For months, Google Maps has been asking users who upload photos of food and beverages in restaurants to tag their images with the name of the dish. This information on the crowdsourced should certainly be used at some point, and according to some informants, there is a new Popular dishes feature in the restaurant menu tabs that use these images and tags to show you the most beloved dishes.

Open a restaurant, check if it has a Menu tab (some do not have one) and the first screen. should to be that of the popular dishes. Large vignettes are used, with the number of pictures and reviews for each dish below. Choose any dish and you will get a carousel of images submitted by the user, a list of all the comments that mention it by name and an edit button to correct the errors or report a bad dish.

Left: Popular dishes tab. Middle: Flat page. Right: Editing options.

For restaurants for which a detailed menu has already been loaded on Maps, the Menu tab displays these popular dishes first and then the text menu in the following sub-tabs. Also worth mentioning is a floating + button for downloading images of dishes directly from here and a carousel at the bottom of the plate pages to quickly switch to other dishes served at the same place without returning to the menu. Main tab.

Left and middle: Popular dishes for places with existing menus. Right: Other dishes served here.

The functionality of popular dishes has been shown for some users for a while, but we have just discovered it and we noticed that it was not yet available for everyone. Despite checking the same restaurants listed above, the latest version of Maps (v10.15.1 on APK Mirror) and a local level 7 guide, I do not see these dishes. Several other users confirmed that it was not yet operational for them. Therefore, with Google, mileage can vary considerably.

Maps - Navigate and explore
Maps - Navigate and explore