Popular Seattle-based food mashup Urbanspoon.com launched two years ago with only three cities: Chicago, Seattle and New York.

Since then it's multiplied and now includes Spokane.

Yeah! http://www.urbanspoon.com/c/291/Spokane-restaurants.html
Urbanspoon provides a location for foodies to offer comments and reviews on places they've tried and foods they've enjoyed.

Nicely, it gives people a way to see and locate well-liked eateries, either on a mobile phone or on a PC or Mac.

The new twist: Urbanspoon just created a great iPhone app called Rez.

The Seattle Times offered this explainer for how Rez, the app, works.

Quoting the Times:
Rez is more than just a new feature.

It's pulling Urbanspoon into the business-software market and challenging the dominant online reservation company, San Francisco-based Open Table, which had sales of $55.8 million last year.

Rez is being tested in Seattle but it plans to expand to other markets, drawing on the reach of media giant IAC, which bought Urbanspoon in February.

The grand plan is to extend Rez with Citysearch, IAC's national entertainment directory, and use its sales force to bring Rez to new markets.

Urbanspoon co-founder Ethan Lowry believes the company has a chance because Rez is so easy and inexpensive to use for restaurants.

Plus it's a useful addition to the Urbanspoon app, which has been downloaded 7 million times and showcased by Apple.

If they get enough restaurants to supply reservation data, that is.

Restaurants use a special app that they tap and slide to notify Urbanspoon when tables are full or open. They can also use the system to add online reservations to their Web site, as Ray's Boathouse has done.

This can all be done on an iPhone or iPod Touch, or through a browser.