By Max Cherney

Urban hunting and gathering, meet the 21st century.

Finding the best food and ingredients is something of an art. Especially in San Francisco. There are dozens of options for meals -- ranging from preparing something with fresh ingredients from one of the many farmer's markets, to grabbing a bite from a nearby food truck. Or even the plain old grocery store.

While everyone knows Yelp, which is a great source of reviews, there are other apps that can help find the most delicious, fresh foods -- and sometimes, have that food delivered. We've found five that will help find the best meals and ingredients in the city.

See also: Top 5 Free Food-Related Games for Your Smartphone or Tablet
Vegansaurus Just Launched a Sassy App for Bay Area Vegan Eating
Our New Hero WordPress Releases Tools For Restaurant Websites

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WordPress/Confit

You've heard it all before, we know -- restaurant websites are the worst, with their flash-heavy animation that doesn't work on smartphones, tinny soundtrack that normal humans mute within two seconds, and out-of-date information that's scattered across the site in an "artistic" fashion. (Note: To be fair, there are fewer of these problems in the websites of new restaurants, but they're still rampant.) It's hard to place blame on restauranteurs, who often aren't particularly web-savvy and spend their time focused more on running the restaurant than updating the site. But hey! Blogging platform WordPress just released Confit, a set of new web tools aimed at restaurateurs to make the job of creating a good-looking, functional restaurant website exponentially easier.

See also:
- Why Are Restaurant Websites Gaudy and Unusable?
- Dear Restaurants: What We Need from Your Website

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Flickr/Lee J. Haywood

As we move toward November it isn't too soon to get ready for Thanksgiving and beyond. Whether you are looking to cook, shop or find a place to take (or escape from) your relatives, there are plenty of free iPhone apps help you prepare for the coming onslaught. If you're staying in the city, the (shameless plug alert) SF Weekly App is a great guide to local events, restaurants, clubs and bars. But there are a few more apps to help you survive, and even enjoy, the season.

See also:
- Bi-Rite's Got Your Back for the Holidays
- Top 5 Free Food-Related Games for Your Smartphone or Tablet
- Vegansaurus Just Launched a Sassy App for Bay Area Vegan Eating

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Gil Riego Junior

Get out of your FiDi lunch rut with LuckyBolt, a new startup that picks up meals from restaurants all over town via bike courier and delivers them to a pickup spot at Market and Beale. Past restaurants featured have included Ike's Place, Nopalito, Lucca Delicatessan, Pica Pica, and more -- today you can choose from the delicious, locally sourced offerings from Pal's Takeaway (last year's SF Weekly pick for Best Sandwiches in S.F.) and Green Chile Kitchen.

See also:
- San Francisco's 10 Best Sandwiches
- What to Have for Lunch: Green Chile Kitchen's Christmas Burrito (in May)

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Vegansaurus

Vegansaurus, the popular vegan lifestyle blog run by (full disclosure) SFoodie contributors Laura Beck and Megan Rascal and SF Weekly's fabulous copy editor, Meave, has teamed up with Escape Apps to produce a pocket guide to the best vegan food in the Bay Area. The new app offers detailed reviews of 77 locations around the Bay Area, all with photos and the irreverent voice you've come to expect if you read the blog.

Along with utilizing GPS wizardry when you login to recommend the best vegan eats near your current location, the app also has the option to save places for later, one-touch dialing, turn-by-turn directions, and useful information like hours and websites. But our favorite part of the app is the writing, which has us using it though we eat animal products on a daily basis. Unlike most guidebooks, the ladies at Vegansaurus tell it like they see it.

See also:
- Top 5 Free Food-Related Games for Your Smartphone or Tablet
- "Week in Vegan" Archives

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Nomiku

The hand-held Nomiku with a perfect sous vide steak.

Sous vide, the method of cooking vacuum-sealed food in a temperature-controlled water bath, has long been the domain of top chefs and molecular gastronomists, but a trio of local tech-foodies is bringing the exclusive and believed-to-be expensive way of cooking to the everyday kitchen. With its ease of use and small price tag, the team behind the new hand-held Nomiku device is hoping to get an edge on the competition.

See Also:
- Cookin': Helping You in the Kitchen Since 1981
- Annals of Sad Press Releases: The Jellinator
- At Buyer's Best Friend, You Can Sample Any Food in the Store

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Cook Taste Eat

The site's first dish, sesame-crusted tuna.

Local celeb chef Michael Mina has teamed up with food entrepreneur Tanya Melillo to create a new cooking website and daily email called Cook Taste Eat. The site's concept centers around a weekly, restaurant-quality menu developed by Mina himself, which is broken down into daily recipes highlighted in a cooking video, recipe, and tasting tips geared toward home cooks. This week's menu is sesame-crusted ahi tuna with fava bean falafel, yogurt tahini and grilled cucumber salad, a dish that's also on the menu at all Michael Mina restaurants.

See Also:
- See Food: A Guide to Local Culinary Television
- Virtual Robert Irvine is Coming to Rescue Your ChefVille Restaurant From Disaster
- Are "Emperor Chefs" Like Michael Mina and Thomas Keller a Good Thing?

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Robert Irvine, the Food Network's answer to shouty chef Gordon Ramsay, will be making a two-week virtual appearance starting today in Zynga's new Facebook game, ChefVille. According to the press release, "Irvine will face his biggest challenge yet as he helps ChefVille players enhance their in-game establishments by mastering dishes from around the world, while improving their restaurants."

See Also:
- Zynga Releases ChefVille , the Video Game That Could Be Your Next Obsession
- Top 5 Free Food-Related Games for Your Smartphone or Tablet
- Bobby Flay Would Like You to Know That He's Not the Screaming Type

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Build your own burger skyscraper in Burger Frenzy.

Food games have come a long way since we were shooting bison on the Oregon Trail. A few days ago SFoodie shared the news that Zynga has released ChefVille, a new Facebook game where you can build your own restaurant, cook recipes for friends, and take cooking lessons. We're not social gamers, but we're fans of the food- and restaurant-themed games we've been playing on our iPhone and iPad. Here are five games that we've spent days or weeks addicted to (platform availability varies):

5. Burger Stack
Burger toppings fall from the sky and you tilt your phone to stack the ingredients listed on your order while avoiding the rest. Catch the wrong topping or miss one of the right ones and you lose tips; snag a top bun before your order is complete and the round is over. Burger Stack is basic but engaging, and because each round is quick, nearly hands-free, and doesn't require much concentration, it's a good option for waiting in line or sitting on the bus.

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Zynga

Today, San Francisco game titan Zynga announces the release of a new game called ChefVille, the latest in the internationally successful and addictive Ville series that also includes FarmVille, CityVille, and FrontierVille.

Rather than just being a game with a single-minded objective, ChefVille has a lot of different areas to play in. You can build your dream restaurant and kitchen, cook dinner for friends (and borrow ingredients from your neighbor if you need them), and take in culinary lessons. But the cutest feature in ChefVille is what Zynga calls a "game to table experience" -- if you master a dish in the game, an actual recipe for it will be emailed to you so that you can cook it at home. It's an extension of what previous Ville games have done on social media sites like Facebook, and has the potential to be just as ubiquitous.

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