Why Matcha exists

The full story

The dish you can’t place

A friend is going to Tokyo and asks where to get ramen. You had a bowl there two years ago that you still think about. You remember the broth and the queue outside. The name is gone, and the photo is somewhere in your camera roll between a train ticket and a sunset.

It happens at home too. You know one bakery’s cinnamon bun beat all the others, but you can’t say which bakery, or whether the new place on the corner was better.

We made Matcha so the answer is on your phone the next time someone asks.

Why star ratings don’t help

The stars on a map answer a different question. They’re one number for a whole restaurant, averaged across strangers. They tell you what most people thought of the place.

What you want to know is smaller and more personal: was the carbonara at this trattoria better than the one you had last spring? A 4.6 can’t tell you. The same kitchen can serve your best carbonara and a forgettable tiramisu, and one score for the restaurant hides which plate to go back for.

Map reviews are also public. Google’s help page for Google Maps says “all reviews are public and anyone can find what you add” (Google, as of October 2026). That suits a review. For a note to yourself about a bowl of ramen, it’s more than you need. Matcha vs Google Maps lists goes through what each one does well.

Why notes and screenshots get lost

You may already keep a list. A notes app line like “Lisbon: pastel de nata, 9” is quick to write, but after a few hundred lines you can’t sort it by score or see it on a map. A spreadsheet sorts well and is hard to type into while the food goes cold.

Screenshots of places you saw on Instagram pile up in the camera roll, and a month later you can’t tell which city they were in. Saved places in a map app remember that you meant to go. They say nothing about how it was.

How to keep track of restaurants compares these options and has a free spreadsheet template if you’d rather not use an app.

What Matcha does instead

Matcha is an iPhone app for foodies: score the dishes you eat, see your best pizza, ramen or matcha latte ranked, and keep every place on a map with a Want to try list.

Your all-time best, for every food

You give each dish a score from 1 to 10 in half steps, with a photo, the price and a note if you want them. Every food gets its own ranking across every city you’ve eaten it in, so your best pizza is the best one you’ve had anywhere. Naples and New York sit in the same list.

When a dish takes first place, Matcha says so: “Best pizza you have ever had.” It also names the place that just lost the top spot. How to rate food has tips for keeping the scale steady, so a 9 in Tokyo means the same as a 9 at home.

Places to try, waiting on a map

When someone tells you about a place, save it to Want to try with the dish to order. It waits on your map as a pink pin next to the places you’ve scored. Once you’ve eaten there and scored the dish, it moves into your rankings.

Places already saved in Google Maps can come along. Share a list from Google Maps to Matcha or paste its link in Profile, pick the places, and they land on your map. More on Want to try, on keeping a food bucket list and on moving a Google Maps list to your iPhone.

Easy to share when a friend asks

Back to the friend going to Tokyo. You can send them an image of your top 5 ramen, sized for a Story, a post or a square, and they don’t need Matcha to see it. If they have Matcha, Send my places gives them a link that copies your places into their Want to try. Nothing they do with them comes back to you.

For a trip together, start a shared list through iCloud where everyone scores the same dishes. You see a friend’s score only after you’ve given yours. See rate restaurants with friends.

Yours, on your iPhone

There’s no account to create. Your journal stays on your iPhone, and nobody sees it unless you share part of it. Usage statistics can be turned off in Profile. What makes Matcha different goes through the rest, point by point.

How it works, in short

1. Tap + and take a photo, pick a few from your library for a past trip, or skip the photo.
2. Type the dish and pick the place from Apple Maps. With no signal, save it anyway and add the place later.
3. Give it a score. Matcha ranks it by food, city, restaurant and year.

The full walkthrough, screen by screen, is on how it works. If you mostly want this for matcha lattes, the matcha rating app page shows that one food up close.

What Matcha isn’t

Matcha does a few things and leaves a lot out. If one of these rules it out for you, it’s better to know now.

• Matcha won’t recommend restaurants, and it has no public reviews. To find somewhere new, search the map (the results come from Apple Maps) or ask a friend. Our city guides help too. They rank places by how many published lists name them, as in pizza in Naples.
• You won’t find a feed or followers. Nothing you log is public unless you share it.
• Matcha doesn’t count calories or track nutrition. You log only the dishes you want to remember (more on the food journal page).
• It runs on iPhone only, with iOS 26 or later. There’s no Android, iPad or web version.
• It costs money. The download is free, and Matcha Pro starts with a 7-day free trial, then costs $9.99 a year, or $0.99 a week without a trial. Other plans may show in the app, prices vary by country, and nothing is free after the trial (pricing).
• There’s no AI. You choose the dish and give the score.

If that’s a deal-breaker, alternatives covers apps that do some of these things and what each is good at. If it sounds like you, read who Matcha is for. Other questions are on the FAQ.