If you are visiting South Korea, then you would want to taste the local cuisine, relish amazing food preparations at top class restaurants and enjoy local hospitality. You can easily go to the Korean ‘Google’ version – Naver or check out Daum, which can show you tons of reviews about restaurants in Korea. However, you want to be more tech-savvy and eat at places the Koreans relish then check these Korean startups that can help you find the best place to dine and enjoy Korean hospitality.
1. MangoPlate – MangoPlate can easily be termed as the ‘Yelp’ of South Korea. This app helps people discover the fine experience of dining at some of the best Korean restaurants. The MangoPlate app can be downloaded on Apple or Android phones. It has access to an extensive database of over 200,000 restaurants in South Korea updated daily to include the hottest new places to eat. Users can find and give recommendations, add reviews and pictures, find new restaurants, and go through guides compiled by editors and power bloggers. The app has ratings for food places out of 5 and mostly any restaurant above a 3.5 rating is a safe recommendation to go to.
MangoPlate can help you select the best dining experience in South Korea
2. Dining Code – Dining Code is a technology-based company developing a database for users to enjoy better restaurant services. The app provides authentic reviews of restaurants using big data analysis system. The filtering technology used by Dining Code eliminates blog reviews written for advertisements.
The user can search for a restaurant using their own preferences and the app will come up with the best results regardless of what terms you put in. Dining Code uses various references like user assessment, the number of likes and comments, the blog content and reputation of blogs, etc., to create a fair ranking system. Every reference is meticulously measured and after that, they filter out information that seems incorrect or are advertisements.
Dining Code was launched in 2013 and has investments from Posco Technical Investment, ID Ventures, Seoul Investment Partners, HBIC and Magellan Technical Investment and K Cube Ventures.
3. Siksin – Siksin App is also a growing online-to-offline-based food tech specialty company. Siksin allows users to leave honest feedback on restaurants and recommend places to eat. What makes it different from others is that the app has interesting features like “Easy Booking” where users can make reservations for over 25,000 restaurants by clicking a button and the mobile-friendly electronic meal coupon “Siksin E-Meal Coupon” for office workers. The app can be downloaded for free from Google Play Store, T Store, and Appstore, and is also available from the website. The restaurant review app was launched in 2013.
4. Catch Table – Catch Table is a real-time restaurant reservation platform introduced by three NHN members, including CEO Yong Tae-soon. Anyone who enjoys gourmet can search for a restaurant of their taste by region, menu, restaurant name, price, etc. In particular, you can easily make a reservation for a restaurant you want by entering the date, time, and a number of people. Catch Table has launched an English version of its app and expects that foreign travelers who visit Korea will easily find great restaurants in Korea using the app, available for download on app stores.
5. Gourmet Era – Mealgeneration Inc. wants to bring uniqueness to the restaurant recommendation app market with its AI gourmet curating app. Gourmet Era app helps food connoisseurs choose the best restaurant based on their taste and gives small businesses monetizing opportunities from reviews. Gourmet Era/Age of Gourmet app recommends restaurants and menus based on expected ratings. This app offers a service that helps satisfactory gourmet experiences with recommendations and benefits that analyze the shared tastes of two or more people. The app recommends a group of restaurants based on variety of tastes, and the user can then choose, taste and post reviews. The users can avail of rewards when the order is placed with reviews.