Favorite Food and Drink Apps

[MaLO]

I have toptable - opentable - relais chateaux - grand tables du monde - the aa b&b guide & yell is usefull for phone numbers and addresses.

Wine-searcher.com is an decent place to get an idea about wine prices etc, if you have constant browsing, although not an app as far as I know. I dont have any paid food apps.

[Becca Porter]

Okay, it is not a food app per se, but if you do not have screebl for Android get it! It keeps your phone lit as long as it is at an angle, when you lay it flat it goes black. This is useful all the time, but it really helps if you happen to be cooking from a recipe on your phone.

There is a paid version, but the free one works perfectly.

[eatenmess]

i know its on android, not sure about the iphoney, but foursquare is pretty fun.

[martinwa]

Try typing "wine" into the iTunes app store and you get 2 pages of em.

[sbb1979]

There are so many out there that it is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack - or should I say, looking for the oyster knife in the kitchen drawer...

As far as food apps go, I love FoodSpotting. So great for getting the appetite going - it makes it so much easier to choose where to eat when you can actually see what's going to come out of the kitchen.

Spingredients is really cool - select one ingredient, shake your phone and it picks three other ingredients that not only go with it, but also with each other. You can also personalise it by adding your own ratings of flavour combinations, but there's loads of them in there already.

Epicurious and AllRecipes apps are reasonable for recipes, but I prefer to browse my cookbook collection or the internet rather than apps for recipes.

I quite like the idea of iPairings, but there's not that much in there, and it looks like an early 90s website.

Cocktail is quite fun for selecting what to drink whilst out and about. Spin through the photos of the cocktails in the random selector and where it stops decides how you're going to feel the next day!

One that I really love that's not food related at all, but that's helping me to be better organised is "2Do". It is a to-do list app, but is so much more than that. Word Lens (translation) is also amazing, but I'm not going to Spain in the near future, so its of little use to me right now.

Has anyone had any luck with Chef's apps etc? Or are they just cheap marketing ploys?

[headconnect]

If coffee apps are of interest, I'd suggest Intelligentsia's app - free, and gives you good step-by-step guides for some of the more 'non-standard' methods of brewing. Great when you're starting out trying a new brew method, and also includes useful timers for different methods with alerts along the way for events (add grounds, bloom time, stir time, etc). Also has some nifty videos.

Also, I've played around with Snooth on the wine side, and I'd have to say you're probably better off with google goggles (goggles has superior label recognition, and will probably give you a much better idea of what you have in your glass and where to get more for how much)

[pastameshugana]

Just checking in to add 'OurGroceries' to the list.

I have it installed on my and my wife's iPhone - and it stays in sync. I can add items to the list while she's out (or vice versa) and it automatically updates, it also updates what is 'checked off' on the list. The app icon also shows a badge telling you how many things are on the list (handy when I'm out I can check and see if she needs anything at the store).

[lesliec]

A year or so down the track; time to bump this one to see what people have found.

I'm looking for a 'grown up' cocktail app for Android; one that doesn't assume its recipe list is all I need to know (I'd even be happy if it didn't come with any recipes of its own). I want to be able to enter my own ingredient list, not be forced to work with whatever peculiar list the app comes with. And I want to be able to put my own recipes in, preferably with a photo. I don't mind a bit of manual work to get the name/ingredients/instructions/photo in there.

I've used Mixology/Mixologist - probably the best of a bad lot, but I'm hoping somebody out there in eGullet land will surprise me. Trello is a recent find; it's not intended as a recipe app but does at least let me enter anything at all that I want to. Where it falls down is now I have a reasonable number of recipes in there it's a bit cumbersome to navigate, particularly when I'm using it on the phone.

What's new and good out there?

[thampik]

I have used InMyBar on my iPad for a while now and find that it does most things that I need from a cocktail app. From your description, it may be a good fit for you as well.

Some things that I find useful

• A reasonably comprehensive ingredient list to which you can easily add new ones. You can mark those that you have in your bar or define and add new ones
• A number of pre-defined cocktail recipes. I am not too bothered by the recipes themselves as I usually modify them to suit me - here the ability within the app to clone an existing drinks recipe comes in handy. You can also create new cocktails
• Certain drinks can be marked as favourites and accessed easily - I tend to use this a lot when I am wondering what to make
• You can identify what ingredients are missing for any of your favourite cocktails for the next shopping trip
• Identify all the cocktails you can make from the available ingredients in your bar

Unfortunately they do not have an Android version of InMyBar. There does not appear to any similar Android app on Google Play - so if anyone has any recommendations I would be interested to hear.

(for the sake of clarity, I'm just an average punter and have nothing to do with the developers of the app )

Edited September 1, 2013 by thampik (log)

[paulraphael]

I just got my first not-dumbphone and am wondering what's good.

The CIA's Professional Chef appp looks amazing, but a bit steep for me at the moment ($50)

A really good app with volume to weight conversions would be perfect.

Also something with a library of ingredient facts, formulas, etc. etc..

Thoughts?

[Shel_B]

I have no favorite apps for the kitchen, however, maybe this is worth a look since you specifically requested a volume to weight conversions:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blogspot.asifrc.Converter&hl=en

It might be helpful if we knew what operating system you have.

[martinlersch]

A really good app with volume to weight conversions would be perfect.

OK not an app, but close enough: I got tired of using single ingredient conversion websites, so I put together a Excel calculator which converts about 275 ingredients from US customary volume measurements to grams based on densities. It includes a differentiated rounding algorithm, so that you do not end up with recipes that call for 943 grams, but rather 950 grams (i.e. always taking care that the imparted error stays low, typicall below 2-3%). It's still a work in progress, but many have found it useful already. Densities are mainly taken from rec.food.cooking’s FAQ and conversion file (this is the same source as "Convert me" is built upon) and USDA National Nutrient Database.

The excel calculator is available for free download from: http://blog.khymos.org/2014/01/23/volume-to-weight-calculator-for-the-kitchen