Feeling adventurous on your food hunt? Dying to discover a new place to eat? Or are you suddenly inspired to test out a new recipe? The problem is, Malaysia is a melting pot of various cuisines and hunting down an eatery or a cafe may prove to be quite a task – especially if you’re completely new to the restaurant or its surrounding areas. Also, not everyone, aspiring MasterChef or not, have recipes on hand to cook up a storm with as and when they like.
But that’s okay!
We’ve found some top food apps that you can use to satiate the epicurean in you, be it if you need to order-in food, hunt for an eatery, get great food bargains/discounts, or brandish your cooking skills. Best of all, most of these apps are mobile-friendly and already localised. You probably wouldn’t have known that you needed them until you had ’em 😉
Foodpanda
Not entirely new to the om nom scene, Foodpanda is a one-stop food delivery service that allows you to tap, choose, and enjoy yummy meals from many restaurant in your neighbourhood. On a rainy day, within the hour, whether it’s for lunch or dinner in the office or at home, you can have the food of your choice delivered right to your doorstep. With only few taps, you can order from restaurants like KFC, Pastamania, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Sakae Sushi, or any other of your favourite cuisines, and sometimes, there are even exclusive discounts and promotions!
Download the app for Android or iOS.
Offpeak
Great deals ahead! Offpeak is an online platform that helps diners save money and time when booking great restaurants online. Once a restaurant is available in their directory, you can simply book and enjoy unlimited discounts on your favourite restaurant, every day, anytime. No more waiting for the right deal or coupon to come by. It’s easy to book and instantly confirmed. So start enjoying great dining discounts, because with Offpeak, every hour is off-peak hour.
Navigate your way to awesome food discounts via their mobile web here or better yet, download the app for Android or iOS.
HungryGoWhere
Singapore-based food app HungryGoWhere launched in the Malaysia in 2013 and set a Guinness World Record with the longest line of “Nasi Lemak Bungkus“. The app positions itself as your “kaki makan”, with dining recommendations from over 35,000 restaurants in Malaysia, to help you decide what and where to eat by allowing you to search and discover the best (recommended or not) restaurants and dishes, and locate them with ease. Best of all, if you’d like, you can even share your latest foodie adventures and review your meals for other app users as well.
Download the app for Android or iOS.
Foodspotting
Foodspotting was started in 2009 when the developers realised that there were many restaurant reviews, but no easy way to find or rate specific dishes. Based in San Francisco, the visual guide to good food and where to find it has since built a worldwide community of foodspotters who love to find and share interesting dishes wherever they go. Instead of reviewing restaurants, you can recommend dishes and see what other foodies, friends, and experts recommend. So wildly popular, probably because it looks like an Instagram app for food, it has since been featured on “The Today Show” as well as earned a spot in TIME magazine’s “50 Best Apps“.
Download the app for Android or iOS.
My Resipi
Nevermind sharing food reviews and good spots to gorge down your favourite dishies, My Resipi is a great recipe-sharing app that allows you to hone your cooking skills. Launched in 2012, the app has been specifically designed for browsing and navigating latest recipes, as well as giving you the option to share your own. With My Resipi, you can create a recipe of your own, add ingredients, cooking specifications, and serving information. Currently, it has about 165,000 registered members and best of all, it’s Malaysian through and through!
Download the app for Android or iOS.
Burpple
Although Burpple is Singapore-based, the app is quite popular in Malaysia these days. For starters, it connects you to other foodies with good spots to eat in more than 3,300 cities from 115 countries. To date, over 1,000,000 people have used it to find and recommend restaurants, cafes, bars, desserts, street food, and even hidden gems. As a user, you can be sure that there’s good food right at your fingertips, in which you can organise and save in lists to rummage through again later. Handy!
Download the app for Android or iOS.
OpenRice
Why “OpenRice”, you ask? The app originally started in Hong Kong in 1999, which explains the name. Fast forward to 2015, OpenRice is now quite a reputed Asian culinary guide. With over 22,000 restaurant tucked neatly under its belt, you can search for restaurants by using keywords, cuisines, areas, districts, landmarks, dishes, type of restaurants, price range, etc. Other special features include seeing what is nearby, saving your favourite restaurants and redeeming mobile coupons from various restaurants. After which, it allows you to navigate to the eateries with GPS.
Download the app for Android or iOS.
Epicurious
This app from award-winning food site Epicurious.com offers delicious, professionally tested and created recipes from renowned magazines such as Gourmet and Bon Appétit, popular cookbooks, top chefs, and leading restaurants. Packed with free features and more than 30,000 of the highest-quality recipes, there’s a reason why home cooks and aspiring MasterChefs have downloaded it more than 10 million times to date. We love how it allows users to store favourite recipes across all devices with their recipe box and shopping list, and then go hands-free in the kitchen by using voice to control the app with “Cook Mode”.
Download the app for Android, iOS, or Windows.
Do you have a favourite food app too? Were there any equally popular ones that we’ve overlooked in the list above? Let us know in the comments box below and we’ll add them in! Until then, happy food hunting/food-a-huntin’ 😉
