The L'Anima Italian restaurant in London has gone one step further than just letting you choose your wine from a touch screen; last month they ran an online contest so that blog readers (some of whom, we presume, were also restaurant goers) could choose three new wines for L'Anima to add to their impressive wine list.

And it wasn't just a case of voting for your favorite wine off a list. L'Anima went to the trouble of getting three pairs of wine experts to explain their favorites off the shortlist of nine, made these explanations into YouTube vids, and got voters to decide which video was the best.]]> amandak 2009-09-22T10:32:20-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/14/5545/53232

Lovers of interactive restaurant menus (a geeky group we do admit belonging to) need to know about a wine bar in New York that's got the geek thing going: Clo, on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center.

Whether you know heaps about wine or only care whether it's red or white on a given night, you will probably have a lot of fun choosing your wine using Clo's "motion-activated" touch screen list. Not only that, you can pay by credit card and then—the ultimate geek touch—the wine is automatically dispensed into your glass, in 2oz or 4oz measures. No waiters required. And they have some special preservation system in place so all those open bottles of wine don't go bad.]]> amandak 2009-09-17T17:23:54-05:00 40.7687350 -73.982938 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/10/81857/4729

While in some places, interactive touchscreen menus are there to stop customers from dithering around while they make their menu choice, at other restaurants they're just there to look trendy. At the new-ish Philippe Chow Express in Greenwich Village, New York City, it's the latter, as far as we can tell.

Opening about a year ago, Philippe Chow Express—yes, a spin-off from Philippe—is full of semi-authentic Chinese food that you can eat in (the restaurant is "atmospherically noisy", we hear) or take away. In both cases you can order via a touchscreen menu if you want, although in comparison to some more high-tech restaurants, the Express touchscreen seems a little bit bland. You can find the full menu, but it's not full of pictures or super-helpful explanations, and you can't flirt with someone using another touchscreen.]]> amandak 2009-09-10T17:13:51-05:00 40.7356880 -73.998372 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/3/64551/05718

The Madpoison lounge and restaurant in Chicago doesn't hide its geek tendencies. Its motto is to "blend Mixology, Technology, Sociology and Foodology," and any place with so many "ologies" is clearly a touch on the nerdy side. But at the same time, it's really very cool.

Madpoison uses interactive touchscreen menus for ordering, including a big one for all us regular customers and tabletop screens at its VIP booths. They encourage you to build your own pizza on-screen, selecting exactly the toppings you want—saki stir-fried vegetables, sesame seeds or feta cheese being among the options. ]]> amandak 2009-09-03T15:54:45-05:00 41.8844053 -87.648312 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/8/26/6538/72516

Give us more interactive menus, and give them to us now! No more waiters for us, since we've found a restaurant in Sydney that lets the touchscreen do even more than the average waiter. We're talking about Wagaya in the Haymarket area of town, a Japanese restaurant where you can make your reservation by SMS, which gives you a good hint of the high-tech stuff to come.

Once you're at your table (you might have to wait, it's pretty popular), you'll find a big touchscreen embedded in the wall at your table. It does everything: you can place your order, get bigger pictures and more details about any dish you're interested in, and check how far along the preparation of your order is. When you've finished eating, use the same screen to see the bill and ask the staff to bring it to your table.]]> amandak 2009-08-26T15:19:41-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/8/19/75940/3945

Ordering a meal off a geeky interactive menus absolutely makes our day, and we just realized that at Adour in the New York St Regis Hotel they've taken the geek factor to a really nerdy extreme by making their wine menu interactive.

It's nowhere near as flashy or game-like as other high-tech menus we've been ogling recently, but neither should it be: choosing a wine is a serious business. Adour itself has this to say about their interactive wine screens:

The wine list is organized in an entertaining format, color-coded and classified by origins, one specific appellation within each region ... an innovative way for guests to discover wine producing areas.

High-tech but refined, as you can see. Nothing wrong with that—we just like being able to push a few buttons instead of having to ask the staff all our dumb questions.

Related Stories:
· Adour – St Regis [Official Site]
· The Touchable Tasting Menu [Business Week]
· We Love Geeky Restaurants, And LA Does Too [Jaunted] ]]> amandak 2009-08-19T12:14:37-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/8/12/71835/5740

It might not be quite as spooky hi-tech as the interactive touch screen tables of Inamo restaurant in London, but the uWink restaurant in the touristy Hollywood and Highland Center of Los Angeles is still very geek-friendly.

When we first heard the name and knew there was a high-tech menu involved, we have to admit we were hoping that we just had to "wink" at the screen and our order would appear … you know, "you wink?" Unfortunately, winking interactive menus are still a thing of the future, and instead uWink has screens sticking out of your tables that you can use for a whole variety of purposes. ]]> amandak 2009-08-12T17:24:33-05:00 34.1015832 -118.33869 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/