Eating better through technology.

Five food apps you need on your phone

1/30/13

I recently saw a stat that 47 percent of Americans have a smartphone. Excluding those who are far too young to use a smartphone, that probably means that more than half of us who are out and about are looking at a screen and using mobile apps to interact with and navigate our daily lives. That's pretty amazing, and it only makes sense that a behavior shift like that would make a big difference in how we all interact with one of the most important things in our lives, regardless of culture: food.

Food is one thing we all need and share. It's ingrained into the fabric of every holiday and coming of age gathering, it's part of how we celebrate and it's part of how we cheer ourselves up. It's how we show love when someone arrives at our home, and what we do with friends we haven't seen in years, or how we get to know someone new in our life. To top it all off, you need it to stay alive.

The point is, we're all going to have to and want to figure out what to eat every day for the rest of our lives. Smartphones change the ways we can do that.

Here are the five smartphone apps I've found that help the most:

1. Yelp: This app aggregates consumer reviews of restaurants. It's my go-to resource for finding out the general idea of what a restaurant sells, what people think of it and all of the little information that is scattered everywhere on any restaurant website. Yelp tells you quick things like directions, phone number, whether they accept reservations, credit cards, etc. The people who do lots of reviews on there can get a little picky and overly-foodie and have high expectations and think that they are writing a magazine column, but… it's my go-to. If you just get one app, get it.

2. Foodspotting: This app helps you search for food near you based on individual dishes rather than a restaurant as a whole. Let's say you want a burger. You search for burger and you'll get dozens of photos from people of the burgers they've had from nearby. Find a picture you like and head to that restaurant for said burger. I've used this a lot in new cities when I have a craving for something specific and don't know where to go.

3. Open Table: This app lets you make reservations at any restaurant in its network online or through the app. It's amazing. You think it sounds pretty cool until you start using it, and then you can't stop. You don't have to call and talk to anyone with all the background noise. You can see all the open times for a table and just pick the time you want. You can earn points for making the reservations and when you earn enough points they give you cash to use for your next dinner. I love being able to pull this out when my wife brings up a restaurant she may want to go to this weekend, then checking for a time and making a reservation within 2 or 3 minutes. No more forgetting about it.

4. Zagat: This is the classic rating company putting their scores and reviews online. They come in strong as the authority in their app, so if you're a fan of crowd sourced reviews and reading the personal takes people have on restaurants like me, you won't find crowd reviews here. What you will find is a professional touch that may make you hungry for pre-cell phone days when there were only a few rating companies like Zagat and true, out loud word of mouth to help you find your next meal.

5. Mobilecious: I think we can all agree that food trucks are awesome, but they would be a lot better if we knew where they were and when they were going to be there. That's what this app does. It will tell you where your favorite food truck is in real time.

Happy eating, everyone. Do you have another food app you use that I should be checking out?