Find your next
hidden gem.

Tonight's Table picks one nearby restaurant you've never tried — favoring the small, the local, the spots no algorithm pushes to the top. Discover what's down the street. Support the people who run it.

Discover hidden gems

Support local restaurants

No account, no sign-up

The best place on your block
isn't on Yelp's front page.

Yelp ranks by popularity. Google ranks by ad spend. Most restaurant apps quietly funnel you toward whoever paid the most for placement — which is usually a chain. Tonight's Table doesn't rank anything. It picks one real, nearby restaurant at random, won't suggest the same place twice, and intentionally favors the small local spots that don't have a marketing department.

Hidden gems, not ranked lists

Tonight's Table doesn't sort by stars. It doesn't promote sponsored restaurants. It picks one real spot near you at random — the family-run café, the diner two blocks away, the noodle place tucked behind the parking lot. The places algorithmic feeds skip over.

Built for local restaurants

Small independent restaurants don't have marketing budgets. They survive on word of mouth — and lose to chains every time the algorithm picks the obvious option. A random pick levels that.

Never the same place twice

Mark a spot as visited with one tap. Flip on "Give me something new" and we drop it from future picks. The map you eat on gets bigger every week.

Anywhere you're standing

Town, zip, or GPS. Works in a town of 800 or a city of 8 million — pulls live restaurant data from Apple Maps.

Maps, Waze, menu, call — one tap each

Open directly in Apple Maps or Waze for turn-by-turn directions. Tap to view the restaurant's website or menu, tap to call ahead, tap to share the pick by text with whoever you're meeting.

No account. On-device data.

No sign-up and no servers of our own — your visited log and ratings stay on your phone, and we never see them. The free app is ad-supported through a third-party ad partner (Google AdMob) that may collect data and use your advertising identifier to personalize ads, subject to your App Tracking Transparency choice. A one-time $4.99 Remove Ads purchase turns the ads off.

Three taps to a hidden gem.

Tell it where you are

Town, zip, or just tap the location arrow. Pick a search radius and go.

Hit "Find a spot"

We pull from Apple Maps and pick one nearby restaurant at random — skipping anywhere you've already marked visited.

Go eat. Tip well.

Open in Maps, show up, tap "Mark as visited" when you're done. The next pick won't be that place — it'll be the next gem on your block.

A neighborhood is its small restaurants.

Independent restaurants account for the majority of restaurants in the United States — and they're closing at a record pace. Most of them are one bad month away from shutting. When a chain replaces a local spot, the whole block loses something it doesn't get back.

The small places near you don't have a marketing department. They don't show up at the top of Yelp because they didn't pay for placement. The only way they grow is one new customer at a time. Every random pick that lands on one is a customer they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Use the app. Tip well. Tell two friends.

Common questions

What about my privacy and data?

We don't run a server, and there's no account or sign-up. Your location is read by iOS and used on-device to query Apple's MapKit, and your visited log and ratings are stored on your phone — we never see, transmit, or store any of it. The one exception is ads: the free app shows ads through a third-party advertising partner (Google AdMob is planned). That partner may collect data and use your device's advertising identifier (IDFA) to personalize ads, subject to the App Tracking Transparency prompt you'll see — you can decline it. Buying Remove Ads ($4.99 one-time) turns the ads off entirely. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Where does the restaurant data come from?

Apple Maps (MapKit). It's the same database your iPhone uses when you tap a pin in the Maps app — restaurant names, addresses, phone numbers, websites, and hours. We don't run a database of our own.

Does it filter out chain restaurants?

Yes. Hiding chain restaurants is a built-in, free feature — flip on the hide-chains filter and the app skips the big national chains so your picks lean toward the independent, locally owned spots. And because picks are uniformly random with far more independents than chains in most areas, you'll land on a local place the vast majority of the time anyway. If something you'd rather skip pops up, just tap "Pick another."

Is anything locked behind a paid tier?

No. There's no Pro tier anymore — every feature is free for everyone: filter by cuisine style, search radius up to 45 miles, the "skip places I've already been" filter (powered by your visited log), and the hide-chains filter, along with random pick, GPS, town/zip search, Open in Maps, Open in Waze, tap to call, tap to visit the website or menu, and share by text. The only purchase is Remove Ads, a one-time $4.99 that turns off the ads — it doesn't unlock anything, because nothing is locked.

Is there a subscription or free trial?

No. There's no subscription, no free trial, and nothing auto-renews. The app is free and ad-supported, and the only purchase is Remove Ads — a single $4.99 one-time charge to your Apple ID that turns the ads off for good. You can restore it on any device signed in to the same Apple ID.

I deleted the app. Did I lose Remove Ads?

No. Remove Ads is tied to your Apple ID. Reinstall the app, tap "Restore purchases," and your ad-free status comes right back. The same applies if you previously bought the old Pro upgrade — restoring keeps you permanently ad-free.

Android version?

Not yet. Tonight's Table is iPhone-only today. If enough people ask, we'll build it.

Find your next
hidden gem.