Some of the most useful set of apps on the iPhone are the restaurant apps that tell you what is to eat nearby. There’s UrbanSpoon, Yelp, and LocalEats, among others. But once you find a restaurant, you still have to call to make a reservation. Now, you no longer have to use up those minutes. Online reservation service OpenTable released an iPhone app today that lets you not only find nearby restaurants, but book a table as well. You don’t have to call and wait on hold. The app uses OpenTable’s online reservation system to book and confirm a table. It will even give you directions to the restaurant from wherever you are.
You are shown only nearby restaurants, and cannot filter by type of cuisine or refine your search as easily as you can on the Website. But the app is perfectly functional. The key is that it only shows you nearby restaurants that have open tables for the time when you want to eat.
OpenTable is especially great for reserving tables at high-end restaurants. If you are on a business trip, or wandering about town with some friends and want to make impromptu dinner plans, I could see this app becoming indispensable. I’m a big fan of OpenTable, and already have an account there, so for someone like me it is a must-have iPhone app.
The app is free and you can download it from iTunes (link opens up iTunes).
Now this is awesome. It’ll be helpful when i’m walking around the city.
^– my new sig —
unless it’s on android it’s useless.
iPhone is for trendies. Real men use Android.
I’ll be making MY reservations on the PHONE in protest
With this economy and the new expanded Socialism coming, how hard will it be to get a table?
Btw, Chris, I’m on a con call that is just starting and one of the participants loves his Android. He really couldn’t say enough about it.
Nahhhh, I want the damn Google voice search for the iPhone, how long can they delay and approve this?
The only problem is that restaurants don’t advertise all of their time slots to OpenTable. There may be a great French Bistro up the street with a open spot in 30 minutes but open table thinks the next available slot is at 10pm.
So this works fine if you want a quick meal and aren’t particular, but if quality matters than this isn’t the most effective solution. The fix, display all area restaurants, eliminates their differentiators.
I’m sure with the economy the way it is, there are plenty of open tables at fine restaurants.
It will be interesting to see if Yelp or UrbanSpoon tries to move into the reservations market.
Yet another reason to get off bberry and make the migration. If only iphone would have the enterprise level security companies like so much.
there has been an app that lets users make reservations via opentable api for a few months now called “Reservations”. opentable was too lazy to make an app when the app store launched, which is retarded on their end because making restaurant reservations on your phone makes a lot of sense. in any case, not much new here. funny how slow some web 2.0 companies are in leveraging existing technology platforms to make USEFUL services (cough, YELP, cough).
just downloaded it and installed it….. works amazingly well nietzschesque.
I love OpenTable. Actually had to call them today because the site froze on my iPhone. Didn’t know about the app. I’ll use it, I’ve found the site to be reasonably accurate in SF (IE if they say no times are avail., call the restaurant and sure enough, no times avail.)
Another useful iPhone app to check out is Ziibii. It gives iPhone users a way of staying in-touch and in-the-loop with friends, photos and the world. Check it out for FREE via the iTunes App Store.
Yum! is an iPhone app for restaurant owners. Check it out at http://www.snow.../Yum/index.html