Get Personalized Restaurant Recommendations from Alfred for iPad
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We’re all familiar with apps like Yelp and Urban Spoon which provide restaurant information, but Alfred steps it up and provides completely tailored dining selections based on your personal likes and dislikes.
Alfred is actually designed to be a quirky personal robot who analyzes data from questions and from your Facebook information to find out what you like. Once Alfred has some data, it is able to provide suggestions on places for dinner, lunch, breakfast, coffee, nightlife, and more.
When starting the app, you’ll be prompted to start teaching him about your preferences. Alfred will ask questions like “What is one of your favorite places for coffee or tea?” or “What’s your favorite place for weekend brunch?” Based on your answers, Alfred will immediately suggest related restaurants and ask if you like them to create an in-depth profile.
After the questioning, the app will prompt you to connect with Facebook, and it will analyze information like check-ins. Connecting with Facebook will also allow you to sync Alfred between your iPhone and your iPad, which is a handy feature.
Once the app has all the data it needs, it will present a series of categories that you can choose from, based on what you want to do. Categories include quick picks, dinner, drinks, dessert, coffee and tea, brunch, lunch, breakfast and nightlife.
Selecting a category, such as dessert, will bring up a list of places that Alfred thinks you will enjoy. You can give him a yay or a nay by clicking the thumbs up and thumbs down symbols
Tapping on a restaurant will display more information about it, including address, hours, plus menus when available and photos of the venue. Alfred will also provide a summary of all of the comments left about the restaurant to suggest the best things on the menu to try.
A map function will show you where all of the different restaurant suggestions in a category are located, and will provide directions. The entire iPad version of Alfred was recently designed to be more intuitive and to provide better suggestions, and having used both versions, I can definitely say that the new version is working great.
Alfred is a fantastic app, and I’d love to see more apps of this type, especially apps that could provide suggestions on other types of businesses like specialty shops. Yelp and Urban Spoon will tell you what’s around, but Alfred will tell you what’s around that you’ll actually like, so you don’t have to spend time sorting through tons of results.
What I liked: Alfred is a great app when you can’t decide what to have for dinner, and it’s also great for discovering new places. I found several restaurants that I hadn’t visited before, and it’s especially good for finding small places like coffee shops and bakeries. I also really liked the way that the app analyzed comments to suggest the best food to order.
What I didn’t like: I’m a strict vegetarian, meaning no eggs, no meat, and no dairy. I would have liked a way to input dietary restrictions into the app so that Alfred would be more apt to recommend places that I’m able to eat at. There are several vegetarian restaurants in my area, and while Alfred did manage to pick up on most of them based on my preferences, I would have liked the ability to automatically eliminate things I don’t eat, such as ice cream and gelato shops, and it seems like inputting that information would have made the app learn faster.
To buy or not to buy: This is a free app, so there’s no reason not to try it out! Alfred is a great way to branch out and find some new venues that you’re sure to enjoy.
- App Name: Alfred
- Version Reviewed: 0.6.8.5305
- Category: Lifestyle
- Developer: Clever Sense
- Price: Free
- Score:
