Whenever my GPS mooed like a cow during my cross-Canada road trip this summer, it meant that we were near another restaurant featured in the Food Network’s You Gotta Eat Here series. Whenever we ate at one of those restaurants, we were never disappointed.
If you’ve ever been tempted to visit one of the restaurants you see on television, then make TV Road Maps your first stop. It is a website that maps restaurants across the United States and Canada which are highlighted in a variety of television shows including Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, You Gotta Eat Here, No Reservations, Man Vs. Food and many more. To be exact, there are restaurants from 37 shows featured on the site that air on Food Network, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel and other specialty cable networks.
The locations of these restaurants, of which there are hundreds, are plotted on maps to help you easily locate them. You can browse the site by state, zip code or TV show to find them. There is no Canadian map to help you locate Canadian restaurants, you can enter a Canadian province or city name in the search box to find them.
Site visitors are encouraged to vote on whether or not they liked the restaurant, the results of which are displayed next to each listing. To further refine the ratings, TV Food Maps has created a bronze, silver and gold medal rating that it awards to those restaurants that have been on the most shows and have received the most visits and comments on their site.
If you register on the site, you can also track restaurants you’ve visited and ones you want to try. You can even get text or email alerts when new restaurants are added to the site.
If you have a GPS, you can download POI (Point of Interest) data for your unit to help you locate restaurants while you are on the move.
And, of course, there is an iOS and Android app for your mobile device that has many of the same features as the website. There is a lite version and a $1.99 version with more features.
Forget about those fast-food chains on your next road trip and discover some of the many, amazing restaurants that are out there serving real food. TV Food Maps will help guide the way.
http://www.tvfoodmaps.com/