NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With 50 million users monthly, Tabelog, Inc. has the number one restaurant review website in Japan and is now launching its US version, Tabelog (http://www.tabelog.us/) in what is often referred to as the food capital of America: New York City.
Launched this April, Tabelog aims to bring high quality reviews of restaurants in the Big Apple to food lovers, enlisting the help of top food bloggers, critics, and industry experts across the five boroughs.
From a business lunch to a date night, this is the place to learn about restaurants in New York. A typical restaurant review on Tabelog has multiple paragraphs of information and photos of the decor, menus, and of course the food. Food experts review everything from their favorite dish and how it was prepared to what desserts they recommend. You can also learn what to expect of restaurants, how to dress and sometimes even the history of the restaurants and the chef. If you want to impress at dinner, these reviews are second only to eating there itself.
Just like the Japanese website Tabelog, run by its parent company Kakaku.com, Tabelog also aims to bring together the food blogger community through tools, awards, and events for them and the restaurants that support them. The largest of these is the Official Food Blogger Restaurant Awards. Here, a judge’s panel of 200 food bloggers come together and vote on fun but informative categories such as the 'Best Kid-Friendly Restaurant in NYC' or 'Restaurant with the Best View.' The winning restaurants are awarded an exclusive Food Blogger Award for their restaurant along with all of the exposure associated with hundreds of blogs with thousands of followers.
Five award categories are voted on each quarter. Currently, voting for the Fall 2013 Awards is underway. The winners will be announced in early October, so be sure to check the Tabelog website for the results. Here are the categories:
Official Food Blogger Restaurant Awards: Fall 2013 Categories
Best Use of Truffles in a Dish
Best Overall Plate Display
Best Happy Hour Location
Best Steak in NYC
Best Ramen Noodles
Although Tabelog currently only has reviews for New York City restaurants, it is rapidly growing. In the past two months alone, an additional four thousand expert reviews have been added to the site.
Moving forward, Tabelog will be growing the site's functions so that food bloggers can actively exchange information about restaurants. Additionally, services will expand to other US cities as well.
About Tabelog, Inc.
Tabelog, Inc.'s parent company Kakaku.com runs Japan's largest price comparison website (http://kakaku.com/) as well as Japan's largest restaurant review website (http://tabelog.com/), which boasts more than 50 million monthly users in Japan and 4.7 million online reviews.
Kakaku.com is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a leader in Internet services in Japan.
