stolen image of the appOn Thurs­day night, our old bowl­ing league arch nemi­si­si­sis bud­dies Click­Suite  launched a new iPhone and iPad app called Fast, Fresh and Tasty. We went along because we were promised food and drink, and you know how good that is at get­ting us to leave our hous­es, but we were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the app itself.

Fast, Fresh and Tasty is not just anoth­er recipe app. Yes, it has over 100 recipes in it, but where the attrac­tion lies is in the fresh­ness. It knows what sea­son it is, and what’s good to eat right now — did you know that Spring is not only a great time for aspara­gus (duh!) but also cer­tain types of fish? Now you know! Or at least you’ll know when you down­load the app. Yes, at $6.50, it’s not the cheap­est app ever. But how much do cook­books cost nor­mal­ly? Exact­ly. PLUS! Just like Angry Birds Sea­son­al, there will be free sea­son­al updates, so in win­ter you can warm your­selves with cur­ries and soups.

The bit that real­ly wowed us about the app though was the shop­ping list fea­ture — you can add all the ingre­di­ents you need to your shop­ping list and then eas­i­ly email or tweet that list to some­one else. Believe me friends, I will be using this fea­ture next time I offer to cook for you.

You might be won­der­ing what the val­ue propo­si­tion is for a web design com­pa­ny to make an app like this. Well, they’ve part­nered with a num­ber of food com­pa­nies like Sil­ver Fern Farms, Ran­gi­tikei Chick­en, the Seafood Indus­try Coun­cil and Alfa One Rice Bran Oil (thanks Ide­a­log arti­cle for pro­vid­ing me with that list!). It’s a mod­el that can be trans­ferred pret­ty eas­i­ly to oth­er coun­tries or areas, and we like that a lot. This is exact­ly the kind of awe­some export that Welling­ton should be pro­duc­ing.

Plus, can we just spend a lit­tle bit of time talk­ing about how fuck­ing awe­some  Bet­tys [sic] is as a launch venue? So slick with their image pro­jec­tions, and the ser­vice is superb and the drinks deli­cious. The food was made to recipes from Fast, Fresh & Tasty, but pre­sent­ed with a lit­tle extra inge­nu­ity (fresh aspara­gus and aioli served in cucum­ber cups), and our glasss­es were kept admirably full. Very impres­sive stuff.

So, to sum­marise: this app looks awe­some, and Bet­tys is great. You should be patro­n­is­ing both.