GoodFood – Good food is something anyone can appreciate and knowing where to go to find it is always a help. If you’re not afraid to try some place new on the recommendation of total strangers or you have a reputation for knowing the best places to eat and are willing to share with others, then GoodFood by Goodrec is a handy little app you can download for free to find recommended restaurants near you.

Using the GPS technology incorporated into the iPhone, GoodFood displays a Google-powered map on your screen with pinpointed locations of area restaurants. Tapping a pin will reveal information about the restaurant and quickly show you others’ opinions in Goodrec’s “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” format. Additionally, you can sort restaurants by the type of cuisine they serve, price range, or even by friends’ recommendations (provided you have friends who are registered Goodrec users.) In GoodFood there is also an included search function that could be utilized if you were somewhere unfamiliar and looking for a specific eatery. An option to switch from map to list view is located in the upper right hand corner, which makes it easy to see the restaurants closest to you.

Unlike the original Goodrec app we reviewed a while back, which combined a conglomerate of recommendations, GoodFood is solely for finding restaurants. It has a simpler, straightforward interface and is easy enough to navigate. GoodFood was purportedly designed it to be fast and on a wireless home network the map and restaurant locations load quickly. I suppose on-the-go speed will depend largely on your iPhone’s network, but I found it occasionally lagged or couldn’t determine my location, but most of the time was quick enough to still be useful.

In my immediate area, there were quite a few restaurants included, but also quite a few missing and even fewer with actual user ratings. Broadening my search to the nearest metropolitan area revealed more locations with actual user ratings, which makes sense. As this is a fairly new app, I imagine it will take some time before we see if it becomes the comprehensive resource it was designed to be. Users must register, which is free and requires only a name and email address, before they can make recommendations or add restaurants. However, no registration is required to utilize the app and view the ratings.

For those who like to have new dining experiences or who travel a great deal, GoodFood is a nifty way to locate nearby restaurants. For a free app, GoodFood has good potential in terms of usefulness and could be a fun way to share dining experiences with people you know.

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category: Best Free Apps, Food, Lifestyle