This is a useful tip. I started doing this a year or so back, just pinning places to try (or that I’ve tried) in Google Maps. Months later I’ll be in the area and open Google Maps and see the pin - so that’s lunch or dinner decided.
Re: westerner use of Yelp: true, there are reviews there, but often in Taipei it’s not so much “What’s the best Middle Eastern place near me?” but rather “IS THERE a Middle Eastern place in town?” So in that sense the reviews often aren’t very useful - if I want to eat that style of cuisine, I don’t have much choice in this city. Like Ed’s Diner or Baba Kevin - both good, but they’re basically the ONLY barbecue places in this city, so good reviews or bad, I’d have gone to them eventually. (And I do recommend both.)
I assume that tapping into Chinese-language reviews would help me make choices between the bajillion Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean places.