City Taste Test Planner

City taste test ideas the planner builds for you

City taste test ideas for any city, built so that every stop answers a question the others do not. The planner picks six dishes that between them cover the city's range: something fried, something from a pot, something from a grill, something sweet, something cold, and one you would not have ordered alone.

Every stop arrives with four things: the dish and why it belongs on the list, the kind of place that serves it, what to judge in the first bite, and a price band.

Order matters as much as selection: the route runs light to heavy so the fourth stop still tastes of something, and it keeps stops in one neighborhood so six stops is a walk rather than a day of crossings.

How to run the route

Score each stop out of 10 on flavor, texture, value and whether you would reorder it. Write the note while the taste is still there: what the crust or the broth did, not whether the dish was nice.

If you are filming, the structure does the editing for you: arrive, order, first reaction, score, next stop. Do not skip the scoring on camera, because the disagreement over what deserves a 9 is the part people rewatch.

Check the distance between neighborhoods before you commit to the order, and start early enough that market stalls are still stocked.

1. Eat something small before the first stop so the first dish is judged on its own.
2. Take one bite at each stop before deciding anything.
3. Write the score and the note while the food is in front of you.
4. Order one portion between two people at the heavier stops.

What a plan costs

One credit builds one full route for any city, with the scoring sheet and the creator kit included. Reloading a page, printing a plan or reopening a plan months later never uses another credit.

Credits come in four sizes: 5 for $4.99, 60 a month for $12.99, 720 a year for $79, or 3000 a year for $249. A new account starts with 1 free credit, and 1 preview route a day can be built without an account at all.

Credits from the one-time pack never expire, and a subscription can be canceled any time from your account.

Getting a better plan out of it

Describe the trip, not just the place. Six stops for a weekday evening and three stops for two people who do not eat much are different plans, even for the same city.

Keep the stops close together. If a route sends you across the city twice, cut a stop rather than rush the walk.

• Name the city the way a local would, not the way an airport does.
• Set the diet before the focus if you have a real restriction.
• Say how many people are eating before you build the route.
• Switch the creator kit on if the route is for a video.

Using a plan for a video

The plan settles the order, so the work left is the shots: the dish arriving, the first bite, the reaction, the score, plus the walk between stops. One shot per stop is plenty.

Put the strongest reaction in the first five seconds and let the route pay it off in order. Name the dish and what you are judging, not the shop, so the video still makes sense next year.

• Film the stops in the order the plan gives you, light to heavy.
• One shot per stop, plus the walk between them.
• Name the dish and what to judge, never the business.
• Score on camera: the disagreement is the watchable part.
• Keep the hashtags to a handful that describe the video.

Budgeting a tasting day

Drinks and transport are the two lines that push a tasting day past its budget, so count them before anyone leaves the house. Fix a price band per stop and hold back a tenth of the money for the stop somebody adds on the day.

Every band is a range rather than a quote. The same route costs more in the middle of a city than in the outer neighborhoods, and a market counter usually costs less than a sit-down version of the same dish.