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Food & Drink
Struggling to find somewhere good to eat? When you’re in a new city, perhaps on holiday or a business trip, or if you just want to try to find somewhere new in your neighbourhood, it makes sense to take advantage of recommendations rather than just try some place at random.
There are a few websites that can be used to check restaurant reviews and ratings but when you’re out and about, a dedicated app can prove more useful. Zagat is a free app from Google that enables you to discover the perfect place to eat as well as give you the chance to share your thoughts and experiences with others.
It’s Holidays Week here at Android.Appstorm! We will dedicate our time this week to bring you the best apps for the year-end festivities. From gift shopping to games, cooking and hosting, managing your to-dos, decorating your phone, it will all be about spreading the cheer and reducing the stress of the Holidays season.
One of the reasons I was really excited about purchasing a Google Nexus 7 was that I’d finally be able to carry a ready reckoner of recipes and cooking videos right into the kitchen to follow along — you know, just to make it look like there’s a method to the madness. But sometimes, I don’t even know what to cook or how to achieve certain results, and that’s where an app like BBC Good Food – Recipes comes in handy.
Culled from the eponymous British magazine, this is a beautiful collection of recipes, cooking tips and tools that are infinitely helpful for both experienced and amateur home cooks. Every recipe is clearly detailed and accompanied by a beautiful photograph, and the app includes a few extra features that make it a must-have in your culinary arsenal. Plus, it’s loaded with a ton of recipes that are perfect for this holiday season.
Most cooking apps for Android are rather straightforward, as cooking involves less time spent using the app and more time doing the actual task at hand. That’s pretty understandable, and as an occassional food maker, I have been content with whatever cooking app I had installed at the moment — until I came across The Baker App. This app not only got my attention, it also motivated me to venture into the exciting world of baking. It’s not every day that I get unusually excited about a cooking app, but The Baker App is obviously an exception.
Evernote’s known for its excellent cloud-based note taking app, but the team has been branching out recently. Last month we looked at Evernote Hello, which keeps track of the people you meet; today we’ll look at Evernote Food, which keeps track of the meals that you eat.
Evernote Food acts as an easy to use database for tracking your food experiences. It allows you to quickly take photos of your meals and easily tag them with the important information (what it is, where when you ate it, and how good it was), syncing it with your Evernote account for the easy access the company has a reputation for.
Whether you are a true bartender or just playing one at your next party, Cocktail Flow makes short work of serving up everyone’s favorite libation. The app wows with its easy to use (and easy on the eyes) interface, making it the best designed, most über functional cocktail app on Google Play. Having this app on your Android phone is like having a Gary Vaynerchuk for cocktails in your pocket.
The app is a gold mine with its cocktail recipe database that in addition to suggesting similar cocktails, tells you which cocktails go with the ingredients at hand, and how to optimize your shopping trip to eliminate last-minute beer runs. The app’s functionality extends well beyond an appified recipe book.
While I love looking up recipes and cooking for my family, I hadn’t been doing either as often as I would’ve liked to over the previous year. Now, armed with a new freelancer’s flexible work schedule, I started to hunger for a way to put my recipes in order, buy the right ingredients (and the right quantities), and get productive in the kitchen. Thankfully, I found a helping hand in the form of Pepperplate.
There are plenty of apps on the Android Market to help you with collecting recipes, buying groceries and planning your menus, but I haven’t been able to stick to using them. Pepperplate does all these things, and looks good at the same time. It’s also dead simple to use, and free. So whip out those smartphones and let’s whip up some grub!
For people who cook regularly, whether for themselves or for their families, meal planning may not be as easy as frying eggs for breakfast. Being the household’s designated chef is a huge responsibility that often gets taken for granted. While we’re out and about going through our daily routine, the “chef” is deep in thought in front of the fridge, mulling over ingredients decent enough for a good, home-cooked meal. For more unfortunate people who live alone and act as their own chef, planning meals may crop up last-minute while on the way home – or may be skipped altogether in favor of the more convenient pizza delivery.
That’s why Food Planner is a great time- and effort-saver for automated meal planning on a daily basis. It’s an app that can really help with this essential yet complicated chore.
As a foodie, I was really excited by the idea of Foodspotting: take a photo of your meal whenever you’re out to dinner, and share it with the world; then, browse photos of dishes other people have tagged to see what looks good around you. There are plenty of websites and apps that aggregate reviews of restaurants’ decor, service, atmosphere, and general food quality, and mini-reviews of the menu items themselves should complement this nicely.
Unfortunately, the Android app has a few flaws that keep it from living up to its potential. Read on to find out what they are, and whether that’s a big deal.
