YukMakan, culinary website with a touch of “social” attitude

Another website on food review at your service, DS Readers. YukMakan (http://yukmakan.com), administered by MenaraVisi, known as administrator for website of wedding, honeymoon and everything within the territories, Weddingku. As for YukMakan, my first impression was it has interesting outlook with cute icons and brownish orange color. Since it is a new player in the world where its competitors is already quite exist such as SendokGarpu and Goorme, what does YukMakan have to offer?

The search area caught my eyes first thanks to its wide and very informative search method. You can advance your search to a more specific category, by restaurant name, street name, or area name. The result is quite accurate. If you want a more thorugh and detail search scheme, not only based on key words, you can use Zone, City, Location, Food Category, and Outlet Type (food court, homey, stalls, etc). Unfortunately there is no uniformity in using languages, despite combining City and Lokasi (Location) in one box, it’ll better to use Bahasa Indonesia or English completely.

YukMakan also has special panelist team, other than user generated reviewers to provide objective review of a dining place. There are 8 panelists, all part of MenaraVisi team. Upon writing this article, there are 138 reviews from the panelists, with detail and thorough writing style towards the dining places they visited. This will be an interesting counterpart other than reviews from customers, because opinions or compliment from those called experts usually gives extra point for the object’s image and will be easier spread virally.

Now back to the website’s menu, if you have chosen the place you’ve visited, for example a sushi restaurant in Senayan City, you will not only be able to see the place details, but also favorite and recommended food and their price. These two things have always become main attention for culinary enthusiasts, but mostly forgotten and only appear on review segment. Although usually every time we go into a dining place for the first time, what we ask first is, “What’s the favorite here?”

The most social, and I made it part of the title is a big box on the upper right side area, asking readers to share. Share what? You can upload pictures from your own review, asking your friends to also make reviews, to tell other friends about the website and places, and ask them to make the places as favorite.

The first thing, uploading your own picture can be the first thing ever offered by a culinary website, because usually you can only use the already available pictures taken by website’s admin. You must admit that this feature is interesting especially if you love food photography, and taking pictures of food before you eat them, and certainly website’s administrators cannot take pictures of every item in a restaurant. This feature is a complement to get complete data with costumer’s help.

Other than review menu, there is also additional menu, favorite directory – filled in by collaborative partners, with reviews, discussion forums, and all kinds of promos already made available, especially for credit card provider. In all, I quite enjoy browsing through the website’s page by page and expect more venues are covered by reviews – either from panelist or users. The discussion forums can be used in a much better way to share information on restaurants or food.

At the moment YukMakan is holding an event collaborating with Raja Boemboe located on Kelapa Gading area, to write reviews on the restaurant, and they provide interesting prizes for the winners. Event will be held until 28 February 2011. Go on and try it, you might be the lucky one.

Translated by Nita Sellya.