arbor's best Ethiopian joint. You can also narrow the field by opting to show the staff’s top picks only.
Free, available on iPhone and Android; localeats.com.
(Courtesy Withlocals)
2. Withlocals
A “weird food” tour in Hong Kong, or an edible-garden tour in Kuala Lumpur? Wine-tasting with an Italian winemaker in Rome, or a vegetarian tapas crawl in Madrid? Withlocals links travelers with people on the ground in 22 countries and 50 cities to offer unique activities, food-focused and otherwise, including cooking classes, home dinners, and all kinds of tours.
Free, available on iPhone and Android; withlocals.com.
3. Eatwith
Another platform connecting locals and itinerants for food tours, classes, and private meals, Eatwith provides travelers with a taste of city life. Book a Sunday dinner in Reykjavík with a mechanical engineer and his distillery-manager wife, or settle in for four courses of Hungarian home cooking in Budapest; stateside, make deep-dish pizza with a Chicago-area native, take a seat at the table for a Venezuelan winter feast in Brooklyn, or explore Miami’s hidden side with a secret food tour.
Free, available on iPhone and Android; eatwith.com.
4. ChefsFeed
Who has a better handle on the food world than a culinary professional? ChefsFeed gets a network of kitchen stars (think: Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, and Momofuku Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi) to give up the intel on their favorite dining destinations, from niche interests like New York’s best bets for sea urchin to macro-level primers like where to eat in Colorado's ski towns. Search by city, look for nearby hot spots, or peruse the experts’ picks for your location.
Free, available on iPhone and Android; chefsfeed.com.
5. Drizly
Say you’ve scoped out the perfect place for a meal...only to discover that it’s BYOB. Drizly can deliver a bottle or two to your door—a worthy alternative to wasting your limited free time running around in search of a liquor store. Active in nearly 100 cities nationwide, the online beverage distributor carries wine, booze, and beer, plus an array of bitters, mixers, and garnishes for the cocktail connoisseur. Throwing a hotel-room fiesta? You’ll find all the supplies you need here, from red Solo cups and plastic wine glasses to corkscrews and snacks. (Don’t forget the ping pong balls).
Free, available on iPhone and Android; drizly.com.
6. Traveling Spoon
It’s not an app, but given its deep roster of highly qualified global hosts, Traveling Spoon (travelingspoon.com) is a mandatory bookmark for any food-curious tourist heading overseas. Whether you're sitting down for a homemade meal, picking up a new culinary skill, or wandering through the local market with a guide who knows their stuff, all hosts and experiences are thoroughly vetted, so you'll be in good hands. Learn how to handle phyllo like a pro in a fifth-floor Athens apartment, join a Brazilian family for supper in São Paulo, or opt for a traditional thali-style meal in Mumbai.