There are two other ways to track down restaurant listings through LocalEats. Near Me uses the iPhone's location feature to produce a list of restaurants in the immediate vicinity. The closest restaurants are listed first--a particularly useful feature if you want to find a good place to eat that's also nearby. Near Address searches for eateries near an address, city, or zip that you type in, also listing the closest results first. Near Address stores your recent searches--how many, I can't say, since I typed in 34 searches and they're still accessible--giving you the ability to delete individual searches.

While I appreciate the distance data that Near Me and Near Address searches produce, these two features have their limitations. First, there's no way to get results by category--if you've got a hankering for Mexican food, you'll still have to sort through all the steak houses, French bistros, and sushi providers to find your heart's desire. Second, you're still limited to the restaurant listing data for the 50 cities currently compiled for Local Eats. That's great if you're visiting some place like Austin, Texas (many, many listings), but not so hotso if you find yourself in Blacksburg, Virginia (zero listings). In its , Where the Locals Eat says its goal is to "cover the entire U.S. We are adding cities as fast as we can, but we admit we have a long way to go."

LocalEats' value, then, is largely tied into whether you find yourself visiting the cities it covers. (The Where The Locals Eat Web site shows a complete list of the cities featured on the iPhone app.) In this calendar year, I've traveled to nine cities. LocalEats would have helped me track down grub in six of those locales: Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and the Washington D.C.-Norther Virginia metro area. It came up blank in the remaining three: Blacksburg, Fresno, and Vancouver. (Yes, LocalEats does not include any Canadian cities, and having consumed my own weight during a four-day stay in Vancouver, I can assure you that is a crying shame.) To me, six out of nine is enough to justify the $1 cost of the application; your travel plans may indicate otherwise.

Me, I find LocalEats to be a handy addition to my travel gear--not just because it helps me find new places to explore, but because it helps me remember great places I've already eaten. A few years ago, I had the best crab cakes in the known universe at a restaurant just a few clicks away from the Baltimore-Washington International Airport--trouble was, I couldn't remember the name of the establishment. Well, after tapping on Baltimore, then Categories, then Crab cakes, I was able to track down the G&M Restaurant & Lounge in beautiful Linthicum Heights, Md.

A tool that can remind me where to find great crab cakes and help me avoid another bland meal at an interchangeable chain restaurant? Yeah, that's earned a place on my iPhone.