Why deciding is the hard part
The difficulty with "what should we eat" is rarely a shortage of options. It is that the choice is jointly owned, reversible up until the moment food is ordered, and low-stakes enough that nobody wants to be the one who insisted. Everyone defers, the deferring costs more time than the decision is worth, and the meal happens late and worse.
A random draw fixes this by changing what people are responding to. Reacting to a specific proposal is much easier than generating one, and the reaction itself carries information: a shrug means proceed, an immediate "not that" tells the table what the person actually wanted without them having to claim it. Either way you are out of the loop in under a minute. That is the entire mechanism, and it works whether or not you take the suggestion.
What the filters do
Every dish carries a cuisine, the meals it suits, and up to four tags. The exclusions act on the tags and are conservative rather than clever.
| Filter | Removes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| No noodles or pasta | Anything whose main body is a noodle | Dumplings and rice dishes stay |
| No soups or stews | Broths, chowders, chilis, curries served wet | Useful in summer, and for eating at a desk |
| Nothing spicy | Dishes where chili heat is a defining feature | A tolerance judgement, so treat it as approximate |
| Lighter dishes only | Everything not explicitly tagged light | An aggressive filter that cuts the pool hard |
The lighter filter is the one that surprises people. It is a whitelist rather than a blacklist, so it keeps only what was positively marked as light and drops everything else, including plenty of dishes that are not especially heavy. Combined with a single cuisine and a narrow meal it can empty the pool entirely, which the page will tell you rather than silently ignoring one of your settings.
The three-candidate mode
Three is the right number for a group. One suggestion invites a veto and no alternative. Five is another decision problem. Three is enough to feel like a choice, small enough to vote on by show of hands, and short enough that everyone has heard all of them by the time the last is read out. If the vote ties, draw again — the second draw excludes the first three, so a tie never repeats itself.
The exclusion is a single generation deep. Press the button twice and the second draw avoids the first; press it a third time and the first draw is eligible again. That keeps the pool from collapsing after a few presses while still guaranteeing that a rejected suggestion does not immediately reappear.
What the list is and is not
One hundred and ten dishes, weighted towards what an American household would plausibly cook on a weeknight or order on a Friday. It is not a survey of any cuisine and it does not pretend to be: seven regional labels covering the world's food is a filing convention, not a claim. Descriptions are opinions about how each dish goes best, not recipes.
The spice and lightness tags are based on the usual preparation, and restaurants vary enormously. A dish tagged not-spicy can arrive incendiary and a light one can arrive swimming in oil. If you have an allergy or a dietary restriction that matters medically, check the ingredients of whatever comes up rather than trusting a tag on a web page.
Questions people ask
Does it ever give the same answer twice in a row?
Only when the filters leave it no choice. The previous draw is excluded from the next one, so with a healthy pool you will not see an immediate repeat. If your combination of meal, cuisine and exclusions leaves a single matching dish, that dish comes back and the results say so explicitly rather than pretending a fresh draw happened.
Are the suggestions weighted or sponsored?
Neither. Every dish in the filtered pool has exactly the same chance, drawn with a Fisher-Yates shuffle over the pool. There is no advertiser input, no popularity weighting and no tracking of what you pick. The results line names the random source that actually ran in your browser.
Why is my favourite dish missing?
The list is a hundred and ten items chosen to cover ordinary weeknight and takeout territory without becoming unwieldy. Regional specialties, restaurant-chain items and anything requiring hard-to-source ingredients were left out. There is no way to add your own on this page; if you want a draw over your own list, the random picker elsewhere on this site takes pasted lines.
Is anything saved between visits?
No. The only thing remembered is the previous draw, and only while the page stays open. Reloading clears it. Nothing is uploaded and there is no record of what you were offered or what you chose.