Frequently Asked Questions
Using Mamakoo
Mamakoo app is also available on the web at guide.mamakoo.com.
Pinning cities highlights the ones you are most interested in, and brings them to the front of the city list on your home page, thus giving you quicker access to them. Similarly, saving restaurants you love highlights them for you under the ‘My Saved Places’ section on your homepage, and helps you keep all of them in one easy-to-access page.
Pin Cities
Use the ‘Pin’ icon under each city image to highlight the destinations you want to see first.
Save Places
Use the 'Bookmark' icon in the place image to save the places you want to see on your home screen.
Eat your way through the city with only the best recommendations. Three easy ways to help you navigate: Explore iconic dishes, look up recommended places and find restaurants near popular landmarks in the city.
via Dishes
Learn what the must-try dishes in the city are & see where to get them!
via Places
Look up our highly curated list of restaurants, bars and more hidden gems, to make sure you never have a miss!
via Landmarks
Plan your meals around where you’re going to spend your day. Find places to eat near popular points of interest.
The search feature helps you find things quickly; simply look for cities, places, dishes, cuisines, interests or members to help you get to your recommendations quicker.
Search Feature
A comprehensive search bar with helpful suggestions to help you find your way.
The Nearby feature helps you find places to eat near you so that your food experience is spot-on, no matter where you are.
Nearby Feature
Let Mamakoo detect your location, or simply type it in, and find the best places to eat, at the location of your choice.
Switch between the map view and list view of recommended restaurants to navigate your way.
Curate your Mamakoo experience by choosing interests that matter the most to you. Looking for that perfect 3* Michelin spot? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
For You
Customize 'My Interests' section on your homepage choosing what best represents your personal interests. These interests will appear in Search so you can quickly get to the results you're looking for.
When you share your location, you’ll see what’s near you first. Mamakoo does not share your location with anyone.
World Membership
Unlock Mamakoo's hyper-curated list of restaurants, bars and shops in 20+ destinations with World membership. Never miss original food experiences you can only enjoy in that part of the world as you discover hidden gems recommended by locals and vetted by Mamakoo. View all benefits here.
by must-try food & drinks
What to get and where to get them
by cuisine
Local ingredients & cooking techniques
by location on the map
Near you or a specified address
near a landmark
Your 'Eatinerary' made easier
by your interests
$-$$$$, TV show, ambiance, trending topics and more!
With Mamakoo's hyper-curated guides, our members are able to maximize their food travel experience by discovering exactly what food to try and where in a specific destination at their fingertips. Our members also appreciate the flexibility of choosing something that best suits their travel plans from several options by food, cuisine, landmark or other interests.
In order to hyper-curate our guides, we conduct extensive research on a destination, interview to approve every local recommender you now see on Mamakoo and cross-reference recommendations from multiple locals before assigning Mamakoo Worthiness Index to each place. We are confident this effort will spare you the pain of plowing through too much data and, regrettably, still missing out.
Mamakoo team has made an important decision to charge our members to help strengthen our editorial efforts and our commitment to enhancing your travel experience through food. Part of this membership fee will also be reinvested back into Mamakoo, to offer essential features, e.g. a dynamic map on Nearby to show place recommendations near you or a specified address; this feature, in particular, comes at a cost to us.
To our World members, thank you for supporting our mission to connect the world through food. To our Basic members, thank you for being part of the community, and we hope that you will one day join us as a World member.
We value your privacy and do not share your data with anyone for any reason. In case you do share your location, it is used only for the purpose of showing you the distance between you and the recommended places on Mamakoo.
We offer one-year membership for Mamakoo World. When you refer a friend to join Mamakoo as a World member, you will receive a complimentary month of Mamakoo World. In this case, if you're already a Mamakoo World member, the expiry of your World membership will be extended by one month. Upon signing up, you become a Mamakoo Basic member. The Basic membership is complimentary and does not expire.
You can cancel your annual Mamakoo World membership at any point during the membership period; your renewal will be cancelled. You will not receive a refund and your membership benefits will expire at the end of the annual period.
If you have any additional question or issue regarding your membership, please email us at support@mamakoo.com.
For more detail, visit Terms of Service.
Absolutely! When you refer a friend, your invitation code gives $20 off to your friend and you get one (extra) month of World membership when your friend becomes a World member. That's a win-win if you ask us. 😎🥂
How We Curate
Our Editorial Process
Rather than reviewing each restaurant or bar on its own, we at Mamakoo pride ourselves in connecting with food-savvy locals. Whether industry insiders or discerning diners who take genuine personal interests in food, food-savvy locals are welcome to apply to become a recommender or are referred to us and then vetted by Mamakoo team. This way, we understand their standards and preferences and trust their place recommendations.
We rely on food-savvy locals because they have the luxury of time to, for example, try 10 different taco spots to tell us their top 3. Did you know? A striking 98% (!) of food travel experts said locals “need to know more about local food & drink traditions.” That's why we ask the food-savvy locals.
Mamakoo recommenders are VIP! How it works: we invite only the best and most dedicated foodies for a chat to say hello and better understand their recommendations. The team then curates that intel into our destination guides and marks the recommender for those places.
***Our recommenders receive a 6-month complimentary World Membership ($99 annual) as a token of our appreciation for sharing their intel.***
Each place is curated with inside scoop - no more power-reading through dozens of reviews or triangulating random recommendations against Google ratings and then Tripadvisor ratings. Discovering food and restaurants worthy of your limited time should be inspiring, not feel like a chore.
While Mamakoo started out to help travelers with FOMO, we realize the food scene is becoming more globalized everywhere, and our dish-first approach helps locals too. After all, food is the easiest way to experience another culture, especially now that many of us are putting our travel plans on hold until the world is safe again.
About Mamakoo
For a full list of our current and upcoming cities, please visit Our Destinations. You can also request new cities by filling out this form.
We decide the next cities based on a few factors:
How trending is the destination?
Does the destination have a unique, exciting food scene?
Does Mamakoo already know food-savvy locals and their favorite places?
Has the destination been requested by Mamakoo members?
We only publish a new city guide when we have 20+ Mamakoo-worthy places so you can wander with confidence and have options to choose from.
Yes, of course! Please fill out this form (10 seconds) and we will let you know when we have that city up on Mamakoo.
For the best experience and full use of features such as pinning cities, saving places and marking your preferences, we ask members to log in. Mamakoo does not share your data with any third party. Your log-in is kept strictly confidential, and we send you occasional email updates.
We verify the latest hours and offerings directly with the restaurants through phone calls or most recent announcements.
We appreciate your patience as the hospitality industry tries to figure out the new norm during COVID-19 to comply with the mandates from the government health officials while providing a safe & enjoyable experience to patrons.