How I Built ReadMenuAI: Solving the 'Poetic' Chinese Menu Problem with GenAI

Source: Dev.to

Hi everyone, I’m DoubleZ! 👋

Have you ever walked into a Chinese restaurant, faced a menu full of beautiful but confusing characters, and had no idea what to order? Or worse, ordered a dish only to find it looks nothing like what you imagined?

This is a common pain point for many expats and travelers. Traditional translation apps often fail because Chinese menus are a uniquely difficult data source: artistic fonts, handwritten text, inconsistent layouts, and “poetic” dish names that shouldn’t be translated literally (e.g., “Husband and Wife Lung Slices” — 夫妻肺片).

Simple translation isn’t enough; users need visual context. That’s why I built ReadMenuAI.

What is ReadMenuAI?

ReadMenuAI is an AI‑powered tool that helps users “see” and understand Chinese menus. You simply upload a photo, and the AI transforms it into a digital, interactive experience.

• ✅ OCR & Extraction: Detects dish names and prices accurately.
• 🌍 Contextual Translation: Translates names while explaining ingredients and allergens.
• 🖼️ AI Image Generation (The “Wow” Factor): Generates high‑quality, representative photos for dishes that don’t have pictures.
• 💰 Travel Utilities: Real‑time currency conversion and audio pronunciation for easy ordering.

The Technical Deep Dive: The AI Stack

Advanced OCR with Qwen3‑Vision

I used the latest Qwen3 (Tongyi Qianwen) multimodal models. Unlike standard OCR, these models excel at:

• Recognizing handwritten or highly stylized calligraphy.
• Maintaining the spatial relationship between a dish name and its price across messy layouts.

Multimodal Parsing & Semantic Translation

The extracted text is fed into an LLM (Large Language Model) to go beyond literal translation. It identifies:

• The “Real” Meaning: Explaining that “Ants Climbing a Tree” is actually glass noodles with minced pork.
• Dietary Specs: Automatically tagging dishes as vegetarian, spicy, or containing common allergens.

Visual Context via Image Generation

For menus without photos, I integrated Tongyi Wanxiang 2 (Text‑to‑Image). This builds immediate trust—when a user sees a generated image of the dish, the “ordering anxiety” disappears.

The Full‑Stack Architecture

As a solo developer, I needed a stack that was fast to deploy but robust enough to handle heavy AI workloads.

• Frontend: Next.js 14 + Tailwind CSS + Shadcn UI
• Database & Auth: Supabase
• Caching: Upstash (Redis)
• Storage: Cloudflare R2
• Background Jobs: Trigger.dev (crucial for handling long‑running AI image generation)
• Deployment: Cloudflare Workers

Engineering Challenge: Handling Long‑Running Tasks

Image generation and deep parsing can take 10–20 seconds—too long for a standard serverless function timeout.

Instead of setting up a separate heavy backend, I used Trigger.dev, which allowed me to:

• Offload the image generation to a background queue.
• Maintain a clean Next.js project structure.
• Provide real‑time progress updates to the user via webhooks.

From Idea to Launch

ReadMenuAI is my second major AI project. It implements the full lifecycle of a SaaS: Authentication, credit‑based billing (Stripe), and internationalization (supporting 12 languages).

Beyond the tech, this project is about cultural connection. By removing the language barrier in restaurants, we’re making local culture more accessible and “delicious” for everyone.

Try it out here: readmenuai.com