How it works

How it works

Four steps, about three minutes

01

Find the restaurant

Start typing a name, street or ZIP code. We hold more than thirty thousand restaurants, bars and food businesses across Houston and the surrounding counties. If yours is missing, you can add it.

02

Tell us what happened

When you were there, what you ate and drank, and how you felt afterwards. Include drinks with ice — that detail matters more often than people expect.

03

Confirm it is you

We email you a six-digit code. Until you enter it, the report counts for nothing. This is what stops a rival business filing complaints about the place across the street.

04

We take it from there

If two or more people report the same place inside a day, it reaches our review queue. Someone reads every report before anything is sent, and if we do make contact the message is neutral and does not name you.

Being straight with you

A service like this only works if people trust it — diners and restaurant owners both. So here is exactly where the edges are.

We have no authority to inspect, fine or close anything. If you want an inspection, contact the Houston Health Department or your county’s environmental health office — and please do, in addition to telling us.

There is no public leaderboard, no map of bad restaurants, no searchable archive of complaints. A single report is one person’s account of one evening, and treating it as proof would be unfair to a business that may have done nothing wrong.

When we contact a restaurant, we say that we received reports, that they are unverified accounts from members of the public, and that we have drawn no conclusion. We invite a response and we record it. That is the whole of it.

Symptoms can start anywhere from an hour to several days after a meal, so the last place you ate is not always the cause. That is precisely why we look for the same restaurant coming up more than once, rather than acting on any single report.

Most people never say anything, so the same problem carries on for weeks. One report is a data point. Two is a pattern worth a phone call.

If you are seriously unwell, please see a doctor first. This is not a medical service and it is not an emergency line.