Having trouble deciding where to eat? Urbanspoon for iPad can help you find restaurants in your city quickly and comfortably, using your Apple device.
The free Urbanspoon app allows you to explore all of the restaurants in your city at the same time, from a convenient user interface. The application can detect your current location, or you can browse to one of the cities covered by the Urbanspoon network. A large, zoomable map from Google Maps displays all of the restaurants in the area.
The best thing about Urbanspoon for iPad is the way it lets you filter results depending on the kind of restaurant you feel like going to. A trio of slot machine-style wheels at the top of the interface allows you to select the neighborhood, type of food, and the price range. You simply spin the wheels to your preference and the matching results are shown on the map, or in List format. Alternatively, you can use the Spin button in the Urbanspoon app, which will randomize the wheels. This is great for picking a place at random if you have no clue as to where you want to go. While the filtering system is very handy, I wish Urbanspoon had included some more search variables, along with an 'any' option for each variable.
Once you've found a restaurant you like the look of, you can click on its name to reveal further details about it, garnered from the Urbanspoon database. Here you can view menus, user reviews, and check the overall score of the restaurant based on user ratings.
Urbanspoon is great for finding restaurants in US towns and cities, but global coverage isn't quite so good. For Canada, UK and Australia only the capital city and a few major towns are covered by the Urbanspoon app. And all other countries aren't touched by the app at all, unfortunately.
Unless you live somewhere that isn't covered, Urbanspoon for iPad makes for a great way to find new places to eat in your area.
