Although not of the same caliber as the sustainable food/restaurant site we previously reviewed , these two recently released iPhone software apps provide restaurant-locater services with some appeal.
Urbanspoon for the iPhone appeals for two reasons: firstly it encourages us to be a bit adventurous (whilst playing it safe!) That’s because its a shake-and-tell system (or Russian roulette!). We shake our iPhone and it will deliver a restaurant in the area we are wanting to go to eat. Its not entirely random because the restaurants with the best reviews get top listing (and anyway, we can shake again if we don’t like the result). However, we found that its still pretty light on reviews, and they only have wide coverage in US and Canada.
The second benefit of registering with this site is that they are running a pretty good contest at the moment. Every ,month, winners get 5 nights at Hotel Pont Royal in Paris and dinner for two at Joel Robuchon’s Michelin Star Rated L’Atelier Restaurant.
The second restaurant guide that is now available on our iPhone is liveonthego – a ‘take out‘ food guide. This already popular site has developed this free app in response to its fans’ demands.
And its easy to see why this is a popular tool. Because it allows us to order our food from our iPhone (nothing new there) But, we can search for restaurants based on our location, view the full menus (for all LiveOnTheGo restaurant partners) and pay for our order. Its an integrated setup that will please many iPhone owners.
As great as this sounds, the service is basically limited to Californian cities, so no use to most of us. But Californians can access the new software by going to LiveOnTheGo from your iPhone and you will be redirected to the new optimized iPhone site.
For those that are serious about eating well (organic, and/or sustainable foods), we remind of the community based, Eat Well Guide that can be accessed on our iPhones and which covers all of North America and