For picky eaters and loyal orderers.

Your usual

Your usual, ready at the door.

Open a place’s page in the car park and Your usual is the first thing you see: the dish you order most there, or the one you loved, or simply what you had last time. Below it, Your menu here lists every dish you’ve had at that place with a count. No menu panic.

Skip list

Dishes to skip, remembered too.

A dish you didn’t like is just as useful to remember. Give it one or two stars and a short note — “too spicy”, “coriander on top”, “ask for it plain” — and it’s there the next time. Search reads your notes, so you can find every dish you’ve marked “too spicy” in one go.

Copy it

A safe-orders list, by place.

Works on paper, in your notes app, or in PlateDiary. Fill one row per place you go back to:

Practical

Ordering tips for picky eaters.

• Read the menu before you go. Decide in the car, not at the table.
• Ask what’s in it. It’s a normal question. Staff hear it all day.
• Sauce on the side solves half of all menu problems.
• Build from sides. Rice, fries, bread and a plain protein is a meal.
• At a new place, order the dish you know — the margherita, the fried chicken — and judge the place by that.
• At a shared table, pick one dish you’ll love and say so early.

If you want

Trying one new thing (only if you want to).

Nobody has to. But if you feel like it, one shared bite of something new is low stakes. Save it with a note — even “never again” is a memory — and low stars are fine. Over a year, you might find two new safe dishes, which is two more than you had.

Company

Eating out with people who order everything.

At a big table you can save just your own plate; the cut-out picks out each dish on the table, and you keep the ones you want. Tag who you were with, and your friend who orders adventurously still gets a page — with your usual together being, quite possibly, fries.