TasteTwins is the flagship product of LOVE SALONE, L.L.C., an applied AI company rooted in Sierra Leone and based in Maryland. We are developing a way to describe food through preferences and meal feedback, and use that understanding to support discovery and shared dining decisions.
The company
Love Salone takes its name from Salone, a name Sierra Leoneans use for Sierra Leone. The company brings cultural perspective and hands-on engineering to food discovery and everyday connection.
Mission
Love Salone builds technology to represent food as people experience it, including overlooked cuisines, and help people discover, share, and make decisions about what they eat.
Vision
We envision better food understanding that respects culture, strengthens community, and can inform carefully designed future research.
Research is a future ambition, with separate consent, privacy safeguards, governance, and study design. A recommendation prototype does not establish a population-level or health finding.
Why Sierra Leone matters to a taste model
A food model’s vocabulary affects what it can represent. Our starting point includes Sierra Leonean and West African dishes, with attention to their names, ingredients, preparation methods, and sensory qualities.
A single “fat” category can hide the different roles of red palm oil and olive oil. A vocabulary without texture and viscosity can miss the difference between a thin broth and a thick cassava leaf stew. Ingredients such as dried fish also need explicit description when used as background seasoning. These are questions for the model and catalog to address, not proof of superiority over other systems.
The company’s Sierra Leonean seed dataset is used to explore gaps in its own food descriptions. The aim is broader representation as that vocabulary develops. TasteTwins is not an allergy safeguard: confirm ingredients and preparation directly with the venue.
Founders
Melinda Arnold · Founder & CEO
Melinda Arnold is the Founder & CEO of Love Salone and is from Sierra Leone. She brings 18+ years in healthcare operations and leads a 20+ person, multi-department team in HIPAA-governed patient authorization work at a national home-infusion provider. Her cultural perspective shapes the company’s focus on representing food and the people who enjoy it. Her interest in food choices and health informs a longer-term research ambition that requires its own expertise, consent, and evidence.
Corey Arnold · Co-Founder & CTO
Corey Arnold is Love Salone’s co-founder, developer, and CTO. He brings 20+ years in systems, DevOps and security engineering for federal and enterprise programs, and holds CompTIA Security+ and ITIL 4 certifications. He leads native app work, backend architecture, quality assurance, and releases. His role connects the company’s ideas with working experiences and the testing needed to assess them.
Where things stand
Native mobile app · iPhone in private testing · Android in development. The public screenshots were captured on an iPhone 17 Pro simulator on October 9, 2026, using sample content. They document the iPhone build; they do not establish a public app release or physical-device performance. The Android build is in active development, not in testing or released.
A browser demonstration is available. Its people and venues are invented and its scores are simplified illustrations. It does not use the production recommendation engine or send messages.
Dated catalog evidence. The September 13, 2026 catalog snapshot reports place, menu-item, and image records. It does not count active users, ratings, or validated outcomes. The iPhone beta is invite-only. New testers join in waves from the beta list. We don't publish active-user or accuracy figures yet.
Programs: Member, NVIDIA Inception (2026).
Research is planned. No research dataset has been shared. The required safeguards and study design are not a completed research program.
The privacy policy describes website behavior and the app’s stated data practices. Matching is not a validated instrument, medical tool, or nutritional recommendation.
Related Love Salone projects
The Gauntlet is a Love Salone 3D game in development for iOS and Android with a planned connection to TasteTwins. It is intended as a game-based way to contribute to food and taste understanding. That connection is not yet built; the public footage demonstrates game development. Explore The Gauntlet.
SOS The Fairways is a Love Salone iOS app plus a web moderator workspace; Android is planned. TasteTwins remains the flagship.
What we are looking for
Early testers interested in food discovery and shared dining. Join the beta list.
Food and community partners who can help us describe underrepresented dishes with care.
Researchers and technology collaborators interested in what food-preference data could support, and what evidence would be needed.
Investors: email hello@tastetwins.app with 'Investor' in the subject and we'll send our deck.
