Truffle is a free app for getting restaurant recommendations from friends — here’s how it works

While there are hundreds of restaurant recommendation apps on the market, nothing beats getting a suggestion directly from a friend.

That’s what restaurant app Truffle is betting on, anyway.

Truffle – which is available for iPhone only right now – lets you curate lists of your favorite spots and easily share them with friends. It’s available as an iMessage app too, which means you can send recommendations directly within conversations.

Here’s how it works:

The goal of Truffle is to eliminate the need for keeping restaurant lists in your Notes app or a starred map in Google Maps — Truffle wants to easily curate all your recommendations in one place to more easily share with friends. To get started with the app, you’ll have to give it access to your location and contacts.

Once you’ve signed up, Truffle will present you with a list of “tastemakers” to follow. I didn’t know any of these people personally, but you can also search for friends to follow.

With Truffle, you can select your favorite restaurants in categories like barbecue, breakfast, places to take clients to, cocktails, etc. You can search for restaurants you like, or Truffle will give you some options. When you select a restaurant to add as your favorite for a category, you’ll also have the option to write a comment about why you like it. Your top picks will show up in a feed as well as on your profile page.

After you add a favorite, Truffle will send you a message letting you know that someone you follow also likes that place, and recommends you make plans. This can be disconcerting when you follow strangers, but it a cool feature if you also have a lot of friends who use the app.

Once you’ve added a favorite, you can easily find it again on your profile page. The cool thing about Truffle is that it organizes the restaurants by city too, which is a great tool for giving friends recommendations when they travel. If you click on a specific restaurant, it’ll give you the information you need, like directions, general price, and how far away it is from you.

Truffle works inside iMessage, too. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you’ll be able to add it to your app drawer in iMessage. If a friend texts you asking to a recommendation, you can pull up your Truffle list without leaving iMessage.

Tapping on a restaurant will let you send someone a link to that restaurant’s page in Truffle (but he other person can only view the page if they’re a Truffle user, too).

Truffle is free to download for iOS devices.