How to Check Out a Restaurant Before You Go There

Get the Lowdown from Instagram

Benjamin Cheah
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Instagram is a visual medium, which makes it a useful app to research dining places in foreign cities. You don’t have to understand a word! Let’s say you’re planning a trip to Japan next year and while you have a couple of restaurants recommended to you, you want to know more. What food do people order? How’s the vibe? Should you anticipate a queue? Let’s do some restaurant reconnaissance!


Welcome to How to App, a series of tips, tricks and tutorials to guide you in discovering new ways to use apps and technology. This is the Dining issue, in which we learn how to find and bookmark great eating spots, skip the crowd, scout for food in foreign cities, and more!


Open Instagram and go to the search screen. Use the search box to find the restaurant you’re looking for. We wanna know what the people think, so we’ll only check out results from the Tags and Places tabs.

The Places tab is pretty self-explanatory. You can see the address for each place which helps you find the right restaurant if there’s more than one outlet, or if that name exists for multiple places.

Searching with Tags is useful when you can’t find the place (because it’s new or obscure) or to find posts that are not geotagged. A good way to search is “restaurant name + city” (e.g. inoda coffee kyoto). You could also try the localized name (e.g. イノダコーヒ) which might sometimes yield better results.

As you scroll through the photos for a place, you’ll discover interesting things about it.

Looking at the results for Inoda Coffee, I would say people go there for their coffee and breakfast food. There’s also a beautiful alfresco area. It’s probably a good idea to visit in the morning when there’s good weather.

Here’s another scenario where Instagram comes in handy—when there’s a new restaurant and you can’t find a whole lot of information on Google. Instagram is usually the first place to get posts. Let’s see how people are responding to the food.

Pretty, pretty good. You should definitely check it out.

Bon appétit!


This issue is brought to you by Yomap — your personal map, compass and notebook. Add and annotate places with notes and images. Search your places even when offline. Share recommendations with friends. Yomap is perfect for planning your next big adventure!

Follow How to App and check “Receive Letters in your inbox” so you never miss a post. You can also tweet at @HowToAppMag to send me a tip or suggest an app or a feature to write about.

How to App

Benjamin Cheah

Written by

design + code

How to App

How to App is a series of tips, tricks and tutorials to help you learn and discover new and productive ways to use apps and technology.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade