An old adage goes, “You eat first with your eyes.” In our Instagram-obsessed age, this is more true than ever. People are increasingly choosing restaurants based not on reputation or reviews, but on the images of food taken by roving bands of foodies on Twitter or Instagram. If you love food that’s beautiful and tasty, a great food-finding app is Forkly.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Forkly is an iOS app that helps users find new foods and new restaurants to check out in their area. Users can share photos of their meals, review the uploads of other users, and earn points to become a “Tastemaker.”

Pros

• Packed with gorgeous food visuals to whet your appetite and give you a good idea of what the food you order will actually look like
• Solid interface that makes it easy to browse, discover, and find exactly what you’re looking for nearby
• Add foods from local restaurants, as well as restaurants that are located far from your current location– a great way to build a foodie “bucket list”
• Sign in with Facebook, create an account with your email, or continue to the app without signing up in order to get the lay of the land
• Add tasty-looking items to your “Want” list so you can find them with ease in the future
• Share beyond the app to Twitter, Facebook, Email and MMS
• Earn “influence” points to become a Tastemaker who has opinions that matter to the community
• Great for answering the age old question, “What’s for dinner tonight?”

Cons

• As with any user-submitted photography app, some photos are not as appetizing as the rest due to poor focus, bad lighting, or careless snapshots
• You must associate a photo with your review– this does make it somewhat hard to praise a restaurant that you love and frequent regularly if you don’t have a photo of your most recent meal handy

Discussion

One thing that makes Forkly special among other apps of its ilk is the ability to get data on local restaurants, as well as national icons. I was able to look up Dominique Ansel’s bakery in NYC, find some cronut pics, and even get a rating for the cronuts. If you’ve been wondering if the famous cronuts are really worth a trip into the city and a long wait in line, the visual and rating systems this app provides can help you determine just how badly you want to try a certain dish.

Forkly has a really nice UI, and it’s easy to browse by city or by current location. Not all of the user-submitted pics are particularly appetizing, which is another reason the rating system is a helpful addition.

You can look up a restaurant right from the Discover tab, and see what other delights people have been raving about. I’m planning a big family dinner next week, and I was able to look at the restaurant I was planning on taking us to and see what dishes people liked there.

I do wish I had been able to see a full menu and some detailed venue info. I know for a fact, for example, that this place doesn’t take reservations, something that I wish the app was telling users.

Conclusion and download link

If you want to find some delicious grub in your area (or add a famous restaurant to your foodie bucket list), you can add all of your culinary wish list items to one list using Forkly. This app is simple to use, comprehensive in locations and menus, and has a great sense of community. This app is well worth checking out if you’re a foodie, and it’s nice that you can browse as a guest before committing to an account or a Facebook association.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 2.5.1

Supported OS: Requires iOS 5.0 or later

Download size: 14.8 MB

Forkly on Apple App Store