From now until Christmas we’ll be picking our favourite apps to get you through the festive season. Today we’re looking at toptable, which has recently been updated for the iPhone 5, adding some new features and freshly optimised to fit the new aspect ratio.
Christmas is a time when many of us will spend time catching up with friends and family over drinks and food toptable is designed to help you find a last minute restaurant table, for those evenings when you’re not quite sure where to eat.
toptable.com has long been the website of choice for restaurant booking, with information on over 4000 restaurants in the UK, and the ability to book using the app.
toptable for iPhone 5 includes a new ‘Great Tables’ feature, which uses your current location to find restaurants nearby. Enter the date, time, number of people and cuisine, hit ‘Find a Table’ and an attractive carousel showing photographs of local restaurants will appear. Click through to view the menu, check out diner reviews and book.
You can also search for restaurants nearby via location with results shown on a map, along view real-time availability – a feature we love. It’s at this point in the app you can specify the cuisine, cost and offers (below right).
Book through toptable and you get points, these points add up to toptable dining cheque’s you can use at restaurants of your choice – 2000 points gets you a £10 cheque. The app includes a section you can log in to view bookings, your current points total and check out any favourites.
We’ve used toptable in its old iteration and we’ve mixed feelings about the new version. It looks fantastic, it’s easier and quicker to book a table, however we feel the booking parameters are hidden too deeply in the menu – specifically price, which for many people is the main factor when booking a table. In addition the ‘Offers’ tab has been removed from the homescreen.
Overall we can’t fault the functionality of toptable. If you eat out regularly, it’s packed with information, reviews and of course the booking feature. However, in its current format, it’s not quite as user-friendly as we’d like.
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