Local Food Shopping for the iPhone

Serious Eats points to Locavore, an interesting new iPhone app that attempts to add a sheen of high-tech cool-ness to the otherwise mundane task of searching for local seasonal foods.

Locavorism...on the iPhone? I gave it a test drive.

After you download the app, the software identifies your GPS location and pulls up a list of foods currently in season. This can be depressing if its March and you're in New Jersey (the app, sadly,  displays "nothing is currently in season here"). But, there is something to look forward to: asparagus, peas, and other green things are shown under another list, "Coming in season soon." Yes!

Click on asparagus, and a map of the U.S. springs up showing those sunnier states where spring vegetables might actually be growing, plus links to epicurious (for recipes) and wikipedia. You can also search for specific types of fruits and vegetables (or browse alphabetically) to see when and where they are in season.

Click on "markets" and Locavore takes you to a list of farmers markets in your area in order of distance from you (oddly, in my case, the market closest to me was listed second). Click on a listing, and a new page gives more details about the market (provided by the localharvest.org). I pulled up my local market in Maplewood, New Jersey, but found out very little (in fact, the page indicated the listing was last updated in 2000 and "is likely to be out of date."). Harrumph!

So, the application didn't pan out as being all that useful for me. While I liked seeing current information on what's fresh in my area (this always inspires cooking), even better would be real details on exactly those markets where specific items are available and plentiful (could you imagine what this would do for rampophiles?). Not to mention, how about details on the farms that are selling at these markets (and other retail locations where you might find their goods).

I'd also love to see listings for where you can find local meats. As far as the local food movement has come in recent years, I still find that shopping for meats raised locally is very difficult (particularly since they aren't sold in my tiny local market).

So, give Locavore a try if you'd like. It's a worthy attempt at making local food shopping iPhone-friendly, though its going to need some improvements before it can achieve the greatness of iPint.

Locavore is $2.99 at the App Store on iTunes.