Google Maps adds dish-covery to the menu

Update September 10, 2019: We've launched popular dishes on iOS, making dish-covery even easier.

When you’re trying out a new restaurant, Google Maps already shows you how to get there, photos, reviews and ratings. But as you scan the menu, you’re probably wondering, “What’s good?” Now Google Maps is making it easy to “dish-cover” a restaurant’s most crowd-pleasing meals with a new popular dishes feature.

Popular dishes from down the street and around the planet

Whether you’re craving a tea cocktail in Brooklyn or sampling Pacific Rim cuisine in London, Google Maps now highlights a restaurant’s most popular items on the menu, so you can place your order with confidence.

The popular dishes feature is powered by a machine learning algorithm that matches dish names, provided by Google Maps users, with relevant photos and reviews. This creates a handy arrangement of a restaurant’s most popular meals right at your fingertips in Google Maps.

Simply pull up a restaurant on Google Maps to find its popular dishes in the overview tab. Feeling extra peckish? Dive into the menu tab to scroll through all the most-talked about meals, and tap on a popular dish to explore reviews and photos. In a country where you can’t read the language? Maps will also translate the reviews for you too.  

At the end of the day, this feature is  made possible because of contributions from people around the world who want to help others using Google Maps. So if you want to pay it forward to the next diner, simply take a photo of your meal (before you’ve scarfed it down!) and add a dish name so others can know what’s good on the menu.

From getting you directions to helping you find a popular dish, Google Maps is there for your dining journey. You’ve heard of “farm-to-table”—now we bring you from “door-to-dish.”

It’s all part of Google Maps becoming even more helpful as you travel, dine and get things done. From a redesigned Explore tab in Google Maps that helps you find things to do, group planning features that make it easier to coordinate with friends and family, and now popular dishes, Google Maps is helping you get out and enjoy the world.

Starting today, popular dishes is live on Google Maps for Android devices worldwide and will be rolled out to iOS users in the coming months.