This one’s for all my foodies. As someone who genuinely has “food” listed in the interests section of her résumé, I always jump at the chance to try a new restaurant, café, or bakery. While my Providence food tour has been somewhat limited by a mix of freshman-year busyness, laziness, dining hall dependence, and unemployment, I’m excited to eventually explore all the hidden food gems our city has to offer.
At home, in Tokyo, and whenever I visit somewhere new, one of my favorite ways to document a trip is through the app Beli. Beli is a platform where users can review, rank, and share restaurants on their profiles, bookmark places they “want to try,” and keep up with their friends’ foodie adventures. Personally, I’ve rated 177 places on Beli, with 37 currently sitting in my “want to try” list, and both numbers are always growing.
I find myself opening the app just to see how my friends across the globe are doing—or really, how they’re eating. I always know my sister is thriving when I see her paragraph-long, food-critic-esque review pop up on my feed. Overall, Beli is a fun, low-stakes app that every foodie, and especially every foodie newbie, needs.
How Does It Work?
On Beli, you can add a new location under one of five categories: restaurants, bakeries, bars, coffee & tea, or ice cream & dessert. Once you’ve categorized the place, you choose one of three ratings: “I liked it!”, “It was fine”, or “I didn’t like it.”
From there, you can tag friends, add labels, notes, favorite dishes, photos, and visit dates. I personally love tagging the friend I shared the meal with, especially because Beli borrows from Spotify’s “Wrapped” trend by creating a monthly recap that includes who you shared the most meals with. I also usually add notes—whether that’s about wait time, the overall vibe, or me simply raving (or complaining) about the food.
Once you post, your review shows up on your feed for friends to see, like, and comment on.
Finding New Spots Made Easy
Beli is also perfect for scoping out restaurants before you commit to going. When you search a spot, you can see photos of popular dishes, overall ratings, and even a personalized “rec score,” which predicts how much you’ll like a place based on your past ratings. If any of your friends have been there before, you can see their rankings too—which, in my opinion, is way more trustworthy than random online reviews. Fun fact: the Ratty, V-dub, Jo’s, Ivy Room, and the Blue Room are all rated on Beli!
Another feature I love is the “Recs for You” section. On the rare occasion that I run out of new places to try, I scroll through this list for inspiration. Beli curates recommendations based on your “taste profile,” which includes what percentile of diners you fall into in your city, a dining map showing where you’ve eaten around the world, and your top cuisines. Check out this article on a new addition to Thayer Street if you’re looking for your first spot to bookmark.
Unsurprisingly, my top cuisine is Japanese; most of the spots I’ve ranked are Japanese, and they also have my highest average ratings. I also take my Beli streak very seriously (more seriously than I ever took a Snapchat streak). I’m currently at 34 weeks, though I’ll admit I occasionally cheat by ranking old spots during weeks when I don’t try anything new.
Beli as a Way to Connect
As silly as it may sound, Beli is genuinely a fun way to connect with friends. I have friends on the app who I’m not quite close enough with to text regularly, but the fun glimpses on Beli into what they’re eating in their college towns or on weekend trips is something I can always look forward to.