Nosh Pit

High-Tech Meets Good Eatin’

Restaurant gadgetry, meet Seattle.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Nov 07, 2011 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy tabbedout.com

First there was that restaurant in Germany that fired all its waiters in favor of at-table computers for ordering and automated table delivery. Soon iPads began replacing menus across New York. Now Palisade in Magnolia announces that it’s the first Seattle restaurant to launch an iPad wine list.

Allowing real-time updates and major green cred (Palisade’s paper list numbered 35 pages), the iPad wine list at Palisade also enables searches by grape, price range, even vineyard.

And menus aren’t the only aspect of dining out that can benefit from tech tweaks. Poquitos on Capitol Hill is but the latest of several local joints to sign on with Tabbedout, a service which allows you to settle up by mobile phone. The mobile payment service allows users to open a tab, view that tab in real time, then pay it from their phone.  

Tabbedout’s website lists some 19 other Seattle places that make use of their services, with conspicuous overrepresentation among the watering holes of Capitol Hill (Auto Battery, Unicorn) and Ballard (Sunset Tavern, BalMar, Hattie’s Hat).

All discussion of which is really just an excuse to flog the best technological restaurant development in town: Seattle Met’s own brand new, indescribably useful, really really smart restaurant app, available in the iTunes store. (Dig the critic’s picks!)

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Tags: Tech, critic's picks, Food Apps, Critic's Notebook

Apps for Ordering Your Lunch

A couple of eateries go high tech.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on May 09, 2011 at 01:07PM 0 Comments

The kimchi rice bowl sounds good.

For a transplant, Bob Liptak sure is privy to the city in which he’s shacking up. Not only will his new SLU sausage shack The Wurst Place stock vegetarian options and gluten-free rolls, Liptak has mentioned he might develop an app for the forthcoming restaurant. The idea is to cater to the nabe’s bustling lunch crowd: the app would allow patrons to place an advance order, ergo avoiding the lines known to clog other nearby spots. (Apropos the Place, have you read the comments on this post? Juicy.)

The just-minted Marination Station and its four-wheel counterpart, Marination Mobile, offer a similar service, Yorder. Same dealie: place and pay ahead of time, then select a time for pickup.

Considering we live in TechTown, USA, these guys can’t be the only ones to make ordering easy. Know of other eateries going techie?

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Tags: Food Apps