Google Maps is rolling out a new ‘Popular dishes’ feature to some users.
The feature relies on user-uploaded pictures of food and drinks from restaurants they go to. Google began collecting these photos months ago and is now putting them to good use.
When searching for restaurants in Google Maps, you can click into a restaurant, and there should be a tab labelled ‘Menu.’ Tapping on that tab should surface the new Popular dishes page unless the restaurant uploaded its own menu to Maps.
Popular dishes is a scrolling list of large thumbnails showing foods from a given restaurant. Beneath each photo is the number of total photos and reviews for each item.
Further, clicking into a dish provides a carousel of user-submitted images and a list of reviews that mention the food by name.
Additionally, there’s a button to suggest edits if you spot a mistake, like a wrong dish, or an inappropriate comment.
Finally, there’s a floating action button (FAB) that lets you upload more photos of food.
It’s worth noting some users have had access to Popular dishes for a while, but it appears it’s rolling out to more people now. The feature is available on my OnePlus 6T, but an iPhone XS didn’t have it. Further, Popular dishes wasn’t available on the web version of Google Maps.
As with most Google features like this, it’s likely part of a server-side update, so you’ll have to be patient and wait for it to come to you.
Update 30/05/2019: Google has officially announced this feature via its Keyword blog. The company says that it’s rolling out to all Android phones, although, none of our phones in the office have the feature yet, including, the OnePlus 6T that we had it on originally.
The blog post says it’s coming to iOS in the coming months.
Source: Android Police
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