I’m exploring a Zomato-like food discovery app and wondering how to handle restaurant search efficiently in PHP. Users may search by restaurant name, cuisine, location, rating, and price range.
Would MySQL queries with proper indexing be enough for an initial version, or would using a dedicated search solution be a better approach as the restaurant database grows?

For an initial version, indexed MySQL queries on columns like name, cuisine type, and a geospatial index for coordinates should handle moderate load quite well. I'd suggest adding composite indexes on the most commonly filtered combinations (cuisine + city, rating range) so the planner doesn't do full scans. Once your restaurant count starts pushing into the tens of thousands, layering in a dedicated search engine for full-text relevance and faceted filtering makes a big difference — but there's no need to over-engineer it upfront.