technology

A food app for the hungry Malaysia-Singapore traveller

BY JULIA YEOW, NEWS EDITOR
December 08, 2015

Food-hunting is made easy for Malaysia-Singapore travelers with an app to navigate the best eateries in the vicinity. – December 8, 2015.There'a mobile app for everything these days, it seems.

Need to book your hotel room halfway across the globe? Use an app. Need to hail a ride to the nearest mall? Whip out your mobile phone. Hungry and in unfamiliar territory? There're plenty of apps in the market for that, too.

But while mobile applications for food-hunting have become fairly common these past few years, we've stumbled upon an app that is perfect for the hundreds and thousands of Malaysians who frequently travel daily to Singapore, and vice versa.

HungryGoWhere is originally a Singaporean creation that started up as a food review site in the tiny city-state, offering foodies with newly-gained insights into the quality of a restaurant or cafe based on the experiences of other food-loving people.

HungryGoWhere, which later launched their own mobile application, landed at our shores more than two years ago and has since picked up its fair share of fans in Malaysia's increasingly competitive food-related tech market.

The site recently relaunched it's mobile app to allow users to search for restaurants, cafes and reviews in both Malaysia and Singapore, making it a true asset especially if you're a frequent traveller between the two countries.

"There are few food-dedicated apps out there that provides the convenience of alternating between two countries," said HungryGoWhere Malaysia's editor Pong Chune Hoong.

"We wanted to take advantage of our close proximity and ties (with HungryGoWhere Singapore) to benefit users from both sides of the Causeway in pursuit of our favourite foods," he told The Malaysian Insider.

The layout of the app itself is easy-on-the-eye and user-friendly. The feature we enjoyed the most was getting recommendations for some of the eateries around us.

Simply turn on your GPS and search for the best eateries around. It sure made deciding on what to eat an easy job, although we must say that the app also recommended restaurants and cafes that were easily more than 10km away, even though we selected to limit searches to a 1km radius.

The app allows you to filter the kind of cuisine you're looking for, the area and even the price range. You can then read through what other customers have had to say about the food and service at selected restaurants, and decide for yourself if it's worth a visit.

After a visit to a particular eatery, customers can then pay-it-forward by putting in their own reviews too.

For Singapore restaurants, you'll even be able to book a table from a big pool of participating eateries for free, a service that will be available soon in Malaysia too.

The app also gives you access to food review articles as well as guides to the best places to find your favourite dishes in major cities around Malaysia. Some of our favourites include the best outlets for KL-style hokkien mee, and where to find cheap eats in Setapak. 

Our verdict was that the app is definitely worth installing if you're keen to discover some of the best eats in town, as recommended by customers and not food critics.

We did find that it needed some tweaking, especially with the location finder which wasn't always accurate, but apart from that, we found it a real handy food guide.

The bonus is if you find yourself travelling often to Singapore, and are tired of having food from the fast food joint next to your hotel, you just need to install the app and you'll be able to check out what locals are enjoying the next trip you make.

And if you're Singaporean keen to have a taste of all that mouthwatering Malaysian street food that you've only ever heard of, this app is the next best thing to a local food guide. – December 8, 2015.