The Foodie’s Guide to Smartphone Apps
The
smartphone is an invaluable tool for the connected, city-based foodie. Great
deals, recipes, recommendations, restaurant ratings, reservations & home
delivery options are just an app away.
Getting There
Trying to locate nearby eateries to grab a bite? Check out these apps to get location based results along with easy-to-follow directions
ON THE WAY
This free Android app is a great companion for the road traveller. It shows details of various eating joints along the highways and major road routes. You can get driving directions to a particular place, cost for two as well as directly call them up for queries. The app is powered by Ixigo and its database is constantly updated with data aggregated from multiple travel websites.
TIMESCITY
Available for Android, BlackBerry 10 and iOS, timescity sorts your search results of restaurants and cafes on the basis of distance from current location - making it easy to identify the nearest eating joint. From the results, you can call a place directly, get directions as well as share the details of a place with your friends.
WIKITUDE
With wikitude you can use your camera to identify and locate various points of interest around your location along with the distance on how far is each place. Although it does not give detailed directions to reach a particular place, this augmented reality browser is very useful in discovering new places.
Make it Yourself
If you're the kind who prefers to cook at home rather than eat out, these apps (they're all available across multiple platforms) will come in handy
EVERNOTE FOOD
Evernote Food lets you explore recipes from various websites and save them to your Evernote account. You can save recipes with detailed notes, tags and pictures and even share them with friends over email or social networks. The recipes that you store using the app can be accessed on any device by just logging into your Evernote account.
SWEET'N'SPICY
If you crave Indian food, this free app offers you over 4,000 different recipes and over 400 video cooking tutorials. You can even select the ingredients available to you and the app will suggest a dish that can be made using those ingredients. As a bonus, it offers a calorie counter (great for weight watchers) plus other useful kitchen tips and tricks.
COCKTAIL FLOW
Probably one of the best designed cocktail apps, this one lets you first select what spirits and mixers you have and then suggests what you can make with them. The step-by-step guide makes it easy for even amateurs to quickly and easily make any cocktail. A useful 'bartenders guide' explains what the different types of glasses are, various bar tools and what their function is while making a drink.
BIGOVEN
With an exhaustive list of over 2,50,000 recipes from around the world, this free (ad-supported) app lets you search for recipes based on ingredients and keywords. If you like, you can create an account — doing so will help you to save your recipes, sync them across multiple devices, share them to social networks and even import more recipes from other cooking websites and blogs. The paid version of the app ($19.99/yr) removes ads & adds more features.
Fun Stuff
INSTAPLACE
Like clicking photos of your food? Instaplace is good place to start — it's like Instagram but with places. Start up the app and click a photo or choose an existing one from the image gallery. Then, you can enhance your photograph with fun effects, add the text of your choice and the app will overlay it on the photo along with details of the location (pulled from Facebook or Foursquare) automatically. The final image can then be shared on Instagram or any other social network — you can share your location and boast about what you're eating at the same time. A pro version removes ads and adds more customisation.
MOODIEFOODIE
Available only for iOS, this app requires you to select your current mood. Depending on what you select, the app recommends what you should eat. It also helps build up your appetite by showing you big, tempting pictures of the food it recommends. Finally, you can get the detailed recipe for the dish with step-by-step directions on how to prepare it.
Get it Delivered
Craving fancy food but don't want to step out? Use these apps to order food from your couch
FOODPANDA
With over 1,000 restaurants in their catalogue, Foodpanda has an easy to navigate interface with detailed restaurant menus. There is no minimum delivery order and you also get the option to pay cash on delivery. Currently the app works for restaurants in NCR, Bangalore, Hyderbad, Mumbai, Pune, Jaipur and Chandigrah/Mohali.
JUST EAT
Just eat claims to have tied up with over 2,000 restaurants and other than ordering food for home delivery it even lets you book a table at select restaurants. You can also see rating of each restaurant along with the minimum order cost for delivery. They also have cash on delivery option. The service is available in NCR, Bangalore and Mumbai.
DOMINO'S PIZZA
For pizza lovers, domino's pizza India has an official smartphone app to order pizza. The app requires a registration via phone number or via Facebook and post that you can select from the various offerings. You can select the size, pizza base as well as additional toppings from the app along with beverages and side dishes. You can also use various discount coupons on the mobile app.
Reservations & Discounts
Use these apps when you need to find a good place to eat near you and/or get a sweet deal
EATTR
Although Eattr (Android only) is powered by Zomato, it's focused on getting you the best deals in restaurants around you. All you have to do is select your city from a drop down list (while the app gets your current location). Then, you can search by restaurant name or type of cuisine and it will start listing places to eat — nearest first. If you prefer, you can also do a generic search for deals in your city.
DELIGHTCIRCLE
DelightCircle (free for Android, BlackBerry and iOS) offers many different types of deals (apparel, electronics, grocery and so on). For restaurants, it first figures out your location and shows you the best deals closest to you. Click on any restaurant name and you'll see the offers, the restaurant’s address and some helpful tips provided by other patrons. You can choose to call the restaurant directly from this page (if accessing DelightCircle from a smartphone) or view its location on a map (clicking on the 'Get Directions' buttons plugs the location info into Google Maps which starts the turn-by-turn directions from your current location). The service is available in nine cities: all the metros, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh.
CITYPAL
Citypal (free for Android and iOS) requires you to sign up with them before you start. Sign up only takes a minute and you can choose to sign in with Facebook if you like. Signing in with Facebook also shows you friends who are also using Citypal. From the 'Places' list, click on any one to see details, call from within the app or get directions (using Google Maps). More features (such as search for restaurant by name) are being added soon. Citypal currently works in Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bangalore and Pune.
Reviews, Ratings
Given all the choices, it can be difficult to decide on a place. These should be your 'go-to' apps when you need to get quick user reviews and restaurant ratings
ZOMATO
Zomato is the number one choice if you want to see how a particular eating place is rated by visitors. You can also view photos of the venue, the full menu as well as read reviews (and tips) about the food and service. The app also provides other useful information such as directions, phone numbers, the cost for two and the restaurant timings.
BURRP!
Even though Burrp!'s interface and details on offer are simpler compared to Zomato, it offers one big advantage: it has a line on the specialities served at various restaurants. This means you don't have to go read user reviews to find out what to order. It also shows you directions to the place and lets you place a call from within the app.
Hitesh Raj
Bhagat & Karan Bajaj ET130619
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