You're not difficult. The menu just isn't written for you.
Knowing exactly what you do not like is useful information. Almost nothing in a restaurant is built to use it.
Built for the table
Less guessing. More calm decisions.
You read the whole menu. Twice. Then you order the thing you always order, because it is the only item you are certain about.
It is not that you are unadventurous. It is that the menu gives you eleven words per dish and none of them answer the question you are actually asking.
Two different things get called picky
Researchers separate reluctance to try unfamiliar food from a genuine sensory reaction to how food tastes or feels. They are independent — plenty of adventurous eaters cannot handle a texture, and plenty of cautious ones love intense flavours once they are familiar.
Most apps model this as one "adventurousness" slider, which is why their suggestions feel wrong. TableSage scores both separately, which is the whole reason it can tell the difference between a dish that is new to you and a dish you will dislike.
It asks. It does not guess from where you've been.
Twenty swipes, no typing, about two minutes. You say which dishes you would eat and which you would not, add anything you avoid outright, and that is your starting profile.
Then every meal you rate sharpens it. That is the part that compounds — a chatbot meets you as a stranger every single time you ask it.
Usually it's an ingredient, not a dish
A great many rejections come down to one component rather than the whole plate — coriander, blue cheese, a slimy texture, raw onion. Menus rarely list the thing in question.
Reading what is actually in each dish turns 'I don't like Thai food' into 'I don't like fish sauce', which is a much more useful fact about you.
Order something you actually want.
Two minutes to describe your palate. Then every menu is a shorter list.