Zendaya and Tom Holland are embarking on an odyssey of their own—a culinary one. As they travel to promote their new films, The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the newlyweds have been trying restaurants around the world with the help of the restaurant-tracking app Beli.
“We’ve been on tour traveling to loads of amazing places, and Z’s been using this app, and it has not let us down yet,” Holland recently shared on an episode of the Dish podcast. “It’s like this new social media for restaurants and food,” he explained. When asked who in the Odyssey cast always knows the best food spots in town, his answer was resounding: It’s Zendaya. “She’s really into her food and trying food. She’s very adventurous,” he said.
When I saw this news, I thought something along the lines of: Celebrities, they’re just like us! Zendaya and I have something in common, because I use Beli, too. Even before I started writing about restaurants, cookbooks, and food trends, I’ve always loved trying new places, and I’ve been known to keep notes on my Notes app with categories like: “Best Not-Too-Sweet Margarita” and “Matilda-level Chocolate Cake.” So when a friend invited me to join Beli in 2024 (back when it was invite-only), it was a perfect match.
For the unfamiliar: Built by Harvard Business School graduates, Beli is an app that allows users to track, rate, and review restaurants alongside your friends. It’s been called the Gen Z Yelp, and has reportedly overtaken Yelp as the restaurant-rating app du jour for young diners. As a Gen Zer myself, I use Beli because I enjoy reading my friends’ restaurant notes, and I love seeing pictures of the food before I go somewhere. You can look up a restaurant on Beli and see the vibe and ambience, menu, and more. And it tells you when you and a friend both want to try a restaurant, which is a cute way to get plans in motion. I also like that it’s not public, because a lot of the time, while I may want to note something, I don’t necessarily want to potentially affect the restaurant’s business by posting a review about what might have been an off night.
Of course, I don’t love everything about Beli—for example: the fact that you have to invite friends to unlock certain features, like the ability to search by dish name—but overall, it’s a fun way to keep track of restaurants I’ve been to and ones I want to try. The fact that you can choose your audience gives it a refreshing intimacy—there is vulnerability in sharing what you really think, even when it is just about a meal. You reveal your neuroses, your preferred French fry shape, the kind of lighting you like—and you get a window into other people’s restaurant moments, whether it’s a picture of a stranger reaching for the last spoonful of a sundae, or a selfie of friends toasting in celebration. It can become a collective diary of sorts, an archive of the lives lived at restaurants.
That window into your friends’ lives and relationships can even lead to friendships. On Beli, one of my friends reconnected with a Hinge date she had blocked, and ended up becoming real friends with him. And as another friend told me, “When I get a boyfriend, he’ll definitely be hard-launched on Beli and probably not on Instagram at all.” That same friend added that it’s fun to be Beli friends with couples—or frequent dining companions—and see what each person had to say about the same meal. What does each person notice? What are the two sides to the story? Who ordered the better entrée?
