Is there a Letterboxd for food? Sort of — in two halves.

The original

What makes Letterboxd work.

Letterboxd calls itself the social app for film lovers. On its App Store page, members keep a diary of films with a date, a rating, a review and tags; make lists; keep a watchlist; and follow other members to see what they’re watching. Paid memberships add yearly and all-time stats pages.

Strip it down and there are really two apps in one. The diary half is private joy: every film you’ve seen, in order, with what you thought. The social half is discovery: friends’ reviews, lists, a feed. When people search “Letterboxd for food”, they usually mean one half more than the other — and the apps that answer them split the same way.

The catch

Why food doesn’t fit the film template.

Letterboxd works because every film already exists in a shared database. You search “Past Lives”, tap it, rate it. Food has no such database. The cacio e pepe at a trattoria in Rome and the cacio e pepe at a wine bar in Brooklyn are different dishes, and the same restaurant’s version changes when the chef does.

So a food diary’s basic unit isn’t “a dish”. It’s a dish, at a place, on a night, with people. That’s why most food apps pick one of two shortcuts: they rate the restaurant (which does exist in a map database), or they let you photograph the plate (which needs no database at all).

Film → food

Every Letterboxd feature, translated to food.

The candidates

The apps that come closest.

If you want followers, a feed and a public profile, Beli is the nearest thing today. If you want the quiet satisfaction of scrolling back through everything you’ve eaten, keep reading.

• Beli — the closest to Letterboxd’s social half. Its App Store subtitle is “Your top restaurants, ranked”. You keep ranked lists and maps of places you’ve been and want to try, see where friends are eating, and get recommendations from a Taste Profile. On the App Store and Google Play.
• Yummi — a restaurant and food photo diary for iPhone. It tags each photo by time and place, shows them on a calendar or a map, and lets each post be private or shared with friends you choose.
• Untappd — Letterboxd’s spirit, for drinks. Check in a beer, wine or cocktail with a rating, tasting notes, a photo and where you had it; follow friends; earn badges.
• PlateDiary — the diary half, for meals out. One photo of the table and each dish and drink is cut out into its own save, grouped with the place and the night. Private, no account, and it works offline.

Copy this

A Letterboxd-style diary card for one meal.

You don’t need any app to start. Copy this card into Notes, a notebook or a spreadsheet, and fill it in on the way home. Six lines, two minutes.

• Date — Fri 14 March.
• Place — the little bao bar off Brick Lane, London.
• Dish — fried chicken bao, and the pickled cucumber everyone fought over.
• Stars — ★★★★½ for the bao; ★★★ for the dessert.
• With — Priya and Tom.
• One line — “Order two bao each. Skip the queue by going at five.”
• Again? — Yes, the Letterboxd rewatch icon, but for food.

Where we fit

PlateDiary: the diary half, without the typing.

The card above works until it doesn’t — usually around week three, when the food is hot and nobody wants to type. PlateDiary moves the effort out of the meal. You take one photo of the table; on-device machine learning cuts every dish and drink into its own save in about a second; the save lands under the place and the night automatically. Names, stars, notes and companions are all optional and can wait.

Over time the diary reads like Letterboxd’s profile page, only for food. Places shows your usual at each restaurant and every dish you’ve had there. Your own dish names come back as one-tap chips, which is what powers “eaten 3×”. And at the end of a month or a year, Served turns your saves into a story of your year at the table.

Pick yours

Which “Letterboxd for food” fits you?

• Choose Beli if… you mostly want to rank restaurants, compare taste with friends and find where to eat next.
• Choose PlateDiary if… you mostly want to remember — every dish, the place, who was there — privately, with no account and almost no typing.
• Use both if… you like a social list for discovery and a private diary for the meals themselves. Beli for the “where”, PlateDiary for the “what we ate that night”.
• Choose Untappd if… it’s really the drinks you want to count.

Fine print

How we checked, and who we are.

We make PlateDiary, so weigh that in. Facts about Letterboxd, Beli, Yummi and Untappd come from their own App Store and Google Play pages as they read on 19 October 2026 — see Sources. Apps change; check their pages before you choose.

Sources

Where the facts come from