Fearless Critic is Austin’s bestselling restaurant guide, with 48,000 copies in print. In the five years and four editions since it first hit the shelves, the book has become the city's most trusted independent resource for food reviews and ratings.

This app offers access to the full text of Fearless Critic’s Austin restaurant reviews and ratings. Enjoy your first 7 days of the Fearless Critic for free, and then you can purchase a year-long subscription for $4.99. Content is provided by Fearless Critic’s discerning panel of local food writers, and the clean, visual, map-based iPhone interface makes Fearless Critic easier to access and rely on than ever before.

Fearless Critic covers every corner of the greater Austin area’s vast restaurant scene. We cover taco trucks and old-time steakhouses, BBQ shrines and power lunch spots. Our critics travel to Lake Travis and throughout the Hill Country to find the best food in the most unlikely places—but we also review and re-review the trendy spots downtown to see if they’re still worth your money.

Our critics are chosen through a rigorous application process, and our journalistic ethics are old-school. We don't identify ourselves when we eat. We don't accept ads from restaurants. We obsessively avoid any potential conflicts of interest. Every single one of our ratings is discussed and debated with the entire panel, and every single review is edited and fact-checked by paid professionals.

Fearless Critic’s cutting-edge map-based search system hides all the bells and whistles beneath the hood, making it easy to find the restaurant you’re looking for. Don’t expect to be interrupted by coupons for no-fee debit cards. We simply offer our critics’ professional evaluations of the Austin restaurant scene.

It all starts on the map: you can kiss goodbye to all those confusing decisions about what “neighborhoods” to select, or complicated rollers or check-boxes before you get the ratings you need. Simply use your fingers to drag the map, and zoom in or out, to choose your area and see the best restaurants within reach. Tap once on a pin to see the restaurant’s name, cuisine, ratings, and price; tap again to see the full 200-word review by Fearless Critic’s panel of local food writers and editors.

Fearless Critic isn’t afraid to call out overrated or underwhelming restaurants, and you’ll see that reflected on the map with our intuitive color-coding system, based on a traffic light. The lowest-restaurants are marked with red pins, the medium-rated restaurants are yellow, and the top-rated restaurants are green. And restaurants with ratings of 9.0 or above—Fearless Critic’s highest honor—get green stars.

With a simple tap on the “List” button, you can see a full list of the choices in your area, sorted by Fearless Critic food ratings. If you don’t want to be limited by the map zone you’ve chosen, just tap the number “in area” instead of “on map,” and you’ll see all choices that conform to your search criteria.

In a picky mood? Narrow your search with a sophisticated set of filters. Choose to see only restaurants that are open right now, restaurants that are vegetarian-friendly, restaurants that have good wine, beer, or cocktail program, and much more. All of it is done with a simple set of switches.

Want to go deeper? Read the entire text of our 200-word Fearless Critic restaurant review, based on the carefully edited, fact-checked, and benchmarked opinions of the panel. See our ratings for food, feel, wine, beer, and cocktails. Everything that you would read in the print Fearless Critic book, you’ll find in the app.