Finding A Meal with AI is A Little Undercooked

Kevin Not-A-Robot
Jan 31
3 min read

Updated: Feb 11

027 - A REVIEW of the AI meal finder, Find A Meal.

Listen To The Article

Robotic hands cutting a cooked steak on a plate with garnish, against a dark dotted background. Silvery metallic texture and focus.

The Pitch

Let AI find you the best places to eat.

I'm guilty of eating out a lot. Seamless and Uber Eats are the apps I use the most on my phone. So when I came across an AI-powered search engine tailored to finding me places to eat, I was excited. Unfortunately, this experience felt a bit undercooked (pun intended).

Find A Meal website homepage — Find A Meal promises to find you the best place, with middling results.

The Experience

Getting Started With Find A Meal

As with most AI apps I've reviewed, this one was simple. In fact, there's really no onboarding available. As simple as the app is, there should still be one, given how wide an audience could benefit from it.

The app requires you to enter your email to create a profile, but not for the reasons one would think. There weren't any options to set your home location or the types of meals you like. There was no real way to set your preferences based on attributes around your eating and travel habits. This is a big miss and ultimately affects the experience in a big way, as you'll see in the rest of my review.

Assessing Find A Meal's Usability

Find A Meal feels really barebones and is not fully fleshed out. There are two ways to search for a meal. First, you can use the app's built-in chat, which works similarly to other AI-prompting apps. There is nothing special here. The other is like using Google Search, where you type in what you are in the mood to eat.

Both options present the same outcome, so why two options are needed? Most, if not all, people will look for places to eat based on the habits they've already become accustomed to when using search engines.

The app's results didn't provide anything that would make me quit my current apps for finding food. Frustratingly, when the app displayed my search results on the map, it showed locations outside my city, NY. Every time I did a new search, I was required to input my zip code repeatedly. This is something that should already be associated with my profile.

Lastly, one nitpick is that distance is measured in Kilometers instead of Miles, and there is no option to change this based on preference. The simple app makes little functions like this stand out even more when missing.

Find a meal's map and restaurant location display — Even after entering my zip code, the site continued to show my location as Philadelphia.

Find A Meal Standout Features

I couldn't find anything in this app that stood out well. Find A Meal needs more time in the oven, as it feels like an app in the early stages of Beta with barebones features and issues.

The Verdict

Why Should You Care

Find A Meal is one of the apps where you can easily see the potential. Just imagine your AI assistant who knows and understands what food you like, when, and where you'd like to eat it. This app could have set itself apart from Yelp or any similar service. I wouldn't recommend it in its current state. The good thing is it's free!