Review: Zagat to Go

— -- Ever find yourself in a strange city — or even a strange neighborhood — looking for a good steakhouse or maybe a sushi joint?

Well Zagat has the perfect gift for that traveling executive in your life: a mobile version of its popular guidebook called "Zagat to Go." For $29.95 a year, users can access more than 75 Zagat guidebooks from a PDA, offering reviews of restaurants, hotels, bars and clubs and even golf courses if you find yourself with some downtime. That's more than 30,000 listings.

The reviews and lists are automatically updated when a new guidebook comes out.

The guides include most major U.S. cities as well as guides for some of the top international business centers including Paris, London, Shanghai, China, and Tokyo.

I downloaded the guide to my BlackBerry and found it extremely easy to use, assuming you you know what you're looking for. One night on my way to a restaurant, I forgot the address and looked it up with the mobile guide. Zagat includes a link that allowed me to call the restaurant on my BlackBerry and say I was running late.

You can search by name, neighborhood, cuisine or special features such as outdoor seating, organic food or "crayons and games available." There are also special categories that are aimed at those on the go, including places open late, dining alone, on jury duty or looking to meet somebody for a drink.

The program also allows you to add reservations to your PDA's calendar with just a few clicks, and you can e-mail restaurant information to a friend.

"Zagat to Go" also includes a map showing restaurant locations, including the surrounding area and cross streets. A nice feature is that Zagat will give you turn-by-turn directions to or from the restaurant and another address.

Zagat makes versions of the program for PDAs or smart phones using both Palm and Windows Mobile operating systems.

I only had two concerns, but they were both minor. First, because of the way the guide is set up, I can imagine a bit of a struggle for somebody in a strange city searching for a nearby eatery if they don't know the name of the city's neighborhoods. Zagat told me that a new version coming in the spring will include a zip code search feature.