If you love food as much as we do, you may have turned to your trusty smart phone to keep you updated on favorite restaurants, recipe informed, and generally in the loop when it comes to cuisine. Just years ago people might have called you crazy for suggesting such a habit but now it’s engraved in our daily schedules.
As with many things in life, sometimes there is such thing as too much. When do you cut the chord on the plethora of Food Apps and how do you know which ones to cut? Thankfully there are some food-loving experts who have decided to weigh in on the topic. With their help, and an opinion of your own, you’ll be able to streamline your food apps in no time! The list is in no particular order and a few picks might even surprise you.
Evernote
Tristan Willey, Booker & Dax
Tristan Willey, bar manager at Booker & Dax, the innovative new cocktail bar attached to Momofuku Ssam Bar, uses Evernote to keep all of his (and his staff’s) ideas organized and easily accessed. “If I’m away from the bar,” he says, “I can upload a recipe and everyone at the bar can see it.” The chefs and bartenders all have access to particular notes, and they all have their phones on them all the time, so whenever inspiration hits, they can jot a quick note for everyone to see and comment upon.
Kitchen Calculator Pro
Wylie Dufresne, wd~50
Wylie Dufresne, chef and owner of wd~50 and basically a minor deity in the movement to bring scientific techniques and theories into the restaurant world, uses an iPhone app called Kitchen Calculator Pro, as do some of his chefs. “It is very useful in the kitchen,” he says. “We are always converting Fahrenheit to Celsius, or metric to standard. With something like this, everyone has access to the app on his or her phone, which makes it practical and convenient.”
iGrill
Luis Bollo, Salinas
Luis Bollo, the chef at Salinas in New York City, uses an app/device that we’re actually pretty familiar with–the iGrill. We had some issues with it last summer, but a lot of the problems seemed easily fixable, and Bollo really loves it.
“It’s a thermometer probe that you use to check the temperature of your meat,” he says. “You enter the probe to your meat of choice, turn on the Wi-Fi and you can be anywhere in the restaurant and your phone will tell you the temp of your choice of meat.” The iGrill comes with one probe for $80, though you can add more probes after.
Bartender’s Choice
Matt Buchanan, Buzzfeed
Matt Buchanan, the editor at Buzzfeed FWD and simultaneously the biggest food nerd and tech nerd I know (in the best way! Thanks Matt!), recommends Bartender’s Choice, which’ll run you $2.99 in the App Store. Says Matt:
“It’s the cocktail app from the dudes behind Milk & Honey, namely Sasha Petraske. It has something like 450 classic and newfangled cocktails, and you can search by spirit, taste, or style. While every entry gives an origin for the drink, the downside is that none of them describe what the cocktail tastes like, so you have to know/guess based on the ingredients. On the upside, it’ll probably be delicious.”
Instagram/Hipstamatic
Jenn Louis, Lincoln
Jenn Louis, chef of Lincoln and Sunshine Tavern in Portland, OR (and a 2012 Food & Wine Best New Chef), uses some of the same apps the rest of us do–Instagram, Twitter, Hipstamatic. “I really like to document food throughout the seasons and how we change what we’re cooking,” she says. Instagram and Hipstamatic give her food a different look, which gives her a different perspective. So maybe you can feel less guilty about snapping photos while out to dinner–chefs do it too.
Baker’s Toolbox
Chris Ford, Wit & Wisdom
Chris Ford, executive pastry chef at the lengthily-titled Wit & Wisdom: A Tavern by Michael Mina (and the newly crowned “People’s Best New Pastry Chef 2012” by Food & Wine Magazine), uses an iPhone app called Baker’s Toolbox. It’s sort of a baker-specific version of Kitchen Calculator Pro–“It can tell conditions, time, conversions, charts, and can house notes” says Ford–but bakers have some different needs and concerns from other kinds of cooks.
Where’s your favorite? Don’t see a killer techno friend who helps you out on the reg? Let us know then read more about the foodie favorite apps HERE.
