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New Apps Make Finding Restaurants and Bars, Pairing and Cooking Easier

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Mar 2, 2010 7:20PM

We've profiled need-to-have food and drink-related smartphone applications in recent months, from Stolpman's review of the Poynt app, to Lizz's recount of beta-testing the Foodie app. Now they're starting to come fast and furious, with MenuPages' application only one of many to be released. Of course, we should also take the time to pimp the Ist-a-verse app.

As an iPhone user, we have more applications our phone than are really necessary and have slowly been paring down to those we feel are essential. Recently we tested out three applications for to see whether they meet that standard.

The Ratio app (Image #1), from author Michael Ruhlman, is a nice companion piece to his best-selling book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. The application, which currently is only available for iPhone users, lists the 32 recipe ratios Ruhlman has deemed as being of critical knowledge for the home chef. The app also has a calculator allowing the user to expand or shrink each ratio; a conversion from ounces to grams (for those of you who are still working your way through the Alinea cookbook); allows you to save your recipes and use the Ruhlman ratios to make them better; and the ability to share your recipes on Twitter and Facebook. This application is so good it almost makes us regretting buying the book first. Ruhlman has said that if the iPhone app proves successful, variations for blackberry and Android phones will follow. At $4.99, it's a steal.

Sommelier and author Natalie MacLean has put together a free app (Image #2) for all smartphone platforms allowing users access to her free reviews; tracking your wines in a virtual cellar; a wine glossary; food pairing matcher; sharing capabilities with Facebook and Twitter; a directory of over 10,000 wineries; and recipes. While MacLean does allow access to her free blog posts and reviews, a premium subscription is required to gain access to her full body of reviews. Still, for the novice wine connoisseur this application is one of the more user-friendly applications available.

A few on the Chicagoist staff have been playing around with Foursquare. Another company similar to Foursquare is Loopt. Loopt's application (available for iPhone, Blackberry and Android platforms) allows the user to "check in" at a specific location. Recommendations for restaurants, bars, events and user reviews of all these are then posted as either a list or on a Google map. Loopt recently announced a content sharing partnership with Tasting Table, in addition to similar relationships with Citysearch, Zagat, Bing, UrbanDaddy and Daily Candy. We had a bit of a learning curve to catch up to using the Loopt app. Once we did, we were able to locate user reviews and shared content for other restaurants in the general vicinity of our apartment, like Nana, Nightwood, Simone's, Perez Restaurant in Pilsen and Ristorante al Teatro. We also didn't have to "check in", which was another added benefit.

The Loopt application, like Foursquare, seems geared towards eventually providing advertising targeted to its users based on the places they most frequently check in. As the grandpa on the Chicagoist staff, we probably aren't the target demographic for Loopt. But the app serves its purpose well, and it's free.