Review: Dishpal for iOS – An Inventive Social Networking App for Food

Food and photography are often two things that remain in my top ten list. What happens if we combine them and create a new social network? We get Dishpal (FREE, link).

Overview

Dishpal allows you take a photo of the food that you’ve just cooked, tag it, put a description on it, and share it with the world. The idea is simple and the presentation works great.

Starting the app

The first thing that meets your eye when starting up the app is a stream field with the latest photos that people have posted on Dishpal. For me, it was a great sight since all of the dishes looked amazing. The functionality and design of the app is familiar, and it is easy to understand and get around how the app works. By tapping around the different views it doesn’t take long until you’re fully understood with what is going on in this app.

Functionality

The app mainly consists of three major views – the timeline stream, the feature stream, and the geotagged stream.

  • The timeline stream is basically all of the latest dishes in a nice grid-looking interface.
  • The feature stream (which in my opinion is the most useful and eye-catching stream) contains of the highest rated dishes, which will just make you drool – lots and lots of great looking plates.
  • The geotagged stream is unfortunately not working at all for me (since people in my area don’t know how to cook food properly), no results at all within the area around my home.

 

Verdict

Rating: 4/5[rating:4]

Dishpal is a smart way of combining the modern life of social networking with food and photography. I really like the idea and the fact that I can find good inspiration for my next meal with this app. It is different from using an app that provides recipes from master chefs such as Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay in the way that you can actually submit your own meals and look at what other people have created.

The only downside for me was the lack of people around me using it, making the geotagged function absolutely unusable for me.

Pros

  • Fast and fun
  • Facebook integration
  • Search for peoples homemade recipes

Cons

  • Not enough people using it, yet

If this app will be more recognized, it could be a smash hit. I can see where Instagram started, and this has got the same potential. Bon appetit, folks!

Jakob Hultman

Jakob is the Swedish, blonde, handsome writer at MacTrast. He is based in Southampton, UK, and has been an Apple fanboy ever since his brother introduced him to the third generation iPod in 2003. He owns more Apple products than he can name and is a hardcore Bruins fan. Follow him on Twitter - @Raekob.