UrbanSpoon
Top-notch restaurant reviews
Get it on iTunes
UrbanSpoon – a must for iPhone foodies

Urban Spoon is a small Seattle startup (three employees as of last year: see this coverage), focused on the restaurant review space. Unlike Yelp, which relies on social/user reviews, UrbanSpoon took the approach of incorporating existing review data from trusted sources like CitiSearch. This approach makes sense to me.

Now, UrbanSpoon is available as an app on iPhone, and I have to complement the team on a very cleverly designed, fun, and ultimately very useful application.

The signature page of the app is a slot machine type interface, where you shake the iPhone and the app picks a restaurant randomly. I fixed the location (Santa Monica) and the cuisine (Steak), and the app chose Boa, which just happens to be one of my favorite LA restaurants. You can drill down further, read reviews of Boa by critics that actually count, such as the LA times, and even twitter about them from within the application.

You can also build up and share list of favorite restaurants with you friends. This “social” aspect is very well designed, and actually quite useful. Of course, since the app lives on the iPhone, you can easily map directions to the restaurants from your current location, or even find a list of “restaurants near me”. Again, since the data is from trusted sources, the results are generally very good (see NYTimes review here). This app will definitely come in handy on business trips.

My only gripe is that i would have liked to see some integration with OpenTable, so that i could make the actual reservations from the phone. Hopefully, the developers will add that in a future version.

For more articles like this, subscribe to the AppCraver RSS feed.

category: Best Free Apps, Editor's Picks, Food



4 Responses

  1. Robbie T. Says:

    OpenTable has their own mobile site for reservations via cell phone. http://www.opentable.com. If you are if you are visiting the web site from a cell phone, It will automatically recognize and forward you to the mobile site.

  2. Fred Krueger Says:

    Appcraver wants a full open table app. How great would that be? iPhone optimized sites are never as good as native apps (redundany, UI etc..). Please develop it, opentable…

  3. iPhone Developer Spotlight: Hasan Edain, NPC Unlimited - iPhone Apps | AppCraver Says:

    [...] favorites: Sales tracker: shows me how many units sold. Showtimes: What movies are playing near me? UrbanSpoon: What restaurants are near me? IM+ Lite: chat client. Sportacular: follow my favorite teams. [...]

  4. Urbanspoon iPhone App Says:

    [...] a more in-depth review of the Urbanspoon iPhone app here. For more information on popular iPod app reviews or to read more reviews of iPhone apps visit [...]

Leave a Reply

Feed Your Cravings

 Click to Subscribe!

Get AppCraver by email:

Delivered by FeedBurner





iPhone Accessories



Subscribe to AppCraver by rss link RSS or email and be the first to learn about iPhone apps, news and reviews.