Getting Started with Calamari

Welcome to Calamari! The app where you rate food, unlock badges, and let your squid mascot Cali guide you to the best eats.

Setting Up Your Account

When you first open Calamari, you'll meet Cali and swipe through a quick intro. On the fourth screen, you can Sign in with Apple to create your account. This lets you save ratings, follow other foodies, and earn badges.

You can also tap Skip for now to browse without an account — but you'll need to sign in to rate food or interact with the community.

After signing in, you'll pick a display name (up to 30 characters). This is how other users will see you. You can change it later from your profile.

Your First Rating

Tap the Rate tab at the bottom of the screen. The rating wizard walks you through four steps:

Select a restaurant — Search for a nearby restaurant or pick one from the suggestions.
What did you eat? — Type a food name (e.g., "Calamari", "Tacos") or pick from the suggestions. The app auto-categorizes it for you.
Add a photo — Snap a photo or pick one from your library. Photos must be food or drink related — Cali will reject anything that isn't.
Rate & submit — Slide the rating from 1 to 10, optionally add notes (up to 500 characters), and hit Submit.

Note, there's a 30-second cooldown between submissions to keep things chill.

Navigating the App

Calamari has four main tabs:

Home — Your feed showing nearby ratings and ratings from people you follow.
Rate — The rating wizard for submitting new reviews.
Explore — A heat map of community ratings. Tap a dot to see restaurant details. Hit "Surprise Me!" to let Cali pick a random spot for you.
My Ratings — All the ratings you've submitted.

Your Profile

Tap your squid avatar in the top corner of any screen to open your profile. From here you can:

View yor stats (ratings, followers, following)
See your rating streak
Browse your unlocked badges
Pick a different squid character
View your saved/bookmarked ratings
Edit your display name
Sign out or delete your account

Interacting With the Community

Follow other users to see their ratings in your Home feed.
Bookmark ratings you want to revisit later.
React to ratings with emoji.
Report a rating if it violates community guidelines — ratings are auto-hidden after 3 reports.
Block a user if you don't want to see their content.

Need Help?

If something isn't working right, make sure you're signed into iCloud in your device settings — Calamari uses iCloud to sync your data. If you're offline, you'll still see cached ratings until your connection is restored.

For further assistances, email calamarisupport@gmail.com