Highstreett vs SquareMeal: finding somewhere to eat in Lincoln
SquareMeal is a national restaurant-booking and reviews site, founded in 1990 and at its best in London. For Lincoln specifically, we searched it directly: the city isn’t recognised as a place on its own, its Lincoln results live inside a 72-restaurant county-wide list that also covers Boston and Skegness, and at least six of the restaurants actually in Lincoln are outlets of national chains, shown with no way to tell them apart from the independents. Highstreett, which we built, searches Lincoln specifically, checks who owns each business, and puts independents ahead when it’s close. Last verified 12 September 2026.
| SquareMeal | Highstreett | |
|---|---|---|
| What it's built for | National restaurant bookings, reward points and PR-driven listicles, strongest in London | Finding somewhere to eat or shop locally, with ownership checked and labelled |
| Searching “Lincoln” directly | Not recognised as a place on its own; the search silently redirected to a restaurant in Buckinghamshire when we tried | Lincoln is a live city with its own directory |
| Lincoln coverage | 72 restaurants across the whole of Lincolnshire, from Boston to Skegness; about a third are actually in Lincoln | Search built around Lincoln specifically, not the county |
| Chains in the results | At least 6 national chains sit inside the Lincoln listings, written up with the same warm copy as the independents, with no filter to remove them | Every result labelled by who owns it; Shop Local hides the chains |
| Ownership check | None. Inclusion is editorial and PR-driven, not an independence check | Verified indie badge, checked against Companies House and the PSC register |
| Booking and rewards | Built-in table reservations and a SquareMeal Rewards points scheme | Links out to the business's own booking page for now |
Where SquareMeal genuinely does something we don’t
SquareMeal has been going since 1990 and it shows: proper editorial reviews exist for signature venues, its “What we think” write-ups on places like Harry’s Place in Grantham (a Michelin-starred restaurant it covers under its wider Lincolnshire listing) read like someone actually ate there, and the built-in booking system with SquareMeal Rewards points is a real convenience if you want to reserve a table and earn something back. The Old Bakery Restaurant in Lincoln, which it also lists, is a genuinely good, values-led independent. None of that is in dispute, and we don’t offer table booking or a rewards scheme ourselves yet.
What we found when we searched Lincoln
Typing “Lincoln” into SquareMeal’s own location search didn’t return Lincoln restaurants at all: it landed on a bistro in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, over a hundred miles away. The working route is to search “Lincolnshire” instead, which returns 72 restaurants spread across the entire county, including Boston, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Stamford, Spalding, Skegness and Grantham. Going through all five result pages by hand, 26 of those 72 are actually in Lincoln itself.
Of those 26, at least six are outlets of national chains: Wagamama, ASK Italian, Zizzi, The Slug and Lettuce, Walkabout and Harvester. Each is written up in the same warm, descriptive style as the independents around it — Zizzi’s entry reads “Zizzi restaurants are passionate about simple Italian cookery”, Wagamama’s calls its Brayford Wharf branch “a serene dining experience” — and nothing in the listing itself marks them as chains. SquareMeal’s own review copy occasionally admits it in passing further out in the county: its write-up for Prezzo in Spalding and Gainsborough notes “over 150 branches up & down the country, the affordable chain”, and its Slug and Lettuce review calls it “the bold, brash” chain by name. That’s editorial voice, not a filterable fact: there is no way to tick a box and remove chains from the results, in Lincoln or anywhere else on the site.
What Highstreett does differently
We check who owns each business against Companies House and the PSC register. A verified independent carries a badge and comes ahead when it’s close; chains are labelled rather than hidden, and everything we haven’t checked yet is marked unverified rather than presented as if it were independent. The Shop Local toggle hides the chains outright, for anyone who wants that. None of that depends on what a restaurant paid or who wrote its listing copy.
The honest bit
Two limits, said plainly. We don’t take bookings directly yet, and we have no rewards scheme, so if that’s what you want on a specific night, SquareMeal’s reservation system is the more complete tool today. And our coverage is Lincoln and a small number of other cities, not the whole of the UK the way SquareMeal’s does. The comparison here isn’t “which site is bigger”, it’s that once you’re choosing between restaurants in Lincoln specifically, one of these tells you which are chains and one doesn’t.
Describe the meal you’re after
Where we fit
Highstreett is a search engine for products and places that tells you who owns what, puts independents ahead when it’s close, and points you to an independent seller wherever it can. For eating out in Lincoln, that means a chain is labelled as one rather than dressed up in the same copy as the family-run place next door.
Questions
Does SquareMeal cover Lincoln restaurants?
Only inside a county-wide “Lincolnshire” listing of 72 restaurants that also covers Boston, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Stamford, Spalding, Skegness and Grantham. As of 12 September 2026, about 26 of those 72 are actually in Lincoln; searching “Lincoln” on its own returned a restaurant in Buckinghamshire instead.
Are there chain restaurants on SquareMeal's Lincoln list?
Yes. As of 12 September 2026, Wagamama, ASK Italian, Zizzi, The Slug and Lettuce, Walkabout and Harvester all appear inside SquareMeal's Lincoln results, each with the same style of warm descriptive write-up as the independents. Nothing in the listing marks them as chains.
Can I filter out chains on SquareMeal?
No. SquareMeal's filters cover things like cuisine, price, ambience and booking options, but there is no ownership or independent-only filter, so a chain and a family-run restaurant sit in the same list with no way to separate them.
Is SquareMeal better than Highstreett for finding somewhere to eat in Lincoln?
For booking a table with rewards points, or reading a proper written review of a signature venue, SquareMeal can be useful. For deciding whether the place you're about to book is actually independent, it isn't built to answer that, which is the one thing Highstreett checks.