What Is Meni?
Meni is an AI-powered menu recommendation app for people who do not want to compare 30, 50, or 100 dishes themselves.
You scan or upload a restaurant menu. Meni extracts the dishes it can read, checks them against the preferences you have already set, and returns a small set of recommendations tailored to you.
A typical result is intentionally simple:
- I’d get this — the strongest overall match.
- If you want something lighter — a lighter alternative.
- If you want comfort food — a more indulgent or satisfying alternative.
The goal is not to tell you that one food is universally “good” and another is “bad.” It is to help you find the dishes that best fit you, this menu, and this meal.
How Meni Works
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Scan the restaurant menu. Take one or more photos of a printed menu, menu board, or saved menu image. Meni reads the visible text and structures the dishes it can identify.
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Match the menu to your preferences. Meni can use recurring preferences such as dietary preferences (halal, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free), foods or allergens you want to avoid, foods you enjoy or dislike, and whether you want something balanced, filling, lighter, or protein-forward.
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Get three personalized menu picks. Instead of turning the scanned menu into another giant interface, Meni ranks the options and shows a focused shortlist. Each recommendation can explain why the dish fits your preferences, the menu details that influenced the recommendation, possible dietary or allergen concerns, an easy modification worth asking for, a simple way to order the dish, and estimated calories or macros when useful, with clear uncertainty.
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Change the mood without rescanning. If the first set of recommendations does not fit what you feel like eating, switch the intent — for example to Filling, Fresh, Comfort, or Protein-rich — and Meni can rerank the same menu.
Why I Built Meni
Restaurant menus create an unusual kind of friction: there is plenty of information, but that information does not necessarily make the decision easier.
A menu may contain dozens of dishes while the person reading it is also trying to remember dietary restrictions, avoid certain ingredients, hit a nutrition preference, choose something they actually enjoy, and decide how they feel in that moment.
Most menu and nutrition tools respond by adding more information: more scores, more nutrition estimates, more filters, or more items to compare.
Meni takes the opposite direction.
Decision > information.
The product is designed to reduce the amount of work between opening a menu and confidently ordering something.
Personalized Restaurant Recommendations, Not Generic Rankings
The same menu should not produce the same answer for everyone.
Someone looking for a high-protein meal may get a different recommendation from someone who wants something light. A vegetarian diner should see a different shortlist from someone who eats everything. Someone avoiding dairy or gluten may need different questions to ask the restaurant before ordering.
Meni uses your saved context to make the menu more relevant instead of asking you to start from scratch on every scan.
Dietary Preferences and Allergies
Meni can use dietary preferences and avoided foods as part of the ranking process, but restaurant preparation varies and a menu rarely contains every ingredient or cross-contact detail.
For that reason, Meni should be treated as decision support, not an allergy-safety guarantee.
If an ingredient, allergen, cooking method, sauce, oil, or cross-contact risk cannot be confirmed from the menu, Meni should surface that uncertainty and encourage you to verify it with restaurant staff.
Calories and Macros Are Estimates
Meni may show estimated calories, protein, carbohydrates, or fat to provide useful context for a dish.
These numbers are estimates based on menu descriptions and general food knowledge. Portion size, recipes, oils, sauces, substitutions, and restaurant preparation can change the real result significantly.
Meni is not intended to be a calorie diary, medical nutrition tool, or precise food measurement system.
What Meni Is Not
Meni is intentionally narrow.
It is not trying to become:
- a calorie tracker
- a daily food diary
- a weight tracker
- a meal planner
- a restaurant discovery database
- a recipe app
- a social food network
The core job is simpler:
I’m at a restaurant. Help me decide what to order.
Built for the Moment at the Table
A restaurant decision often happens with limited time. Someone may be waiting to order, the menu may be several pages long, and the user does not want to configure a complicated AI prompt.
That is why Meni is designed around a short loop:
scan → understand → rank → choose
Every extra tap has to earn its place.
My Role
I independently shaped the product direction, interaction model, personalization strategy, visual experience, AI workflow, and mobile implementation for Meni.
The product work includes:
- product strategy and scope
- onboarding and preference design
- camera and multi-page menu capture
- AI menu extraction
- personalized dish ranking
- uncertainty and dietary-safety UX
- recommendation and dish-detail design
- estimated nutrition context
- monetization and purchase flows
- backend and AI orchestration
The project is another exploration of the kind of AI product I like building: a focused workflow where the model removes work instead of creating a larger interface for the user to manage.
Privacy and Safety
Meni can process menu images and personal food preferences in order to generate recommendations. Some of those preferences — such as allergies, dietary restrictions, or religious food preferences — may be sensitive personal information.
Read the full Meni Privacy Policy for details about data handling, AI processing, purchases, retention, and your choices.
Meni — your menu, narrowed down to three.
what it does
- Take one or more photos of a restaurant menu, menu board, or saved menu image.
- Set dietary preferences, foods to avoid, and tastes you enjoy or dislike.
- Choose meal intent: balanced, filling, lighter, protein-forward, or comfort food.
- Get three personalized picks with explanations of why each dish fits your preferences.
- Switch meal intent to rerank the same menu without rescanning.
- See estimated calories and macros as supporting context with clear uncertainty.
why it matters
- Turns a long menu into three personalized dishes worth considering.
- Uses your saved dietary preferences, avoided foods, and meal intent to narrow choices.
- Supports recurring preferences like halal, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free.
- Lets you switch meal intent without rescanning the menu.
privacy notes
- Menu images and personal food preferences are processed to generate recommendations.
- Dietary restrictions, allergies, and religious food preferences may be sensitive personal information.
- Restaurant preparation varies and menus rarely contain every ingredient or cross-contact detail.
- Meni is decision support, not an allergy-safety guarantee.
