General Questions
What is Menutopia?
Menutopia is a customizable, community-based website built around the all-mighty menu.
We provide the menus, but we leave the rest up to you, the community. Menutopia is completely at your mercy—you rate the restaurants, you write the reviews, you create the lists, you even decide how the restaurants are categorized by tagging them. All you have to do to get started is sign up for your free account.
We even have an area of the site dedicated to your suggestions and feedback about how to make Menutopia even better. Visit Menutopia: Behind the Scenes and help shape the site as it grows. Menutopia is available only in Manhattan now, but we plan on changing that very soon.
That Menutopia is so hot right now...Menutopia.
What is 'Behind the Scenes?'
Menutopia: Behind the Scenes is a mini-site that we set up to do just what the name implies—take you behind the scenes of Menutopia.com.
We'll be posting regular updates and announcements to the Menutopia Blog, but there are also a bunch of ways for you to participate. You can:
Go Behind the Scenes
What's all this about ordering online?
Through a partnership with our friends at SeamlessWeb, the top food ordering service around, we've made it easy to order food online from participating restaurants.
See a menu that makes you hungry? Just click the 'order online' link at the top of the page and we'll send you right to the SeamlessWeb menu where you can start your order and check out.
If you're looking to order, you can always browse through the 'Order Online' category. You can also just look for the SeamlessWeb icon that appears before participating restaurants: 
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I want Menutopia in my area!
First of all, that's not even a question. Second, we're already hard at work planning our expansion to other areas. If you'd like to be notified when we launch in your city, send an email to contact@menutopia.com and include your city name in the subject line of the email.
Questions about Signing Up
Why do I need to sign up?
You don't...unless you want to take advantage of the My Menutopia features.
You can still browse restaurants, use the oh-so-smart search, read reviews, view full menus, view public lists, and order food online without a Menutopia account.
But signing up is free and it only takes a few seconds. Once you have an account you rate and review restaurants, create your own lists, save favorites, add friends, and more.
» Read the Top 10 Reasons to Sign Up for a Menutopia Account
Sign Up Now
I signed up. Now what?
After submitting the sign up form, you will need to verify your email address to activate your account. Just check your inbox for the email addressed that you used when signing up. There will be a link in the email that will activate your account and log you in. If you don't receive the activation email, contact the Menutopia team so we can help get you set up.
Now that you're all signed up, why not get started taking advantage of the exclusive members-only features?
Questions about Finding a Restaurant
How do I use the smart search?
Just start typing! Really, that's all there is to it. As soon as you start typing the name (or part of the name) of the restaurant you're looking for, you'll start to see the matching restaurants appear instantly. Keep typing until you see the restaurant you want, then click on it!
If you're not sure of the name of the place you're looking for (or you only know part of the name) you can use the advanced search options to get a more focused list of results. Just click 'advanced search' and select the neighborhood or cuisine type of the place you're trying to find.
The smart search shows the top 20 results listed alphabetically, so if you're performing a general search, you can always click the 'search' button to see the full results.
How do I refine my results?
If you didn't use the smart search (or if you clicked 'search' to see a full list of results), you'll be taken to a results page.
Some result pages may contain several hundred restaurants. To narrow that list down to a more manageable number, use the 'Refine By' links in the column to the right of the results.
For example, if you're looking for brunch spots in the West Village, you would click the 'West Village' link under 'Browse by Neighborhood' from the main page. The results page shows a few hundred restaurants. Then you would click the 'Brunch' checkbox on the right column. The restaurant list is updated instantly, showing only the relevant restaurants.
You can either select a restaurant or refine your results even further by checking more tags or cuisine types. You can even sort by rating to see which places the community has selected as the best.
Why can't I find a specific restaurant?
We're pretty new to the game here and we realize that we don't have menus for every restaurant out there...but we certainly want to.
If you can't find the restaurant (and you're sure it exists) you can always suggest a restaurant. Once we have your request, we'll do our best to get the restaurant and it's menu listed on the site as soon as we can.
Questions about Menus
Can I submit/send in a menu?
Of course you can! If you have a recent menu for a restaurant on file, please send it to menus@menutopia.com.
How do I print the menu?
We don't have any links to printer-friendly menus on Menutopia because all of our menus are printer-friendly! That's right, just print the menu that you're viewing on-screen and it will come out nice and pretty. Easy peasy!
To print the menu, simply use the 'Print this menu' link in the yellow Quick Tools box on the menu page, or you can use your browser's print function. PC users hit CTRL + P, Mac user hit CMD + P.
The menu is outdated. What can I do?
How nice of you to offer! You can report outdated menus that are need of an update on the discussion boards Behind the Scenes.
Questions about My Menutopia Features
How do I rate and review?
There are several links to rate and review on each restaurant page, but rest assured, there will always be one in the yellow Quick Tools section.
Ratings and reviews are tied together in Menutopia, so you will have to rate each aspect of the restaurant (step 1) as well as write a review (step 2). You also have the option of tagging the restaurant (step 3) before submitting your review.
When writing your review, imagine you are sharing your opinion with a friend who is thinking about trying this restaurant. You don't have to be nice, but let's keep it clean and relevant, huh?
Where is my review?
Most reviews are posted to the restaurant's page immediately. If you got a confirmation message that says "your review has been submitted for review by Menutopia," you must have used a word that tripped our dirty word filter. As you should know if you read our terms of use, we don't allow illegal, offensive, objectionable, libelous, racially offensive, abusive, threatening, or otherwise inappropriate information on our site.
If your review is flagged, it will have to be manually approved before appearing on the site. This is just a precaution that we take to make sure that Menutopia isn't filled with spam or personal attacks. Most of the time it's a case of being overly cautious...but we're just trying to keep the quality of our reviews high!
How do I tag a restaurant?
Tagging is part of the rating and reviewing process (step 3 to be exact), so to tag a restaurant you have to review it.
To tag a place, just click any of the tags before submitting your review. Each time you click a tag, you're basically casting a vote for applying it to the restaurant. Once enough people apply the same tag to one restaurant, the restaurant will be found under that category for anyone browsing the site.
Here's the tagging step when reviewing a restaurant:
How do I save favorites?
On each restaurant page, there's a yellow Quick Tools box that gives you, well, quick tools to take advantage of the special members-only features of the site.
Once you navigate to the reviews or menu page for one of your favorite restaurants, all you have to do is click 'Save as a Favorite.'
How do I create lists?
When you're viewing restaurant info (including the menu) for a restaurant that you'd like to add to one of your lists, use the Quick Tools box. There's a link that lets you add the current restaurant to an existing list or create a new one.
You can also click 'Lists' in the My Menutopia area and create your list there, manually adding restaurants from your favorites, your recently viewed, or the places you've reviewed.
How do I add friends?
Once you've signed up for your free Menutopia account, adding friends is cream cheese. Just click the 'Invite Friends' button in the My Menutopia box and enter your friends' email addresses.
It doesn't matter if your friend already has a Menutopia account or if s/he's never heard of Menutopia. We'll send a friend request to existing members and a general invitation to non-members. If your member friend accepts your invitation, they'll be added to your friends. If your non-member friend signs up, they'll automatically be added to your friends.
If you want to rub elbows with the Menutopia elite, you could also check out the top reviewers and click the 'Add ___ as a friend' link.
Unanswered Questions
You didn't answer my question!
Well, I guess your question doesn't qualify as frequently asked yet. You can contact us via our handy online form and we'll get back to you pronto.