Tatlow Park's  Street Food Vancouver app has been in the App Store for three weeks and the response has been amazing. It has been downloaded by more than 2,000 people and there has been requests from all over the world to bring the app to more cities and more smartphone platforms. So far Vancouver street food fans have rated the app 4.5 out of 5 stars on average on iTunes. The first update to the app has just been approved by Apple and is now available in the App Store. After you update the app you'll have access to occasional daily specials from your favorite food carts. Be sure to check the app often to see who has a daily special. The first one will be on Monday (Valentine's Day). Enjoy!

After seeing New York Street Food's iPhone app last year, I decided that I would make my very own app for Vancouver's food cart scene. I got on the phone told people the exciting news. "But you don't know C+" and "I didn't realize that you are fluent in AppDev" were common responses. AppDev...uh, what? Anyway, Those haters weren't going to take my dream away that easily. Determined and excited, I opened a new window in Chrome, typed 'how to make an iphone app' into Google and got down to business. Buoyed by a false sense of coding prowess (possibly brought on by a half-assed attempt at making my own level in Little Big Planet while killing time at Best Buy), I signed on at Apple as an 'iOS Developer' and started reading. 15 minutes later, I realized that I indeed DO NOT know 'App Dev'. Luckily for myself and the rest of the city, Tatlow Park Software had a similar idea and the coding skills to execute it flawlessly. A couple of weeks ago we got a peek at some screen shots of the new app catering to Vancouver street food lovers. Toby at Tatlow was kind enough to hook me up with the beta version shortly after. Now that it's officially released I can can honestly say that the retail version delivers...big time! In my experience, far too many apps are loaded with speed crippling eye-candy and useless bling. Tatlow takes a 'less is more' approach that I found non-distracting and to the point. The interface is simple, two buttons on the bottom switch between 'map' and 'list' mode. Green pins indicate which vendors are currently open while the red ones show who's closed. You can get directions to the food cart of your choice based on your location via GPS, IP or entered manually. List mode displays vendors and one's distance to them, favourites and star ratings. It's great to see a local entrepreneur being the first to bring a street food app to Vancouver. With at least 15 new food carts coming to our streets this year, this will be the 'go to' resource for munchie's on the road. Hoping to see an Android version sometime soon! Get the app <here> Find them online: streetfoodapp.com ..