Dubai-born byChefs expands to eight global cities in six months and prepares to launch AI-powered restaurant app

The UAE-founded restaurant platform has brought together more than 500 leading chefs across four continents and is now preparing its next wave of expansion, including London, Milan, Singapore and New York.

byChefs.com, an international restaurant ranking founded in Dubai, has expanded to eight cities worldwide in just six months, building a network of more than 500 leading chefs and preparing to launch a new consumer app featuring an AI-powered dining concierge.

The idea behind byChefs is simple. The platform builds its rankings around recommendations from professional chefs, asking them where they personally choose to eat. Every participating chef votes only within their own city, ranking the restaurants they genuinely recommend. Votes are converted into points through a transparent methodology, with clear conflict-of-interest rules limiting how chefs can vote for their own restaurants or hospitality groups.

The ranking also shows which chefs selected each restaurant, while individual chef profiles give users access to their personal recommendations.

Eight cities in six months

Since launching in Dubai, byChefs has expanded to Porto, Lisbon, Cape Town, Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Barcelona — reaching eight cities across four continents in just six months.

During the same period, the platform has brought together more than 500 leading chefs, creating one of the world’s largest international chef communities built around a single restaurant-ranking methodology.

This pace of expansion is unusual for the restaurant-ranking industry, where entering a new market traditionally requires building a local editorial operation from scratch. byChefs builds each new market around its local professional chef community, allowing the platform to expand internationally while keeping the voting rooted in each city.

London, Milan, Singapore and New York are among the next planned launches as byChefs works towards its ambition of covering 50 of the world’s leading gastronomic cities.

From Dubai to the world

Dubai is central to the story of byChefs. Over the past decade, the city has established itself as one of the world’s leading gastronomic destinations, attracting chefs, restaurant groups, entrepreneurs and talent from virtually every part of the world.

byChefs was founded in Dubai and has used the city as the starting point for its international expansion.

“Dubai has spent years bringing the world to the UAE. With byChefs, we want to take something created in Dubai to the world,” says Alexander Sysoev, founder of byChefs. “In just six months, we have built a network across eight cities and more than 500 leading chefs — and we are only at the beginning.”

The company sees that expansion as part of a broader shift in which UAE-founded hospitality and technology businesses are increasingly building for international markets.

From restaurant ranking to technology platform

The next major step will be the launch of the byChefs consumer app, which will expand the ranking into a global dining discovery tool.

Users will be able to explore annual city rankings, discover restaurants through an infinite visual feed, follow the recommendations of individual chefs, save places they want to visit, create personal collections and keep track of restaurants they have already experienced.

One of the app’s central features will be the byChefs AI Concierge — an AI-powered restaurant discovery tool that lets users search for restaurants using natural-language requests. A user could ask for a casual dinner in Dubai, a restaurant for a special date, a particular dish, a specific atmosphere or design, or the right breakfast near a certain neighbourhood.

The AI Concierge draws on the byChefs ecosystem, where restaurant discovery is informed by the choices, votes and recommendations of professional chefs. The platform has built a proprietary network of relationships between chefs, restaurants, categories, cities and recommendations that can be used to personalise restaurant discovery.

More than a ranking

Technology is only one part of the project. byChefs is also building an international community of chefs, with the network intended to connect members when they travel, help them meet peers in other cities, exchange ideas and develop new professional relationships and collaborations.

“Just as the UAE brings together millions of people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds, we want byChefs to connect chefs across borders,” says Sysoev. “The ranking is the foundation, but the bigger opportunity is the global network we are building around it.”

For consumers, byChefs offers restaurant discovery based on professional trust. For chefs, it is becoming an international professional network. And for Dubai, it represents a UAE-born concept designed from the beginning to scale globally.

Born in Dubai. Built for the world.