A list of online menus

I was trying to find a place from where I could order food to be delivered last night. When I realised that none of the menus I had in the house had the kind of food I wanted to eat at that time (Thai), I decided to ask my good friend Google. It wasn’t as easy as I thought, so to help others avoid the pain of going through the whole process, here’s the fruit of my research. If you know of any others that I can add, do let me know. 

1. Just Eat: Enter your postcode, zero in on a restaurant from the list it throws up, place your order online, pay for it online if you like (or you can just pay cash on delivery). This is what I used eventually, and it was very convenient. 

2. Menulover: This site actually has scanned versions of actual menus!

3. Order Takeaway: What I don’t like about this site is that you HAVE to register just to see a list of places (which is not the case with Just Eat – you only need to register if you decide you want to place an order). 

4. Fancy a Bite to Eat: This one has a very limited list of restaurants in its database, so it’s not of much use.

5. Takeaway2nite: This one has virtually no menus in its database, so I don’t know what they’re doing!!

6. Fodder Finder: This site serves only Lincolnshire. 

7. Seamless Web: I remember using this in the US (it has details of restaurants in 14 US cities), but I think it’s still really small in London, which is the only non-US city it has details for. When I typed in my postcode, it said it didn’t have any restaurants in my area but that it is ‘constantly expanding’.

*Update: 8. Hungry House: This one seems like a pretty good online ordering site for the UK. Shane, from the company, wrote to me to include it and from a quick look, it seems as good as Just Eat. I’ll try this one next time!

9. E-Resistible: Founded by 3 students at the University of Warwick (who are currently completing their degrees), this site focuses on Birmingham, Bristol, Bath, Coventry, Reading and some parts of London. An interesting feature is the search within menu function, so if you like chicken tikka masala and don’t want to labour through a long menu, you can see if it’s there very quickly and save yourself some time. I look forward to seeing their database grow.