We’ve spent many hours scrolling endlessly through our food feeds, checking out (and drooling over) all the great reviews and pictures that flowed in after our last update a few months ago. Now, we’re going a step further, and building on the existing Zomato experience to make the in-restaurant experience smoother and easier. 

It starts with the Check In. Checking in at a restaurant now gives you handy tips from fellow foodies, suggestions on what to order, and also lets you add a picture or a review for that restaurant incredibly easily. 

What’s even better than checking in at a restaurant, you ask? Checking in with friends! You can now tag friends in check-ins, reviews, and photo comments, so you’ll always remember who you celebrated that promotion with. Without saying too much, we’ll tell you that the check-in is just the first step in a series of great new related features to come. Just a note of playful caution: Zomato is not a game, so just don’t expect any (ahem) official-sounding titles if you keep checking in at places across the city.

Speaking of places across the city, we understand it can be quite difficult to remember all the restaurants you’ve eaten at, or when you went to a particular one. With the completely redesigned Food Journey, you can now track every single foodie moment – the photos you added, the reviews you wrote, and now even check-ins – right from the time you signed up on Zomato, up until the meal you just finished.

One more important thing we’re sure you’ll notice the moment you open the app, is how different it looks and feels. Images load 6x faster than before, the home screen is easier to read, and even restaurant pages have been redesigned so things are just where you’ll need them. For example, the things that foodies on Zomato access the most – menus, reviews, and pictures – are conveniently located at the top half of the page. Supporting information such as dish suggestions, what a restaurant is known for, timings, and cuisines are at the bottom half. Essentially, we’re on a mission to make things as simple as we possibly can for anyone deciding where to eat. That’s also why your Wishlist and SpeedDial – now rolled into a single list known as Bookmarks – can be accessed offline as well (so you’re at nobody’s mercy when the WiFi’s down and you need to order in).

Last, but definitely not the least, Zomato is also compatible with iOS8. In addition to several overall performance improvements, we’ll be baking in some of their features in future updates. For now, you can use interactive notifications to follow foodies back from within the notification at the top of your screen, without leaving what you were doing. 

All these changes should go a long way in simplifying the way we eat. And like we said, there’s still so much more to come, including our Android, Windows Phone, and website updates, which are headed your way very soon.

We’re always looking for feedback, so we know what we need to be doing better. We’d love it if you took the app for a spin, and sent us your thoughts – we’re at feedback@zomato.com, and always listening on twitter. Oh, and if you haven’t already heard, we’re giving away an iPhone 6 for the most brutally open – but constructive – public feedback we get for our apps and website. You might want to check it out – because those food pictures will look so much better on that 4.7-inch screen.