Ever get a craving for a delicious, cheesy slice of pizza? Of course you do. For too long, searching for a slice has always been a hassle on foodie apps with too many search fields and extra results that don’t have pizza at all.
Well, no more! A cheesy-bread sniffing compass that leads you directly to the nearest pizzeria has simplified the hunt for pizza: Pizza Compass, a $1 offering from Oak Studios.
With a name and concept so straightforward as the Pizza Compass, you have to wonder if it really works as perfectly as it sounds. After way too much extensive “testing” I can verifiably say that Pizza Compass will always lead you true north—pizza north, that is.
I started my pizza-finding trails in New York’s SoHo to see if it could really locate a pizzeria I knew all-too-well for its vodka sauce slice. I launched the app, and in a few moments it located my position along with a nearby business: Pomodoro Pizza. From there, it was a simple matter of wandering around, following the pointy end of the pizza on my iPhone’s screen, and keeping track of the distance marker located just underneath it.
Of course, you actually have to look up once in a while or else you’ll risk walking into a wall: Pizza Compass points you directly towards pizza joints, and not with a pre-planned a route that follows streets or sidewalks. It acts as a true compass.
Sure, the premise almost sounds stupid, but this fun app is all about getting you to a steamy pie. Heck, the compass actually steams when you get close to the pizzeria.
Much to my surprise, Pizza Compass pointed me directly to Pomodoro Pizza with out a single issue. To see if it was just a fluke, I swiped across the screen to shuffle through a list of other nearby pizzerias, and followed the compass again. Even after visiting a half-dozen other pizza places, the Pizza Compass never led me led me astray.
But this is hardly a challenge in New York, where, in some neighborhoods, pizzerias are virtually within spitting distance of each other. Obviously, I had to throw the app a challenge it was never designed for: Could it take me to another pizza place in a completely different neighborhood?
Hitting the map button peels back the main interface to reveal a Google map with every single pizzeria in its FourSquare-powered database. I set Pizza Compass for the first pizzeria on the southern edge of the West Village and went on my merry way.
A half-hour later and a little worse for the wear, I found my way to Spunto, about a mile away from where I started. As ridiculous as it sounds, you really can use the Pizza Compass to navigate your way around a city if you give it a food-filled destination. The only thing Pizza Compass can’t do is look up any particular pizza joints by name, so you’ll either have to scroll through dozens of pizza places or know exactly where it is on a map beforehand.
Pizza Compass has a couple of rough edges compared to your usual food finding apps. However, if it’s pizza you’re looking for, this slightly silly app makes finding pizza easy as pie.