How do you keep track of all these restaurants/recommendati?

Its friday night and you've just gotten home from work. The MRS or MR says "lets go out to dinner tonight." You know there's a multitude of restaurants and specific dishes you've been wanting to try. But where to begin? A cursory glance at the front page of LTH? The Yelp/urbanspoon/GNR guide apps on your smartphone? A list or matrix that you've put together to remind yourself of where you'd like to try? The options really do seem endless at times and one can sometimes take an hour or more just figuring out where they'd like to go eat in this wonderful city of ours. How do you make it more efficient?

I've been adding places to a Google Map for a while now. It's very simple to do, and it makes it easy to access from my phone if I'm out and about and want to see if any good places are near by.

Kid Charlemagne wrote:I've been adding places to a Google Map for a while now. It's very simple to do, and it makes it easy to access from my phone if I'm out and about and want to see if any good places are near by.

How does this work? I'm intrigued.

The only thing I use the yelp app is for this very thing. Bookmark the places I like or want to try etc and they are sorted by distance. Very easy.

pairs4life wrote:

Kid Charlemagne wrote:I've been adding places to a Google Map for a while now. It's very simple to do, and it makes it easy to access from my phone if I'm out and about and want to see if any good places are near by.

How does this work? I'm intrigued.

I do this for Chicago and any city that I visit for vacation. Simply go to Google Maps and search for your desired location. An option to "Save to map" will become available, and you can add the location to one of your personalized maps or a newly created map. From your iphone, enter this address into your browser: http://my-maps.appspot.com/maps. Follow the prompts to grant access, and you will see the list of your personalized Google maps.

Commbrkdwn wrote:A list or matrix that you've put together to remind yourself of where you'd like to try?

This is what I do. I have a dinner list and a brunch list. Both lists have 6-12 places at the top for the ones I've been most wanting to try. On my list, I include the neighborhood or suburb, and a link to the restaurant's website.

Pucca wrote:

pairs4life wrote:

Kid Charlemagne wrote:I've been adding places to a Google Map for a while now. It's very simple to do, and it makes it easy to access from my phone if I'm out and about and want to see if any good places are near by.

How does this work? I'm intrigued.

I do this for Chicago and any city that I visit for vacation. Simply go to Google Maps and search for your desired location. An option to "Save to map" will become available, and you can add the location to one of your personalized maps or a newly created map. From your iphone, enter this address into your browser: http://my-maps.appspot.com/maps. Follow the prompts to grant access, and you will see the list of your personalized Google maps.

Thats exactly what we do whenever we visit a new city. It is really useful to input information about interesting restaurants around the areas you plan to visit. Sharing the link allows multiple people to work on it at the same time. Makes planning a lot easier. For Chicago, I never have a problem of remembering a place I want to try nearby so I dont really use a list.

nsxtasy wrote:

Commbrkdwn wrote:A list or matrix that you've put together to remind yourself of where you'd like to try?

This is what I do. I have a dinner list and a brunch list. Both lists have 6-12 places at the top for the ones I've been most wanting to try. On my list, I include the neighborhood or suburb, and a link to the restaurant's website.

Since making this thread, thats exactly what I've started doing - I created a worksheet in excel with the sortable columns of:

Restaurant
Type of cuisine
subset of type (for instance: "Asian, Thai")
Neighborhood/Location
Price Range
Suggested Dish
Whether or not my wife would eat there (she's a lot more picky than I am)
Website

There's 79 entries so far

The problem isn't keeping a list, it's reducing it.

That said, I've been keeping a Google map with my 'hit list' for a few years now. Still, no matter how frequently I go out, the list continues to grow.

=R=