Free · No signup · Updated October 2026
Menu checker: what should you order?
The best dish on a menu depends on what you’re watching. Upload a photo of a menu or paste it, and pick one: blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, a fatty liver, gout, heartburn, digestion or bones. Cloche estimates every dish and shows the three best to order and the three to skip. Use it to find low sodium restaurant meals.
- Best for choosing at a restaurant
- Free, no account, no email
- Results in a few seconds
- Estimated from USDA values
Get Cloche on your iPhone, free on TestFlight
How does the menu checker pick a dish?
It reads each dish on the menu, estimates a typical restaurant portion and its nutrients from USDA values, then scores each dish against what you picked. For blood pressure that is sodium and potassium; for blood sugar, added sugar, carbs and fiber; for gout, purines and alcohol.
A dish ranks higher when it stays under the amounts Cloche uses for one meal and brings the nutrients that help, such as fiber for cholesterol or calcium for bones. These are sample amounts for reading a meal, not your personal targets.
What should you look for on a menu?
- For blood pressure, watch soups, cured meat, soy sauce and anything “crispy”; ask for sauce on the side.
- For blood sugar, pair the carbs with protein and vegetables, and skip the sweet drink.
- For cholesterol, choose grilled over fried, and olive oil over butter and cream.
- For gout, go easy on organ meat, shellfish and beer.
- For heartburn, order a smaller plate if it’s late, and leave the fried side.
Chain restaurants in the US with 20 or more locations must post calories on the menu, by FDA menu labeling rules, and give full nutrition on request. When the menu prints numbers, the checker uses them.
More free tools: the sodium calculator and the added sugar calculator. Every number is an estimate; we publish how far off the estimates run against USDA reference foods.
Questions people ask
What is the healthiest thing to order at a restaurant?
It depends on what you are watching. Grilled fish or chicken with vegetables suits most goals; for blood pressure, the sauce and soup decide more than the protein.
Can I upload a photo of any menu?
Yes, a printed menu, a board or a screenshot. A sharp, straight photo reads best. You can also paste the dish names.
How accurate are the restaurant estimates?
They are estimates of a typical restaurant portion. Restaurants vary a lot, especially in salt and oil. A menu that prints nutrition is read as printed.
Is the menu photo stored?
No. The photo is read once to list the dishes and isn’t kept.
Take a photo of the plate when it arrives
Cloche is a food journal for iPhone. Snap what arrives at the table, and it reads the plate for what you’re watching and keeps it in your day.
Cloche is on TestFlight, Apple’s app for trying an app before its release. It’s free while it is. Leave your email and the invite comes from [email protected].