chewsy

Chewsy iPhone app tells you which burger to get

I have a weird love/hate relationship with Yelp. On the one hand, when I'm traveling, it helps me find a good burger joint or girls-who-love-balding-nerds fetish club. But some users can be unfair, rating a good restaurant just one star because another diner brought along a crying baby.

I, however, usually just want to know how good the food is, and that's where an ambitious new iPhone app called Chewsy comes in.

Launching today, Chewsy is something of a micro-Yelp. Chewsy lets users rate food. And not just in general terms. What makes Chewsy awesome is that it lets diners rate individual menu items.

The app asks the question, "What's good here?" But it also answers it by presenting dish reviews from other users. Menu items can be ranked from highest rated to lowest rated at a restaurant, give a rating and review for each individual dish, and show you the highest-rated items within a certain distance.

Like everything else coming to the iPhone these days, it has some game elements. There are achievements that can be unlocked by doing certain things, like trying five different burgers a week, or eating in three different cities in a month. The beta doesn't say what unlocks them, but it should be interesting. … Read more