tbachhh’s article about his website

# The story behind my fun website dishcover.io

![Cover image](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HQHQ2m9bIAAeAK-.jpg)

In late July, I started a funny side project called [dishcover.io](http://dishcover.io/), it lets a user search for a dish/ingredient and the output is a list of restaurants that serve it. It’s currently available in New York City because it’s an absurd restaurant culture. The reason I continue building this is because my fiancé is a really picky eater. For example, she doesn’t eat most vegetables, cuisines (i.e. Indian, French, etc.), and the craziest part is no red sauce on pizza. I’ve become less sensitive towards it and regardless, I love her very much. However, finding a restaurant that accommodates her preferences is really tough. Without dishcover.io, I would go to @googlemaps and search “food near me” or a variation of that. I get a random list of red bubbles and I would click on them and find the menu going directly to the website and read it. On average it would take about 7-10 menus before I would come across a spot that could be a fit. And even then, it has a high chance of getting “i’m not interested in that”. So then I would try @UberEats or @Doordash. I would scroll through the list of options which are often encumbered with fast food and high delivery fees, but I usually get “I’m not interested in that”. @Yelp also isn’t that helpful. And worst of all is @Reddit. You can read endless threads about a restaurants and, more often than not, it’s inundated with negative reviews. I’ve come to learn that @Reddit has tons of poor reviews and it’s lost my trust. What has worked, however, is sticking to the same few restaurants that she’s comfortable with. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but if we’re in the city with the best food, I would love to take advantage of that. So that’s why I’m working on [dishcover.io](http://dishcover.io/). But how is it going so far? Well, the short answer is that it’s going well, but I’ve run into a few blockers. The hardest part is distribution and I wasn’t unaware of that. I’ve dm’d multiple food journalists, influencers, and chefs in the #NYCfoodscene, often getting me a response “thank you for this!”. And it definitely feels great, but it’s not sticky enough where I get meaningful usage. I started posting cringeworthy @TikTok's and I’m surprised people are saving the videos. It reminds me of a video of @sama about 10 years ago where he articulated that when you want to get the name out badly, you’re going to reach out to journalists, celebrities, and relevant companies in the space; it hit home because that's exactly what I’ve been doing. The second difficult task is always updating menus. Every menu is horribly built. Some are PDFs stored on @AWS, some are #BentoBox, some are images, some don’t have pricing or ingredients. I’m building agents that will be dedicated to each restaurant/menu, and checking if the menu was updated on a monthly basis. It’s not complicated, it’s time consuming. What I’ve learned from this project is that monetizing this is hard. People are “ideating” with me about how this can make money and they all sound great in theory. What it looks like I’m doing is building the most granular database of food in NYC. If it leads to something fantastic, great. But if not, I helped people in New York search for their cravings easier and faster than they could before. That’s a win. Also, kudos to my friend @AlexReibman who is a hackathon wiz who helped me redesign the website.

[video](https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2090183515258392576/vid/avc1/1304x720/Qx8OXsxSmc17Bo1j.mp4?tag=29)

# Article Metadata

Author: David Tabachnik (@TBACHHH)
Post ID: 2090184502371131637
Source: https://x.com/TBACHHH/status/2090184502371131637
Article: https://x.com/i/article/2090178784490295296
Published: 2026-08-19T21:09:53.000Z
Captured: 2026-08-19T22:24:35.372Z

Author:
- Profile: https://x.com/TBACHHH
- Avatar: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2001192878232469505/7JYHKKGv_normal.jpg
- Verified: yes (blue)
- Protected: no
- Affiliated with: none
- Location: San Francisco, CA
- Joined: January 2015
- Bio: Lol. Formerly @Google PM | @Amazon industrial RE. Side Project: https://www.dishcover.io/ - search a dish, find the restaurant that serves it (NYC)
- Followers: 388
- Following: 690
- Posts: 987

Stats:
- Replies: 0
- Reposts: 0
- Quotes: 2
- Likes: 4
- Bookmarks: 0
- Impressions: 449

Post text:

> #restaurantweek #freshfood #AI https://x.com/i/article/2090178784490295296