well, darbar makes the best sauces rice korma pakoras butter sauce,but hey, they could make ''butter tofu'' instead of ''chicken'' their butter sauce is the best youve seen. calafia has best salads stuff ,sanchos besst fish burrito but does anyone trust fish anymore from that poisoned ocean. the pizza place on cal ave has the most authentic looking pizza from fire oven.why cant the use ''hemp stems and twigs instead of ''wood'' for cleaner air and ,imagine ,all these ''hemp fired'' pizza places could ad a ''lilt'' to the evening stroll with ''hemp fumes''om much cleaner ''wood fired'' pizza....pizza with pizzaz.no electronic media needed. you now know everything about the area.

I find the Foodspotting app - now part of Open Table (another useful app for making reservations) - very useful when in a strange town. You take pictures of food in a restaurant. Then when you go to a new town you can see other people's pictures of food in surrounding restaurants. I find it best to take all the pictures as soon as the food arrives on the table - then submit them to Foodspotting when there is a lull in service. I only have a few Foodspotting friends. I like to help a good restaurant get known through Foodspotting and many waiters and waitresses have been intrigued with it. You can photo the food quickly.

I recently paid 99c for an iPhone app - Bites and Chews - that tells you how fast to eat - 70 chews a minute is optimal and many things require 20 chews. The aim of the app is to make you eat slowly so that you eat less and get slim. Alex Nedvetsky, MD, PhD who wrote the app says he's seen the slow eating process work with his patients. So he designed the app. The app has eating times for popular restaurants. It would be intrusive to have it ticking like a metronome, but it should be OK to sit on the table. See Web Link

I don't mind being photographed while dining - so using a smartphone as a camera is fine with me.

Another acceptable cellphone use might be to look at the time.

If the purpose of a meal is to discuss a presentation, video or photo - then a cellphone can easily be shared. In fact, a tablet or laptop might be appropriate for such a discussion. Maybe you are excited about some new shoes - then it's easier to show a picture of those red soles on a cellphone than describe them.

Looking up answers to questions during a meal, for me is interesting. Fact checking is another reason for using a smartphone.

Reading email, texting and answering phone calls during a meal that could demonstrate poor manners. So I don't like people using a cellphone to communicate with others, but to communicate with a relevant and informative app seems OK.

I'd be interested to know what others think.

I use Chowhound message boards to research any place we visit. It's the best place to find great new and old restaurants and good values. Most posters are super foodies.

The main problem for me & many other foodies who eat out often is that there's no easy way to access the food we love & recommend them to friends. If I asked you for dish recs from your trip to NYC, it should be as easy as you sharing a list in 1 minute or less. I used to use foursquare lists for that but it's hard to rec a specific dish. Now I use foodmento (disclosure: I'm the founder) and all my friends have easy access to the 1000+ dishes I loved in 35+ cities. It should be that easy :)