About
The menu data layer
behind dishes.nyc.
dishes.nyc is a public-facing window into Cartewei — a verified restaurant menu intelligence platform. The dishes, prices, and coverage notes you see on this site come from the same evidence-backed data we license to publishers, search engines, and AI systems that need to ground their answers in what restaurants are actually serving.
What's in the data
For every restaurant we cover, Cartewei holds the full menu — every dish, every section, every price — tied back to reviewable source evidence and refreshed as menus change.
Beyond raw menu rows, the data layer tracks creator and press mentions tied to specific dishes, signals about what a restaurant is known for, neighborhood and cuisine classifications, and coverage notes that make the quality of each record visible instead of hidden.
How it's built
Cartewei collects menu evidence from operator-controlled and other reviewable sources, then keeps the source material separate from the structured data shown here. That means a dish can be traced back to evidence, and later corrections do not erase the original observation.
The system is designed around a simple distinction: what a source said, what Cartewei extracted from it, and what has been reviewed enough to publish or license. Keeping those layers separate makes the data easier to audit as restaurants update their menus.
Presentation-ready coverage is checked by a person. We compare the captured menu against current restaurant evidence and look for the kinds of mismatches a diner, editor, or AI answer would care about.
Why it exists
Existing menu data either lives behind delivery aggregators (with the wrong incentives and stale prices), or is locked inside point-of-sale systems no consumer product can reach. Cartewei is built for the layer that's missing — verified, operator-aligned menu data that publishers and AI systems can cite with confidence.
The dishes.nyc project applies that layer to the 2026 NYT 100. The same primitives apply to any restaurant set: a curated list, a neighborhood, a delivery zone, or a tasting-menu directory.
Licensing & press
For data licensing, partnerships, press, or research questions, send a brief note to Cartewei.