6 great apps for food lovers
Jump out of the frying pan and into the fire with these culinary companions
We’ve all gotta eat, so why not take pleasure in one of life’s necessities? Thankfully, when it comes to dining, iOS has a wide menu of satisfying options. Recipe book, tour guide, encyclopedia: you’ve got it all here to hand. When it comes to recipe apps,
Epicurious (Free, Universal) has long been held as the filet mignon standard. It’s an easily searchable collection of over 30,000 recipes, all tested and rated by users – you can browse by ingredient, as well as narrow it down by the likes of course, dietary requirements, and cooking method.
For inspiration, look no further than Foodgawker ($1.99, Universal). It puts a whole world of food blogs in front of you; just tap once to view the post in question, or twice to save it to your favorites – along with comments and tags to help you find it again. Essentially, it’s a culinary-focused Pinterest with less fuss and fewer colors.
If you need a bit more guidance, Escoffier Cook’s Companion (Free, Universal) is your virtual sous chef. It’s a multi-tasking tool to support you in the kitchen, enabling you to convert measurements and temperatures, scale a recipe’s number of servings, set multiple timers and even find out how to tell if a particular ingredient is of good quality.
To get the bottle to match, load up Vivino (Free, iPhone), your personal wine library. As well as recommending wines to pair with particular food, it also enables you to search by parameters such as price, rating, and grape. You can use your iPhone’s camera to snap a bottle’s label and see usersubmitted reviews and average prices. It’s a great way of keeping track of bottles for future reference – especially if a few too many taster glasses has temporarily impaired your memory…
For nights when you’re too tired to prep your own meal, Open
Table (Free, Universal) saves you the trouble of showing up at a restaurant only to find it fully booked. It’ll show you restaurants based on location or search terms, along with reviews and table availability. Seen where you want to eat? Tap through to secure a reservation. Better still, you can earn points when booking at certain places, so if you’ve got a favorite spot you’ll soon pile ’em up. It also has a Maps extension, so it works right within that app, too.
And for the ultimate fantasy fix, ChefsFeed (Free, iPhone) is a delicious rabbit hole of menu envy. Part location-based restaurant recommendation, part curated editorial content, this iPhone app boasts reviews from top chefs such as Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck, and Alain Ducasse. If you want to track down the dishes that your heroes dine on when they’re not behind the pass, this is the app for you. Who knows, perhaps you’ll discover the next rainbow bagel while you’re at it?