I used a combination of spreadsheets and Google Maps, much like hyperbowler.
When traveling, I create my own Google Map for each city, putting labels on it for each restaurant I’d like to visit with notes and/or links back to reviews to remind me what to order and why it put it on the list. As I plan my day’s activities, I can easily see which restaurant(s) might be reasonable destinations and which of those fit my mood at the time. This work very well.
Sometimes, before making the Google map, I read a lot of sources and have a simple spreadsheet of restaurant name and number of times I’ve seen it cited. Then I can easily make sure I put the “can’t miss” on the map and don’t get distracted by the solitary amazing, engaging review of a restaurant no else seems to bother mentioning.
For places I live / visit regularly (i.e., not doing touristy things), I use spreadsheets, one for each region (e.g., “San Francisco”), each simply listing the restaurant name, cuisine time, neighborhood, specialties, and other notes such as “good for lunch”, “RSVP required”, “closes early”, “go with a group”. I bold the restaurants that seem especially appealing for easy scanning. This works okay.
I have separate spreadsheets for places I’ve been. These contain one column for each restaurant, and column contains notes such as “visited on XYZ with A, B, and C”, and then additional entries for each other dish we order. The bottom of each column a TO TRY section. This works well for me. (I find the people and date reminders and separate entries for each item makes it easy to jog my memory of a visit. It also makes it easy to spot dishes for which I may have different reactions each time depending on my mood.)
I’m not sure why I have separate “to eat at” and “have eaten at” spreadsheets. I think my decision-making model has “do I want to try something new?” as one of its first branches, even before cuisine.
I have tried yelp bookmarks and also general web browser bookmarks and neither worked well for me.
