Leave a Review Epicurious
Once a great app
Conde Nasty has succumbed to greed. This once great app has been trashed by their greed. There are many other fine apps that don’t want to charge you $40 a year (that’s the discount price) for recipes freely searchable on the internet. I once loved this app, it was my go-to choice when I wanted inspiration or guidance. What do I have in my fridge? What delicious dinner can I make from what I have? But no more. Condé reworked the app so it eliminated the hundreds of recipes that appealed or were tried from my saved recipes. They reworked it so I couldn’t search for “chicken” and then filter by adding the arugula I had as an ingredient in a recipe. It’s really a disappointment now. Don’t subscribe and encourage their greed. Use a web search for more and more interesting recipes that won’t cost you $40 a year.
They responded to this review saying “[P]lease know that our team has worked to deliver a new and improved experience for our subscribers.” But that’s the problem: it’s not an improved experience. Maybe it’s improved for an app developer, but not for a cook.
Take a look at Paprika here in the App Store. It doesn’t cost $40+ a year and you can save all the great recipes you find on the internet.Show lessBill Merchant
Developer Response
Hello, Bill Merchant. Thank you for being a loyal user and taking the time to leave us your review. While we understand your concerns, please know that our team has worked to deliver a new and improved experience for our subscribers. Now you will have access to over 50,000 recipes from Epicurious, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and more! We welcome you to explore all the new features Epi has to offer and take advantage of our 7-day free trial when you subscribe via the app!Entire recipe file vanished
First you go to a paywall model, then AFTER I pay, all my 400+ bookmarked recipes disappear, even though I can literally see the bookmarks on the recipes themselves? And unfortunately this is NOT the first time I’ve negatively reviewed so-called updates to this app. What’s up, Condé Nast? Even though I’ve paid, I see more ads than ever before, and you either can’t use a developer with enough experience to test a new release, or afford to pay an employee to take a test drive BEFORE releasing an app that will require multiple updates just to get users back to where they were BEFORE the update? I won’t be using the app, or giving your advertisers my eyeballs on their ads until I see from these reviews that these issues have been resolved. Also, aren’t you LEGALLY REQUIRED to let me opt out of cookies, which is now apparently not an option on this ‘new’ release?Show lessChiggerMom
I hate ads, content is not free
I wrote another review complaining about the fact that you can't print the recipes but after poking around more, I am giving it 5 stars. They wrote back saying they were working on printing, hopefully that is true. I also noticed some clunky, and in my opinion, poorly designed functionality of the app. Like 'side dish' should be a pre-selected searchable category. And they should allow you to organize your saved recipes. And let you print them. But overall epicurious is a great recipe website. The recipes are just better, written by professionals whose job it is to write recipes. I love to cook, content is not free & it seems worth it to me. Also, I hate ads and it is great to see the content without it being covered up by ads. And the app & website, despite it's flaws seems pretty solid.Show lesssgseattle
Developer Response
Thank you so much for your 5-star rating, sgseattle! We appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us, our teams are working hard to improve our subscribers' experience and an important part of that process is your feedback. We hope you continue to enjoy cooking with our app. Please keep an eye out for our next update!You ruined my favorite app
Hi,
Your new app is a disaster. It’s terribly buggy and I can’t open my saved recipes. And you eliminated so many recipe filters. I am not impressed at all. Bring back the old appSusan from Toronto
May as well google now.
No warning just an update to a new pay service. Basically useless now unless you pay for it and from the other reviews even then it’s broken. I’m off to google new recipes now.Maxodw
Crying Shame
This is the best recipe/cooking app and I have been using it for so many years I can’t remember…. Right up until the app made me randomly login this morning and was hit with a pay wall.
So long, goodbye. $8 a month is not fair value. What was that other cooking app that was free? Oh yeah, any search engine on the internet.Show lessADHD Broker
No longer stays open and avoids Lock Screen on iPhones
I am a die-hard Bob Appetit / Gourmet fan and have been a subscriber off and on for 20+ years. One of my favorite features of the Epicurious app was that it would remain open on iPhones, thwarting the time-settings of your Lock Screen, and allowing the recipe to stay open. This means you don’t have to touch your phone with your dirty hands over and over again while you cook. Well, with last week’s update, that’s no more! It was a main reason I kept using this app vs seeking recipes in the wild on the Internet, and now I’ve paid an in-app subscription fee, and now that feature is gone. I’m so disappointed—I should just cancel the subscription if it’s going to behave like every other online recipe service.Show lessMM-Sea-NB
I’m sad
I have been using this app for many years … sad to say I have to delete this app and lose all my saved recipes … I cannot afford the monthly subscription … I still rate it 5 stars … thanks for all the wonderful years of recipesAng 🐢🦎🦈
Subscription required?
I’ve been using Epicurious for years and was never asked to subscribe before today. Did something change in their model? It’s a good app and I have a lot of favorite recipes saved in it. I emptied my bookcase of old Bon Appetit magazines when the app came around. It is not a big amount of money, but I’m annoyed. Update: now I’m mad. I went to sign up for the subscription decided for some stupid reason to sign in through Apple, which I usually don’t do I just didn’t feel like making yet another password. I have to go out of the app into the Conde Nast website to set up this account. I put in my email. There are two options on the page, to either hide your email or to show it. Hide is automatically checked so I left it there. The next thing I know I am told that because I’ve hit in the email I can’t sign into Epicurious, which is the whole reason I am making the account. I don’t see anywhere in the process that I can back to having dysfunction the way I want it to.
Update 2: Now I’m furious. Went to look for my years of saved recipes. THEY ARE GONE.Show lessQwertyyuo
Developer Response
Thank you so much for being a loyal Epicurious subscriber, your support over the years has been greatly appreciated. We completely understand your concerns and frustration with our recent changes, but we want to assure you that our team is working diligently to restore your saved recipes as soon as possible. We kindly ask for your patience while they work to address this concern. In addition, if you are still experiencing trouble accessing your account, please contact apps@epicurious.com at your next available moment, our team will be happy to further assist you there.Subscription now required - no notice
As a long-time user of the app (first when it was free, and then when a one-time fee was required), it would have been nice to receive some notice that the app was switching to a monthly fee. With the latest update, I can no longer access my Recipe Box. There was no notice about the switch or the inaccessibility and while there are some recipes I would return to, I don’t see a need to subscribe. Between the fairly recent decision to omit beef recipes (likely due to a meat substitute promotion) and now this. There are so many other resources and this seems to be an omen of things to come (in-app purchases, promoted content, ads, ….?) While I understand the need to monetize, I have been using other apps (including ones I pay for) more than Epicurious so this is one I will be passing on. It just would have been nice to receive some notice.Show lessIalalalala
Developer Response
Hello Ialalalala, We understand your concern and want to let you know that we have completely overhauled the Epicurious app to include over 50,000 recipes from Epicurious, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and more. Please know, our team is working diligently to restore your saved recipes as soon as possible! We also have a ton of new and exciting features currently available in the app and some additional feature we can't wait to roll out in the near future. If you'd like to subscribe, you can enjoy a 7-day free trial when you subscribe via the app.
