Dish-level memory
Beli ranks the restaurant; Dishiary remembers the plate. The dish, your
A–F grade, the date, and your order-again call all stay attached to the
place.
App comparison
The food logging apps for people who want to remember meals.
Not every food app is a calorie tracker. This is a fair look at the apps for remembering what you ate, where, and whether it was worth it — and an honest account of where each one wins.
Remembering a meal is not the same as counting it
The apps on this page share one thing: none of them count calories. That is the point.
Food apps split into two families. Trackers — MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, Cal AI — exist to measure intake: calories, macros, micronutrients. Diaries exist to remember the experience: the dish, the place, the night, and whether it was worth ordering again. This comparison is about the second family.
Dishiary lives firmly in the diary camp. So do Beli, See How You Eat, and Mapstr — each in its own way. If you are here to lose weight by the numbers, skip to the note on calorie counters near the end; one of those trackers will serve you better than anything on this page.
What Dishiary is
A private diary that remembers the plate, not just the place.
Snap a photo or type one line, and Dishiary turns it into a graded, mapped memory — the dish, the restaurant, the date, and whether to order it again. No feed, no followers, no calorie math.
What each app supports
Feature by feature, across the four apps built for this job. Scroll sideways on a phone.
| Feature | Beli | See How You Eat | Mapstr | Dishiary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log a meal by photo | Yes | Yes | Place-level | Yes |
| AI logging (snap, speak, or one line) | No | No | No | Yes |
| Remembers the specific dish you ordered | Limited | No | No | Yes |
| Restaurant / place memory | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Private map of your places | Social, not private | No map | Yes | Yes |
| Your own rating system | 0–10 ranking | No | Ratings + notes | A–F grades |
| "Want to try" list | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Restaurant menu completion | No | No | No | Yes |
| Area / city exploration quests | Leaderboards | No | No | Yes |
| Social feed & friends | Yes | No | Follow only | No, by design |
| Discovery & recommendations | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Counts calories or macros | No | No | No | No |
| Private by default | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export your data | No | Limited | JSON + CSV | |
| Platforms | iOS + Android | iOS + Android | iOS, Android, web | iPhone only |
| Price | Free | Free + Premium | Free to 300; ≈$80/yr | Free; Premium $2.99/mo · $19.99/yr |
Which app is for who
The fastest way to choose is to be honest about what you actually want.
| App | Best for | Look elsewhere if |
|---|---|---|
| Dishiary | Privately remembering the dish, the place, and whether to order it again — logged by photo, voice, or one line, and graded A–F. | You want a social feed, calorie counts, or an Android app. |
| Beli | A social, gamified way to rank restaurants and get recommendations from friends. | You want private journaling and dish memory more than venue rankings. |
| See How You Eat | Anti-diet photo journaling you can share as a PDF with a coach or dietitian. | You care about which restaurant you visited and what to order again. |
| Mapstr | A private, taggable world map of every place you've saved — food or not. | You want per-meal memory, grades, or AI-assisted logging. |
| Foursquare Swarm | Gamified check-ins and a lightweight social map of where you've been. | You want to remember the food, not just the location. |
| Apple Notes | The fastest freeform capture, with zero structure. | You ever need to search by dish, place, grade, or map. |
| Google Maps lists | Finding places and saving pins to navigate to later. | You want to remember what you actually ordered there. |
Where Dishiary wins
The things it is built to do that the others do not.
Logging that keeps up with eating
Snap a photo, say a sentence, or type one line and AI drafts the dish,
tags, and restaurant. None of the others auto-fill a meal from a picture.
Private, with real exits
No feed, no followers, no public ranking. Your diary is yours — and
export (JSON or CSV) and delete are one tap, not a support request.
Where the others win
No single app is best at everything. Here is where Dishiary is the wrong choice.
Beli, for social discovery
If you want friends' recommendations, taste-matching, and a ranking
leaderboard, Beli's network is the real thing — and it ships on Android,
which Dishiary does not.
Mapstr, for everything-maps
For a private map of every kind of place — not just meals — across
iPhone, Android, and the web, Mapstr is more flexible than Dishiary's
restaurant-only map.
Need Android or calories?
Dishiary is iPhone-only and never counts a calorie. See How You Eat and
Beli have Android apps; for macros, a tracker beats any diary here.
What about calorie counters?
If counting is the goal, this is not your category — and that is deliberate.
MyFitnessPal and Lose It! have the largest food databases. Cronometer has the deepest micronutrient data. MacroFactor has the smartest adaptive targets. AI-photo apps like Cal AI lead on instant estimates — with the accuracy caveats that come with guessing a meal from a picture.
Dishiary does none of that, on purpose. It is a food journal without calories — no targets, no barcodes, no goal-weight pressure. If you want to count, one of the trackers above will serve you better. If you want to remember, that is what the rest of this page is about.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best app to remember restaurants and dishes?
It depends on whether you want a private diary or a social network. Dishiary is built to privately remember the specific dish you ordered, the restaurant, and your A–F grade. Beli is better if you want to rank restaurants and follow friends. See How You Eat is a simple no-calorie photo diary, and Mapstr is a private map for saving places of every kind.
Is Dishiary the same as Beli?
No — they solve different problems. Beli is a public, social restaurant-ranking network where you compare places and follow friends. Dishiary is a private food diary: it remembers the dish, the place, the date, and whether you would order it again, with no feed and no followers.
Do any of these apps count calories?
No. This whole category is about remembering meals, not measuring them. None of these apps — Dishiary, Beli, See How You Eat, Mapstr, or Swarm — counts calories or macros. If that is your goal, use a calorie tracker such as MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, or MacroFactor instead.
Which of these food apps work on Android?
Beli, See How You Eat, Mapstr, and Foursquare Swarm all have Android apps. Dishiary is currently iPhone-only.
What is the most private food diary app?
Dishiary, See How You Eat, and Mapstr are private by default. Beli and Swarm are social by design, built around feeds, friends, and leaderboards. Dishiary also makes export and account deletion one-tap actions, not support requests.
Keep the meals worth remembering.
Dishiary is the private food diary and restaurant map for the dishes, places, and grades you will want back later.