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Denver isn’t known as a foodie mecca. Apart from our omelette, deep fried bulls’ testicles and edible marijuana products, we don’t really have a cuisine. When Anthony Bourdain visited, he found himself "hungry, wandering the city center looking for good food." What he found was "not inspiring."
But all that is changing, quickly, and exciting new restaurants are popping up all over. Just in time, an app that people from around the world have been using for years has arrived in Denver. Now we can head out informed, to the newest and best food options, instead of eating the stuff Bourdain was forced to eat.
Zomato is a food discovery app and social media platform for foodies. The app allows you to search for nearby restaurant and drinking options, as well as rate and review them. You can follow other foodies, tag them at restaurants, or comment on their reviews. There’s even a handy feature where you can draw a circle (or any other shape) around an area on a map and the app will spit out restaurants in that location.
But what sets Zomato apart from existing restaurant discovery and review apps is that they have a large physical presence in Denver. The company opened offices off of 17th Street in June and has upwards of 12 staff who constantly scour the city for hot new locations. Every restaurant in Denver and Boulder has been physically visited by the company’s staff, and things like hours and menus have been verified. It’s a time consuming and expensive process the company goes through every three months to ensure information in the app is reliable. Just to put things into perspective, that means the company visits upwards of 8,000 restaurants four times a year, and that’s just in the Denver/Boulder area.
"Denver’s food scene is onto something,” Justin Doshi, Regional VP of Zomato said. “Farm to table is huge here, the city invented the fast casual movement and it’s a beer brewing mecca. Denver is a hidden gem and I think it is finally on the national level.”
The company was actually founded in 2008 in New Delhi, and while Zomato has been used in 22 countries for years, they only came to the U.S. earlier this year after purchasing Urbanspoon. That acquisition, made for upwards of $50 million, was one of the largest U.S. based internet companies to be bought by an Indian firm.
The company has ambitious plans for the future. They are working on integrating systems that would allow users to reserve tables, pay for their food and order food for delivery without ever leaving the app.
'We want to make sure every meal out is a great experience for foodies,' Doshi said.
Who knows, maybe next time Bourdain visits he won’t be walking around downtown hungry and depressed.
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