Luckily for me, OpenTable’s got my back. OpenTable is a massive (and still growing) system of restaurants, foodies and tools for helping you find the right restaurant as well as always getting a table.

First, you’ll see this screen below (which looks an awful lot like a parking screen for an ad company, but really isn’t). Pick your locale – most major American cities are well-represented by OpenTable, as are a number of international cities. Then, you can refine your search even more: by a more narrow location, by type of food, or even by date and time (eliminating any restaurant that might be closed when you want to eat).

If you still can’t decide, let the users of OpenTable help. Every restaurant you’ll see has reviews from OpenTable users who have been there, and the site even aggregates some of the most popular and best-reviewed restaurants in a variety of categories, from “Good for Groups” to “Best Ambience.” Of course, there are also tons of “Best ____ Food” lists as well, for every locale you choose.

To further aid you in finding the right restaurant, every listing comes with useful information: price range, accepted cards, whether there’s a bar or not, where to park, and lots more, all based on giving you as much information as possible to make your food run even better.

Once you’ve narrowed it down to the perfect spot, you choose your date, time, and size of party that you want a table for. OpenTable then does a search, and looks for the best available reservation times, and comes back to you with some options. I tried a place for Sunday brunch at 12pm, and got three reservation possibilities back in only a few seconds.

Choose your reservation time, log in (you can create a temporary account, or create a free account on OpenTable for this part), and you’re done! OpenTable sends you an email confirming your reservation, and you’re all set. Cancelling or changing your reservation is easy, as is exporting the event to your Outlook calendar.

OpenTable also lets you publish your reservation information to Facebook, or send invitations by email to your event – this makes OpenTable into a one-stop event planner, at least for the basics.

The reason OpenTable’s so great, as I see it, is that it’s better than you at knowing what’s going on. It’s connected directly to all the restaurants, so its information is as up-to-date as the restaurant itself, and reservations are made internally and easily, rather than OpenTable just acting as a middleman. Your reservation is always certain, and always correct.

OpenTable makes a once-annoying and complicated process extremely simple. Just log in, click, and you’re set – no phone calls, no guessing game about when to arrive; OpenTable does the work for you, and you just show up when you’re supposed to. That’s my kind of dining experience.

Are there other great apps that making eating even better? If you know any, please share them with us in the comments.

Other foodie articles on MakeUseOf are:
3 Recipe Sites For The Post Fast Food Era
Desktop Dining – The Best Places To Order Pizza Online
FOOD Love: Top 5 Recipe Websites

Photo: wallyg

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• Chipotle – A Free iPhone Food Ordering App Done Right (10)
• 3 Recipe Sites For The Post Fast Food Era (8)
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But don’t drop the good habits all at once. Fast food is passé and slow food is on the rise!

If you haven’t done so already, learn how to cook properly. That is goodbye to microwave and freezer (at least for the most part)! If you already know how to cook, but are running out of delicious recipes, you’ll not be disappointed either.

Here is a list of sites to give you some inspiration and fresh ideas, including practical advice and simple recipes for beginners. Maybe this is the time to start something new!

Cookstr

Want to rely on recipes from professionals? Then Cookstr is definitely for you as it contains recipes from hundreds of chefs and cookbook authors. A contributing celebrity chef you certainly know is Jamie Oliver. And I’m sure the other contributors are celebrities, too…somewhere.

You can search the site by recipe, ingredients or chef. If you’re totally uninspired you can hit the Surprise Me! button and see what it comes up with. Totally awesome is the refine search feature which lets you filter recipes for cost, skill level, total time, holiday, course, season, mood and a lot more.

Ingenious! Coming soon is a section with Tips & Techniques.

In case you’re not a good cook, I would recommend to browse recipes and find something that sounds simple enough. For example start with Italian cuisine and then use the refine search feature on the left to filter the Italian recipes for skill level, kid friendly and/or ingredients.

Cookthink

A recipe site designed to please your cravings.

What’s nice about this site is that you can create an account, post comments, save your favorite recipes or share your own. This feature is yet lacking from Cookstr, although I hear that it’s in the planning.

You can search by ingredient, dish, cuisine or mood. From the different category tag clouds you can build your custom search string. Simply go through them and click the most popular tags. Or manually add your own.

The site also contains a reference section for beginners. Here you can review common kitchen jargon and receive explanations about techniques, tools, ingredients and different cuisines. Even the experienced amateur chef will learn something new here.

In Your Kitchen

If reading recipes isn’t enough, In Your Kitchen is for you!

The site features recipes paired with videos. Visual demonstrations are just so much easier to grasp then written instructions.

In addition to recipes, the site invites you to view tours of wineries and restaurants, and being a signed up user you can even post your own material.

What more could you ask for? Oh, that one chef, Diane Stopford, looks a little like the young Kim Basinger. Now aren’t you tempted to have a look already? Guys?

Alright, for those that are not tempted, these are the two sites you should absolutely avoid if you want to eat healthy!

This Is Why You’re Fat

Actually it’s just a blog with a collection of photos featuring bad food. But it could trigger some serious cravings. So don’t go there. I won’t even share a picture.

Breakfast Blogger

A blog dedicated to breakfasts. Those that you can make yourself and those that are served at public places. Some posts contain recipes.

The site has not been updated for a while, but the archives are worth it if you want to feel sick just from seeing fat. It’s incredible what some people will have for breakfast – voluntarily!

For more food resources, check out these posts:

FOOD Love: Top 5 Recipe Websites by Aibek

Great Cooking Websites from a Different Perspective by Simon

What is your favorite dish and who is your favorite celebrity chef?

Image credits: woodsy

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• Mr.Breakfast – All about Breakfast Cereals! Top 100 Cereals, History & more (8)

First, you’re going to need some gas (even if you’ve got one of those classy hybrids). Well say no more:

Gas Bag (iTunes Link)

Gas Bag is a nifty little gas pricess app that will show you local gas stations on a map, prices included. It’s a social network, so coverage may be really good or really bad in your area. It all depends on how many locals use the network and actively record their purchases.

Even so, it has a great interface, is easy to use, and many commenters on iTunes seem to think it works very well for them.

The thing I like most is that it has Google Maps integration. While this isn’t a novel feature, it’s been implemented well. Gas Bag can either determine your position with GPS (or pseudo-GPS) or you can manually search for your location. After it has your location, it displays the six or so closest gas stations. You can zoom in or out for more or less options.

Once you decide to purchase some gas somewhere, there is the option to enter your purchase into the network. I won’t go into the specifics of exactly how that interface works, but I’ll say it’s much better than the webapp I used to use to track my gas consumption. I stopped using that webapp because the interface was a bit too tiny and when you’re in a hurry, entering gas data isn’t something you always have time for. Let’s see if this one lasts any longer on my iPhone.

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Now that you’re all gassed up, you’re going to need some traveling music. Well obviously you’re carrying around an iPhone/iPod, but just as the last App helped you pick a gas station, the following one will choose some music for you.

FlyCast (iTunes Link)

FlyCast is a pretty decent iPhone radio application. Usually I use Pandora’s iPhone App whenever I need some impromptu tunes, but sometimes I crave the discretion of a DJ and a mix of music that doesn’t necessarily match my exact taste.

Over the course of my life, I have been generally disappointed with internet radio because either the selection is way too limited or the player is really difficult to use. On both counts, FlyCast makes up for all that lost time.

The lists of stations for each genre isn’t terribly long, but everything is still pretty well represented. Also, FlyCast pulls from several different radio sources so if one doesn’t work out, you can try another. They are still expanding their line-up, but it looks like they already have over 1000 stations.

The interface is the part I like best about FlyCast. After you select a station (which admitedly can be a bit confusing), it takes you to the main player. From here you can play/pause the music as well as adjust the volume.

I’m a bit confused as to why there is a separate slide for the volume (alongside the iPhone’s volume controls), but I assume it has something to do with the incoming stream needing to be controlled differently.

When the stream is building up a buffer, the WiFi logo blinks blue. The number next to that indicates how much music is buffered ahead of where you’re listening. This is a great feature because it tells you how long you can get out of sync with your signal and still have an uninterrupted experience.

Most stations pull in cover art and song information along with the signal. Because it’s just a regular iPhone page, you can double-tap any cover art to blow it up to full size. If you want to surf the web (especially to find out about the songs you’re listening to there is an integrated browser that should keep the music running as you surf.

The rest of the features are a little confusing. I had trouble labeling anything as a favorite and most of the other options didn’t seem to have any function. Detractors aside, the core function of this App is solid and in a world of terrible internet radio players, this one does remarkably well.

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With music in your soul and fuel in your vehicle, it’s time to fill your body with food!

Urbanspoon (iTunes Link)

Urbanspoon is probably the best App on this list. First of all, Urbanspoon is already a really great food review site that lets people rate their local eating establishments socially.

On their network you can have friends too, so you can see who likes what. The iPhone App is partially an extension of that network because you can sign in and benefit from having an account. On top of this, though, there are a few terrific features that can help jazz up your night on the town.

Above is the “shake” interface, which lets you lock in location, style, and/or price and then give your iPhone a hearty shake. This starts the unlocked sections spinning (complete with some fun sounds). Where it stops nobody knows! After the selection is made, you can either shake it again for a new one, or click the item for information. The App can give you the address for directions or simply show you ratings and pictures to help you make the best choice. If this interface isn’t for you, a more low-key “browse” window lets you search all the places near you by rating, style, or closest proximity.

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Hopefully at least one of these Apps will make your next trip a little more fun! … Oh and, in case you’re travelling abroas make sure to check previously posted 10 Travel Websites that should be Bookmarked.

Let us know if you have any other favorites for traveling.

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