Founded by Adaptive Path UI designer Alexa Andrzejewski and Get Satisfaction engineer Ted Grubb, Foodspotting lets users upload photos of their favorite dishes along with a restaurant address. In Posterous-style fashion, you can also email your finds to food@foodspotting.com. From here you can rate dishes and users, add additional details, earn reputation points and follow places, dishes and community members. The difference between Foodspotting and Yelp is that every review is a positive one. Instead of showcasing restaurant rants, Foodspotting offers a visual menu of customer favorites.

ReadWriteWeb got an early look at the duo's upcoming iPhone application. Set for release in early 2010, foodies will be awarded points for their uploads as well as the particular foods they've tried. In Foursquare, users become the "Mayor" of a particular establishment, but in Foodspotting users become the "Champion" of their favorite dishes. And because so many towns are famous for a particular dish, you're likely to see stiff competition for the "Champion" of Maine lobster or Chicago hot dogs. Users will also compete to collect dishes through scavenger hunts and a food passport system. In the future, as we begin to record more dishes, the system will amass our flavor profiles. These profiles will later form the basis for a dish-related recommendation system.

While the mobile application will not hit the market for at least a month, Foodspotting is well on its way to offering salivating diners a chance to discover nearby favorites on a per-dish basis. To register for the site's early alpha visit foodspotting.com/ilovefood.