A lot of people call me and say things like, "I'm having drinks in SOMA after work and then I want to eat jerk chicken. Where should I go?" or, "I need to plan a party for 12 people at 7 PM on Saturday night and I would like tapas-style Indian food." or, "Is there anywhere in Sausalito that serves good teppanyaki?" and things like that.




Well, people, take my number off of speed dial and log on to FoodieBytes. You can enter a term like "jerk chicken" and your zip code and see what comes up. Basically the service searches menu items and shows you where to find them. In addition to menu items like "vegetarian burrito" or "gnocchi pomodoro" you can search terms like "gluten free" which makes it a useful resource for those with dietary restrictions.

After a little playing around with the service I would say it works relatively well for that which it is narrowly defined to do, but not much more. If you want to search by a type of cuisine, you can do that on a separate screen. A big downside is that there are no review aspects to this so you'll probably have to hit FoodieBytes for the place names, but then go over to Chowhound or Yelp to see if people think the place is any good, and to see if the ambience and price fits your bill.

Currently it's only available for NY, SF, Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston. It's in beta, so they are probably open to suggestions as well... give it a try and let me know if it works to satisfy your craving! Then you can stop calling me with all of your silly questions.