Fancy a nibble? Even as the recession puts the squeeze on our spending and the politicians start talking about a double-dip crisis, eating out is still a popular pastime. So popular in fact that getting a table may prove tricky. Read our Open Table review and find out how to beat the queues..
There are of course several apps on the Ovi Store that claim to solve this vexing dilemma for you. Open Table is the latest and it comes backed with a well established online booking service. Will it help you chow down, or just grind you down?
Open Table starts by making a connection to the Internet.The app picks up your default accesspoint settings from the browser and these cannot be changed from within Open Table, so make sure you have this configured as you would like. Unlike some apps, refusing the connection doesn't auto-quit, but as you won't actually be able to do anything without a net link, you had better let it get on with things.
Open Table has a rather non-standard interface which nevertheless is well designed and consistent. Despite this, it does take a while to get used to the positioning of certain onscreen controls compared to more standard Nokia apps.
You have three basic search options - find a restaurant by name, find restaurants near your current location (using positioning data, e.g. GPS) or find restaurants near a specified location. Open Table has a database of over 13,000 restaurants in 14 countries which use its booking software.
Even over 3G, search was fast and could be filtered by the time and date when you would like to make a booking, and narrowed down to a list of nearby neighbourhoods.
Once the initial search is complete you have the option to refine your search by type of cuisine and price range (divided into ££, £££ and ££££ rather than specific amounts). While this is useful it does seem odd that you can't specify these filters at the beginning of the search, thereby saving yourself another screen's worth of fiddling about.
You are also restricted to choosing a single type of cuisine to filter by. So you could look for all Chinese restaurants in the vicinity, but if you wanted to eat either Chinese or Modern British you would have to conduct two searches.
All the Restaurants in Open Table's database come with directions that can be displayed via Google Maps and most have viewable menus and customer reviews for you to check out. UK coverage is mainly centered on London, although there are listings for other parts of the country too.
Assuming you find a restaurant table, Open Table will let you book everything directly through your handset. If you have an account on the Open Tables site this can all happen automatically, but if you don't there is an option to book anyway by typing in your contact details.
If you like to dine out a lot and often find yourself looking for a table at short notice, Open Table would be very useful. A few annoying interface decisions stop this from being an essential app, but it is a useful one to have at the bottom of your SD card.
Details
Price: Free
Size: 0.45 MB
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