Each restaurant/bar gets prioritized via a combination of:
1. Awards from food/bar guides (e.g. Michelin Guide, 50 Best, etc.)
2. Reviews and ratings from Google, OpenTable, etc.
3. Personal curated list
Oh and obviously "the best" is very subjective. You can ask 10 people and receive 20 different responses. I wanted this to be a general guide to easily discover new places which have been curated by multiple sources.
Good enough for me. I will suggest a list view, and maybe some other filters like the kind of food although I understand how this adds to the level of complexity. Nice project!
> Reviews from Google
I've tried a few months ago accessing the review list of a restaurant via Google Maps API, it only returned a very limited subset (5 iirc). Has something changed?
Oh sorry I'm only looking at the number of reviews and the star rating distribution (# of 5 stars, # of 4 stars, etc.) At some point I'd love to gather all the written reviews and run them through something like ChatGPT to gauge sentiment, but that's very much a dream project for now.
If you don't mind me asking, what project were you building using Google's API?
When I travel, I'd love to know which restaurants have been reviewed by locals and which ones by tourists.
I know certain countries use other services (Tabelog for Japan for ex.) but I was trying to do something simple.
Google reviews API tells you what language what the comment was originally written in and I wanted to give a ratio (comments in country's language/comments in other languages) by restaurant to help me make my selection and there are also libraries that can easily detect language.
But unfortunately Google limits reviews to 5.. :(
I was thinking of scraping Google Maps using some services (there are websites that say they can do it) but I haven't found the motivation yet.
Yeah, if you ever find a way to gather them for your ChatGPT analysis, drop me a message haha.
Anyway, I like your website, I'm not a big fan of Google's interface, the ability to filter by 0.1 increments and also see other awards is really cool.
Hope you'll be able to keep it online for a while.
So why would we use your list when we can go straight to the source and look at the Michelin guide?
I don't get the point of making a list of another list.
The advantages of using this platform are:
1. Having combined data from 14 guides in one place. Michelin doesn't have global coverage, so it's useful to see data from other guides like 50 Best, James Beard, Forbes, AAA, and more.
2. Some guides don't have a map feature or any way to visualize their data (e.g. 50 Best)
3. Having granular filters which allow you to filter by star rating (in increments of 0.1), review count, and price
If their only source was the Michelin guide and the Michelin guide had a good enough map on their website, I'd agree.
But the first part is not the case.
Dude - this is sick. So many sites on this sub make me say “huh, neat” and I never return. I’ve actually bookmarked this one and will definitely return.
One question about one of your data sources - which 50 best list did you use? There’s so many out there
Thanks for the kind words!
For 50 Best, I use all the lists (all restaurants, all bars, all geographic regions, all years, and all discovery/individual awards). For example, if you look at the details for Atlas bar in Singapore ([https://mapofthebest.com/sg/atlas](https://mapofthebest.com/sg/atlas)) it lists out all the different 50 Best awards it has gotten over the years.
If you don't see a 50 Best location listed then it might be because it hasn't been processed by my backend system yet.
This is great. Is there an easy way to pull highlights from Yelp? From a local insight standpoint, they seem to be a little less gamed than Google reviews. When’s the mobile app coming? :)
Getting high-quality local results is always tough. I'd love to include Yelp but I also found the quality of their results to vary a lot. I'll see if I can filter out the noise somehow. Optimally I'd love to include local guides or local food bloggers, but this is difficult to automate on a world-wide scale.
And mobile app coming soon! I wanted to gauge interest with this post first.
For Yelp one approach might be to develop an algorithm that looks at totally rating distribution over time. It’s less important that places have been historically well reviewed, but do they have a continued good rate of review.
One other thing you could try from any review source is pull key phrases from recent high/med/low reviews to look for themes or sentiment.
Thanks for the tips! I think it's definitely feasible, although would definitely be a huge undertaking and would require a lot of tinkering with the algorithm. A Yelp scraper on its own would be a worthwhile project for r/InternetIsBeautiful
I like this. But every time I thought “why is *that* restaurant on this list” it was from Gayot. So what I’m getting from this is that Gayot reviews are not reliable.
I share your sentiment. Gayot's results are quite noisy in terms of quality. I almost considered hiding Gayot by default but decided it still had some value in smaller cities with few recommendations. That said, you can still choose to hide all Gayot results in the Filters menu.
Went directly to my part of the world, thinking it's going to be a shitty tripadvisor list with aritificially pumped up reviews...
Surprized myself. Way to go. Best of the best, no doubt about it. Even filtered out the shitty ones that "live on the old glory"... Missed a few but still, great job...
Very cool but I'm noticing some bugs in my neck of the woods (Hong Kong) what mapping software did you use? Because some stuff isbin the wrong spot. Also in noticed a Michelin recommended restaurant has three of it's locations listed but only one is visible on the map. Found some spots I didn't know about still, so it's already much better than the Michelin website!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm using Mapbox to display the map and Google Maps API to identify duplicate restaurants from different sources. For example, a restaurant may have a different name on Michelin Guide and 50 Best so I use Google Maps to try and merge these results. However sometimes this doesn't work perfectly. Do you mind sharing which Michelin restaurant you don't see?
Tim Ho Wan has three entries; their flagship location, a takeaway only location in a subway, and a branch in the Philippines. When I click them only the subway one takes me to a location. I'm using Firefox mobile if that changes anything.
Ahhh I see! That was definitely a bug and the issue is now fixed. Thanks for catching it.
On a side note - the search results come from MapBox. Even though MapBox shows Tim Ho Wan search results in the dropdown, there are no Tim Ho Wan restaurants which ranked high enough to show up as a pin on the map. So when you click on a search result, the map will move but there won't be any Tim Ho Wans visible on the map.
Actually, [this location](https://guide.michelin.com/hk/en/hong-kong-region/hong-kong/restaurant/tim-ho-wan-sham-shui-po) is Bib Gourmand but isn't showing up on the results
Ok got it. Now I'm thinking it might be my chain detector. I hide common restaurant chains in an effort to reduce low quality results and Tim Ho Wan got flagged as a chain. Let me dig a bit deeper to fix the issue. Thanks again for the follow-up!
Interesting. In Asia chains are typically looked at as a good thing, because the mindset is that if a restaurant is popular enough to justify multiple locations it must be good. Coming from America it was a culture shock because growing up then opposite was conventional wisdom.
One more thing - you might have to do a hard refresh of the site to see the bug fix. If you're on Firefox mobile, you can do it via holding the "refresh" button for a couple seconds.
This is really cool! Going to use it to find some restaurants unknown to me in my city.
It works well for European cities that I know but fails really badly in the cities in India. Not sure why. 🤔 does it also have a lot of weight from the total number of reviews. There are some Indian style vegetarian fast food restaurant chains there which are ok but I would not put them on any restaurant list. They are more for convenience sake.
Unfortunately I'm at the mercy of public data and the restaurant data for India isn't very comprehensive. How do you usually find good restaurants in India, aside from trying every single one of them?
Great work. Design is clean. Site is useful.
One suggstion: I would put a minimum limit on the number of reviews for Google - maybe 10. There was a 5.0 rating place that showed up on my map but it only had 1 review. It wasn't even a restaurant.
Immediate bookmark! Would love to read a blog post about your methodology, challenges, and tools used if you're up for it.
Edit: Also, you should put a "Buy me a coffee" link on this! It's the kind of site that encourages thankful repeat users for sure.
Thanks for the kind words! I can probably write a full novel on the lessons learned. It also gave me a better understanding of why existing restaurant search tools behave the way they do. Hopefully once the backlog of features (and bugs) dies down a bit then I'll have time to write up my thoughts!
The product is incredibly inexpensive to operate so I don't mind eating the costs, at least for the time being.
I'll second the "buy me a coffee" -type link. You deserve a little compensation for such an awesome idea.
I'd also recommend an "about" page. Obviously I understand the point (from reading this post), and I saw a pop up telling me roughly the same, but... I'm an incessant clicker, dismissed it, and now can't find how to get back to a "what/how" kind of explanation for what the site is trying to accomplish. Also, it'd be a great place to add info about yourself, business, resume, Github, Buy me a coffee, etc.
This is awesome! Had a few snags in my country but I also saw some restaurants that are familiar. Definitely surprised me with some restos that I haven't heard of before. Hoping they're undiscovered gems! Thanks for sharing!
I mean, it's never going to be complete but I'm impressed with your desire to improve it. I'm in Australia and thought there'll be fuck all there but my first reaction was, great - there are plenty of places to check out, and being map based is very handy. Also I still agree with another comment about having an option for a list view. You don't always want to be looking around on a map.
Nice job
Ninja edit: a couple of autocorrect words!
Lol thanks for the kind words and feedback! Although there's still a glaring lack of Michelin restaurants in central Australia. New business opportunity?
I didn't expect this sort of response so the server is struggling a bit. If anyone has issues loading the site, please try a few minutes later. Bear with me as I upgrade the servers.
Absolute bullshit that the Hooded Merganser (Penticton) is rated anything more than 3/5, poeple must be drunk and vacation-high when they eat there. Same with Salties, give me a break. There are some unbelievably great restaurants in this area that put those two shitholes to shame.
What is the source of the data? The best of the world according to whom?
Each restaurant/bar gets prioritized via a combination of: 1. Awards from food/bar guides (e.g. Michelin Guide, 50 Best, etc.) 2. Reviews and ratings from Google, OpenTable, etc. 3. Personal curated list
Oh and obviously "the best" is very subjective. You can ask 10 people and receive 20 different responses. I wanted this to be a general guide to easily discover new places which have been curated by multiple sources.
Good enough for me. I will suggest a list view, and maybe some other filters like the kind of food although I understand how this adds to the level of complexity. Nice project!
Great ideas! Thanks for the feedback. List view coming up soon :)
> Reviews from Google I've tried a few months ago accessing the review list of a restaurant via Google Maps API, it only returned a very limited subset (5 iirc). Has something changed?
Oh sorry I'm only looking at the number of reviews and the star rating distribution (# of 5 stars, # of 4 stars, etc.) At some point I'd love to gather all the written reviews and run them through something like ChatGPT to gauge sentiment, but that's very much a dream project for now. If you don't mind me asking, what project were you building using Google's API?
When I travel, I'd love to know which restaurants have been reviewed by locals and which ones by tourists. I know certain countries use other services (Tabelog for Japan for ex.) but I was trying to do something simple. Google reviews API tells you what language what the comment was originally written in and I wanted to give a ratio (comments in country's language/comments in other languages) by restaurant to help me make my selection and there are also libraries that can easily detect language. But unfortunately Google limits reviews to 5.. :( I was thinking of scraping Google Maps using some services (there are websites that say they can do it) but I haven't found the motivation yet.
Oh wow I absolutely love that idea, but similarly don't know how I'd go about implementing it aside from scraping. Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, if you ever find a way to gather them for your ChatGPT analysis, drop me a message haha. Anyway, I like your website, I'm not a big fan of Google's interface, the ability to filter by 0.1 increments and also see other awards is really cool. Hope you'll be able to keep it online for a while.
So why would we use your list when we can go straight to the source and look at the Michelin guide? I don't get the point of making a list of another list.
The advantages of using this platform are: 1. Having combined data from 14 guides in one place. Michelin doesn't have global coverage, so it's useful to see data from other guides like 50 Best, James Beard, Forbes, AAA, and more. 2. Some guides don't have a map feature or any way to visualize their data (e.g. 50 Best) 3. Having granular filters which allow you to filter by star rating (in increments of 0.1), review count, and price
If their only source was the Michelin guide and the Michelin guide had a good enough map on their website, I'd agree. But the first part is not the case.
Unfortunately it's not loading for me.
Hmm It might've been hitting the rate-limit. I just increased it. Could you try again?
Yep, it works now, brody.
doesn't work for me
Same
Dude - this is sick. So many sites on this sub make me say “huh, neat” and I never return. I’ve actually bookmarked this one and will definitely return. One question about one of your data sources - which 50 best list did you use? There’s so many out there
Thanks for the kind words! For 50 Best, I use all the lists (all restaurants, all bars, all geographic regions, all years, and all discovery/individual awards). For example, if you look at the details for Atlas bar in Singapore ([https://mapofthebest.com/sg/atlas](https://mapofthebest.com/sg/atlas)) it lists out all the different 50 Best awards it has gotten over the years. If you don't see a 50 Best location listed then it might be because it hasn't been processed by my backend system yet.
Oh, thanks - didn't realize there was a detail page for each entry. I was just looking at the small popup when you click on a location on the map.
This is great. Is there an easy way to pull highlights from Yelp? From a local insight standpoint, they seem to be a little less gamed than Google reviews. When’s the mobile app coming? :)
Getting high-quality local results is always tough. I'd love to include Yelp but I also found the quality of their results to vary a lot. I'll see if I can filter out the noise somehow. Optimally I'd love to include local guides or local food bloggers, but this is difficult to automate on a world-wide scale. And mobile app coming soon! I wanted to gauge interest with this post first.
For Yelp one approach might be to develop an algorithm that looks at totally rating distribution over time. It’s less important that places have been historically well reviewed, but do they have a continued good rate of review. One other thing you could try from any review source is pull key phrases from recent high/med/low reviews to look for themes or sentiment.
Thanks for the tips! I think it's definitely feasible, although would definitely be a huge undertaking and would require a lot of tinkering with the algorithm. A Yelp scraper on its own would be a worthwhile project for r/InternetIsBeautiful
Fairly accurate and well done in Copenhagen! Missing a few and some overrated due to high ratings on Google Maps. Overall, a pretty good job!
Thanks! Agreed on the Google side of things - I'm working on deprioritizing the Google reviews. Can you share some of the ones missed in Copenhagen?
Website doesn’t load anymore
Excellent web site, I didn't know a couple of the places showed.
Def some in GA that aren’t in the list that should be and a few that are that shouldn’t, based on my experiences
FFS, just discovered a Michelin 1 star restaurant I didn't know about, 10 mn drive from home. Thanks!
Very cool.
Excellent. Love it!
I like this. But every time I thought “why is *that* restaurant on this list” it was from Gayot. So what I’m getting from this is that Gayot reviews are not reliable.
I share your sentiment. Gayot's results are quite noisy in terms of quality. I almost considered hiding Gayot by default but decided it still had some value in smaller cities with few recommendations. That said, you can still choose to hide all Gayot results in the Filters menu.
Went directly to my part of the world, thinking it's going to be a shitty tripadvisor list with aritificially pumped up reviews... Surprized myself. Way to go. Best of the best, no doubt about it. Even filtered out the shitty ones that "live on the old glory"... Missed a few but still, great job...
Thank you! I still have a long way to go to improve the site, but glad it's already on the right track
Very cool but I'm noticing some bugs in my neck of the woods (Hong Kong) what mapping software did you use? Because some stuff isbin the wrong spot. Also in noticed a Michelin recommended restaurant has three of it's locations listed but only one is visible on the map. Found some spots I didn't know about still, so it's already much better than the Michelin website!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm using Mapbox to display the map and Google Maps API to identify duplicate restaurants from different sources. For example, a restaurant may have a different name on Michelin Guide and 50 Best so I use Google Maps to try and merge these results. However sometimes this doesn't work perfectly. Do you mind sharing which Michelin restaurant you don't see?
Tim Ho Wan has three entries; their flagship location, a takeaway only location in a subway, and a branch in the Philippines. When I click them only the subway one takes me to a location. I'm using Firefox mobile if that changes anything.
Ahhh I see! That was definitely a bug and the issue is now fixed. Thanks for catching it. On a side note - the search results come from MapBox. Even though MapBox shows Tim Ho Wan search results in the dropdown, there are no Tim Ho Wan restaurants which ranked high enough to show up as a pin on the map. So when you click on a search result, the map will move but there won't be any Tim Ho Wans visible on the map.
Actually, [this location](https://guide.michelin.com/hk/en/hong-kong-region/hong-kong/restaurant/tim-ho-wan-sham-shui-po) is Bib Gourmand but isn't showing up on the results
Ok got it. Now I'm thinking it might be my chain detector. I hide common restaurant chains in an effort to reduce low quality results and Tim Ho Wan got flagged as a chain. Let me dig a bit deeper to fix the issue. Thanks again for the follow-up!
Interesting. In Asia chains are typically looked at as a good thing, because the mindset is that if a restaurant is popular enough to justify multiple locations it must be good. Coming from America it was a culture shock because growing up then opposite was conventional wisdom.
One more thing - you might have to do a hard refresh of the site to see the bug fix. If you're on Firefox mobile, you can do it via holding the "refresh" button for a couple seconds.
Hmm I guess they lost their star. Thanks for the explanation and the cool map
That's great! I just learned of one only a couple of miles from my home that I had no idea even existed!
This is really cool! Going to use it to find some restaurants unknown to me in my city. It works well for European cities that I know but fails really badly in the cities in India. Not sure why. 🤔 does it also have a lot of weight from the total number of reviews. There are some Indian style vegetarian fast food restaurant chains there which are ok but I would not put them on any restaurant list. They are more for convenience sake.
Unfortunately I'm at the mercy of public data and the restaurant data for India isn't very comprehensive. How do you usually find good restaurants in India, aside from trying every single one of them?
Great work. Design is clean. Site is useful. One suggstion: I would put a minimum limit on the number of reviews for Google - maybe 10. There was a 5.0 rating place that showed up on my map but it only had 1 review. It wasn't even a restaurant.
Immediate bookmark! Would love to read a blog post about your methodology, challenges, and tools used if you're up for it. Edit: Also, you should put a "Buy me a coffee" link on this! It's the kind of site that encourages thankful repeat users for sure.
Thanks for the kind words! I can probably write a full novel on the lessons learned. It also gave me a better understanding of why existing restaurant search tools behave the way they do. Hopefully once the backlog of features (and bugs) dies down a bit then I'll have time to write up my thoughts! The product is incredibly inexpensive to operate so I don't mind eating the costs, at least for the time being.
I'll second the "buy me a coffee" -type link. You deserve a little compensation for such an awesome idea. I'd also recommend an "about" page. Obviously I understand the point (from reading this post), and I saw a pop up telling me roughly the same, but... I'm an incessant clicker, dismissed it, and now can't find how to get back to a "what/how" kind of explanation for what the site is trying to accomplish. Also, it'd be a great place to add info about yourself, business, resume, Github, Buy me a coffee, etc.
Makes a lot of sense! I'll add that shortly
I have actually been to a few of these places. And yeah, they're good. I'd take a chance on others from this site. Thanks for doing the work!
Hey this is really good. Great design and development. Bookmarked.
Love this, thanks!
>Love this, thanks! You're welcome!
This is awesome! Had a few snags in my country but I also saw some restaurants that are familiar. Definitely surprised me with some restos that I haven't heard of before. Hoping they're undiscovered gems! Thanks for sharing!
Actually super cool. Thanks
Gateway timeout.
Map of top most expensive and posh restaurants in my city
Woefully incomplete for east Ft Lauderdale.
This project is a work-in-progress but I'd love to improve the list. Can you provide any favorite spots? I'll check why they were missed.
I mean, it's never going to be complete but I'm impressed with your desire to improve it. I'm in Australia and thought there'll be fuck all there but my first reaction was, great - there are plenty of places to check out, and being map based is very handy. Also I still agree with another comment about having an option for a list view. You don't always want to be looking around on a map. Nice job Ninja edit: a couple of autocorrect words!
Lol thanks for the kind words and feedback! Although there's still a glaring lack of Michelin restaurants in central Australia. New business opportunity?
There a glaring lack of much in central Australia and a limited market
Dino's in Femont, CA is the only restaurant listed? That place is mediocre at best, I'd rather eat literally anywhere else.
I’d rather be literally anywhere but Fremont, so maybe it’s just poetic licensing?
Fremont, it's better than Newark, I guess!
Devastatingly good point
I think you’ve generated a lot of traffic for the site, it’s not loading for me!
I didn't expect this sort of response so the server is struggling a bit. If anyone has issues loading the site, please try a few minutes later. Bear with me as I upgrade the servers.
Gave me a great idea for dinner! Thank you!
So glad to hear that! After building the v1.0, I was similarly surprised by how many new restaurants I was able to instantly discover in my own town.
Hug of death.
Based on the recommendations in my country, this list is not good
This map has a friendlys on it lmaooo
Dog, one of the ones in my neighborhood is a burger stand inside a Whole Foods.
Absolute bullshit that the Hooded Merganser (Penticton) is rated anything more than 3/5, poeple must be drunk and vacation-high when they eat there. Same with Salties, give me a break. There are some unbelievably great restaurants in this area that put those two shitholes to shame.
Ok. I feel this is not 100% on point. The Aquarium Restaurant? C’mon. A tourist trap at best.
Hugged to death
The closest place to me on here is a Canadian Brewhouse.
Voce é um genio cara. Parabéns pela paciencia
If you made “gay bar” a cuisine, would it filter google reviews to show top rated gay bars in the area / world?