Help and questions

A way to know what to order before you order it. The menu has no pictures. Bucketdish shows you the dish: photos from people who’ve eaten it, its score out of 10, how it tastes, and how well it matches your palate.

It’s built from Bites. People log the dishes they eat, one at a time, and everyone’s Bites add up to the photos, scores and flavours for each dish. You can log your own, keep a bucket list of dishes to try, and find spots on the map.

Google reviews are about the whole visit: the room, the service, the parking. Great for choosing where to go. Bucketdish is for what to order once you’re there.

On Bucketdish you rate one dish at a time, with a photo of the plate and what it tasted like. No scrolling through 400 reviews hoping someone mentions the risotto.

One dish, logged by one person. A Bite has your photos and your verdict: Loved it, It was fine or Not again. If you like, add what stood out, a tip for the next person and the price you paid.

Eight scores, each from 0 to 5: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, spicy, rich and fresh. A dish starts with an estimate from how its menu describes it. Then diners shape it: when you log a Bite, you can pick the tastes that stood out.

Your palate is built from your own Bites. It leans on the dishes you loved and the ones you ate recently. Bucketdish compares it with a dish’s Flavour Index and gives you a match from 0 to 100. See it on a dish page.

Want a head start? An optional quiz of 12 dish photos gives it something to go on before your first Bite.

Every dish and spot you want to try, in one place. Tap the heart, or Bucket it, on any dish or spot and it lands there. You can make lists of your own too, like date night or Sunday lunch.

Yes. Follow people to see their Bites in your Following feed, like them, comment on them, and bucket anything that looks good. Once you’ve both logged a few Bites, their profile shows your taste match.

Each week (Monday to Sunday), and each month, we shortlist the dishes in each town or city that at least 2 different people have logged. They’re ranked by rating, pulled towards the local average while a dish has only a few Bites, so one lucky score can’t win. Loved dishes move up, and smaller places get a small lift, so a busy restaurant can’t drown out a small, good one.

Then a Bucketdish editor picks one dish from the shortlist and writes the one-line reason you see on Explore.

It’s never paid for. No restaurant can buy a pick, and claiming a restaurant on Bucketdish doesn’t change its chances. A restaurant’s replies and its own photos don’t count towards it either.

Places come from OpenStreetMap, so you can search for restaurants, cafés, bars and pubs far beyond the big cities. If a spot’s missing, you can add it when you log a Bite.

Fair warning: Bucketdish is new, so in lots of places you’ll be the first to log a dish. Someone has to go first. You may also spot some sample Bites we made while building it. They go before we launch properly.

Nothing. Bucketdish is free, there are no ads in it, and we don’t sell your data to anyone.

Not in the app stores yet. The iPhone app is being tested on TestFlight, and Android comes after that. Want to know when it’s out? Join the waitlist on bucketdish.com.

Your Bites, photos, verdicts and public lists are visible to other people on Bucketdish. That’s the point of a shared food map. Your email address isn’t: we only use it to sign you in and to reach you about your account.

If someone’s bothering you, block them, and you’re hidden from each other.

No. Bucketdish asks your phone for a rough position only while you’re using the map or logging a Bite, so it can show what’s near you and suggest the place you’re in. We don’t store your position, and we don’t keep a history of where you go.

We do store the restaurant you pick, because that is part of the Bite.

Your account, Bites, lists and follows live in a database in London, and your photos are stored with Vercel. We don’t sell or rent your data, there are no ads, and there are no third-party advertising or analytics trackers in the app. Our privacy page has the full detail.

From your profile in the app, any time. Or email hello@bucketdish.com from the address on your account and we’ll do it within 30 days. Either way, your Bites, photos, lists, follows and sessions go with it.

You can ask for a copy of everything we hold about you the same way.

Every Bite, comment and profile has a Report option, and every profile has Block. We review reports and remove anything that breaks our terms. You can also email hello@bucketdish.com and tell us what and where.