5 Great Apps For Finding The Best Food In Your Area

Finding a great restaurant can be as easy as knowing how to use Google. But discovering new restaurants that only recently opened or finding an amazing hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant often takes a lot more work.

As we all know, cellphone apps can do almost anything and everything for you, except tie your shoes…yet.

There are a number of great apps for both iPhones and Androids that do all the work of finding eclectic, weird, or just darn delicious restaurants, while also saving you from potential food poisoning that you could encounter on a trial-and-error quest to find great eats.

Here are five great apps for finding the best food in your area:

1. LocalEats

LocalEats is a restaurant website that offers mobile apps for both iPhone and Android. What’s cool and unique about LocalEats is that it only features local restaurants—it doesn’t include any national chains, according to HowStuffWorks.

You can look through the top 100 for your city, browse the “Best Of” within certain cuisines or prices ranges or just search by specific characteristics like neighborhood or type of cuisine.

The app is free for Android users and 99 cents for iPhone users, but it’s quite a good $1 investment if you want to stick to local restaurants.

2. Seekeasy

Seekeasy is a new app that will be launching in some North American and international markets in the fall.

Jordan Axani, CEO, said the app hand selects local, community influencers who are really familiar with key areas of their neighborhoods. Then, when a user logs into the app, it can match users with locals who have similar interests or tastes.

The locals can then act as guides to users, suggesting restaurants, interesting businesses or even cool public spaces. All of the certified locals are English speakers, so language barriers will never be a problem either.

Seekeasy can help you find great restaurants in neighborhoods around the world, so that you never get stuck in a tourist trap.

“We see a future where you have access to what locals really love, in real-time,” Axani told SimpleMost. “While that includes restaurants that are hidden gems, that’s really just the beginning. … After all, review sites and best-of lists can only take us so far. They tend to be impersonal, biased and dated.”

3. VegOut

Finally, a free app for vegetarian and vegan foodies! VegOut can help you find restaurants with veggie and vegan options using the HappyCow database of vegetarian restaurant reviews, according to HowStuffWorks.

The app also provides info on whether a restaurant is vegan, vegetarian or if it serves meat but also has vegetarian- and vegan-friendly options.

4. Eat St.

Eat St. is another free app, but this one is awesome for the food truck obsessed. The app helps you find the best food trucks in your area, and, no, these aren’t your standard, “Is-that-safe-to-eat?” food trucks.

Most of the food trucks serve awesome gourmet food, like waffles and ice cream or fresh empanadas. According to HowStuffWorks, this app is best for people who live in an area with a strong food truck community.

5. ChefsFeed

ChefsFeed is truly awesome for people who appreciate the work that great chefs do. The app shows you delicious dishes in your area that were hand selected by some of the best chefs in the country, according to Urban Tastebud.

This app is free for both the iPhone and Android.

Photo by SOZIALHELDEN e.V.