I recently went on a family trip to southern Florida, Weston to be exact. We decided to make 1 day a “TVFoodMaps” day.  We hit up 3 different restaurants seen on TV.  For lunch we did take-out at Sonny’s Famous Hoagies, seen on DDD and known for their cheesesteaks.  I got mine with onions and provolone.  The cheesesteak was really good, especially after adding the hot peppers they gave us on the side.  We also split a meatball hero, it was good but not that impressive.  The cheesesteak was good but that that big, I could probably have done 1 and half to really be fully satisfied.

Later that day we headed over to Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor for some early dessert.  Here we got some amazing ice cream.  The kids got individual servings and the adults(4) split 3 signature sundaes.  Turns out 3 sundaes was way too much for 4 people, these things were huge and delicous. Jaxson’s was a great experience and I recommend it if you are in the Ft. Lauderdale area, especially if you have kids.  Jaxson’s was seen on both Outrageous Food and Drinking Made Easy (Steve did a challenge there).

Just a short walk from Jaxson’s is Grampa’s Bakery which was on DDD as well.  After stuffing our face with ice cream we just ordered some donuts and cookies to go.  The people at Grampa’s were really kind and gave some samples to the kids.

All in all it was a great day of eating.

We are excited to offer our users the ability to now connect your TripIt account with your TVFoodMaps account.  Once connected there are two distinct features that you can use:

View your upcoming trips directly on TVFoodMaps and search for places to eat on your next trip.

Get notified after you create a trip on TripIt.  TVFoodMaps will email you after you create a new trip on TripIt with places that are near your final destination.

It is quite simple to setup as well.  All you need to do is log in to TVFoodMaps and visit your account page.  From their click the My Connections link on the right.  You will see the TripIt logo and all you have to do is click the Connect Now link.

After you allow TVFoodMaps to link to your TripIt account you are all done.

The Connections page will now say you are connected and there will be a link to View TripIt Details and that’s it!

We just released TVFoodMaps 1.81 for Android. This update has a few key features. First we added a more button so when using the location search you can get more results. We also increased the default results from 25 to 50. On top of that this release has performance improvements and bug fixes. We also “think” we improved the way the app looks on Android tablets. Since I don’t have an Android table I need some feedback from you!

We’ve added a new show, Drinking Made Easy, to our site. Drinking made easy is the ultimate show for those of us who enjoy a nice beer or cocktail.  It features Zane Lamprey travelling the country getting drunk and exploring drinking culture.  We’ve added 33 episodes and over 180 places so you shouldn’t be far away from a good place to drink.

This puts us at 21 unique shows and over 2300 total places featured on TVFoodMaps.

Yesterday we announced our involvement with WeFeedback a program to help feed hungry children around the world, sponsored by the World Food Program. Today we are excited to announce that for the month of December we will donate 10% of all our earnings to WeFeedback. This includes our advertising, mobile app revenue and our NEW BOOK. So if you’d like to help support TVFoodMaps and WeFeedback you can either donate directly, upgrade our mobile app or buy our new book!

Thanks & Happy Holidays to Everyone

We are excited to announce that we have partnered with WeFeedback.org, the world’s largest community for sharing food and changing lives. WeFeedback.org is part of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian organization, and its goal is to enlist you along with your social network to help fight hunger that burdens millions of families all over the world.

You will find WeFeedback widgets on many pages throughout TVFoodMaps which make it extremely easy for you to give back and donate.

WeFeedback works by you entering in a food you want to donate (for example : double bacon cheeseburger or a pint of beer) and the cost you would normally spend for that item.  The widget will display how many people that amount of money will help feed and you will then be directed to their website to make the donation.

What makes this very exciting for us at TVFoodMaps is that when someone donates from one of the widgets on our site, we are able to track the impact that the TVFoodMaps network has on fighting hunger.  Like the majority of our community we have a love for food but at the same time want to make a difference by giving back.

To find out more about WeFeedback.org check out our page on their site : TVFoodMaps on WeFeedback.org and from there you can make a donation as part of the TVFoodMaps network and also read more about WeFeedback.

As of our last update the TVFoodMaps community has fed 57 children.

We are really proud to announce the release of our first book, based on our website, TVFoodMaps.com. TVFoodMaps the Book, is over 420 pages of restaurant listings from the same shows we feature on TVFoodMaps.com. The book has 3 general sections. The first is restaurant listing by city and state. Each listing will let you know what show(s) the restaurant was featured on and have links to more information. You can either type in the link or scan a QR code with your smart phone. The second section lists the restaurants by the shows they were on including some show specific additional information (e.g. did Adam win the challenge on Man v. Food? or who was the chef who made the recommendation for The Best Thing I Ever Ate). Finally, we have some featured reviews for a small set of restaurants. The reviews come from the TVFoodMaps team as well as some of the blogs we love to read!

Whether you just want a nice big reference book or know someone who loves to eat but isn’t into phone apps or websites, or if you just want to help support us TVFoodMaps the book is a great gift for the holidays! For our readers we have a coupon code to take an extra 20% off the regular price.

The coupon code is: TGYLJTYN

Buy the book now!

Per our recent announcement 10% of all revenue from the book will go towards the WeFeedback Hunger program.

We’ve added 2 new shows to the site, Top Chef & Restaurant Impossible. For Top Chef we listed the restaurants of the chefs that compete on the show (at least the ones we could find). We are now at 22 different shows!

Today we are announcing TVFoodMaps Premium for our Android, iPhone and iPad apps.  Many of our users have expressed interest in helping to support TVFoodMaps so we’ve decided to create TVFoodMaps Premium.  The premium status is just an in application purchases of $2.99, no separate download required (as long as you are update to version 1.71).  Our goal is NOT to punish those who don’t want to pay but rather a little extra for those that do.  Premium membership gets you:

• * No advertisements in your mobile application.
• * Access to our new Mobile Alerts feature for your mobile application.
• * The satisfaction of helping support TVFoodMaps.
• * New features coming in the future.

All of our existing features will still work as-is for non-premium members.  We want to offer a great FREE experience with just a little extra for those who feel like supporting us.  Depending on how it goes we may do something similar for the website as well, but dont worry our focus will always be on providing ALL users a great application.

Learn More About TVFoodMaps Premium

We are excited to announce 2 new shows that we have added to our lineup at TVFoodMaps.com. The new shows are Duff Goldman’s Sugar High and Troy Johnson’s show Crave, both on Food Network.  For both shows we have all our normal great features, filtering my episode, state or viewing on a map.

This brings our featured show count to 20 different shows!