I’ve been a fan and user of OpenTable’s online restaurant reservation booking tool for sometime. It is super easy to use, and ensures that you will have your reservation at the restaurant of your choosing. There’s no guesswork, and no wondering whether your reservation will suddenly disappear after you hang up the phone.  So when I found out that they released a free OpenTable application in Ovi Store for use on Nokia Symbian devices, I was really pleased.

And like you would expect from a service such as OpenTable, the mobile counterpart is equally effective and easy to use. When you first start the application – after a quick initial log-in process – you have the option to find a “table” based on either your current location or a city of your choosing. You can also begin your search finding a restaurant by its name – which may be the quickest path, if you know exactly where you want to go.

Just as easily however, start your search by your current location – the app knows where you are, based on the GPS data available from your mobile device. I clicked on Current Location in a recent search, and after also providing the date, time and size of the group that would be dining out, it brought up a series of nearby restaurants that are enrolled in the OpenTable service, including one that we like a lot in our town.

Based on the time of the reservation you are seeking, OpenTable shows you three options that are within 30 minutes of your original request. So if you want a 6:00 p.m. reservation, it will also display 5:45 p.m., and 6:15 p.m. – assuming all of those times have availability.

With each listing, you will also see some quick details like the type of cuisine, general location by city or town, distance from you, and price range. When you click on a specific restaurant, you will see more details, including a full description of the place, and those three time options once again for your reservation.

Click on your desired time, and on the next (and final) screen, you will be able to enter your mobile phone number (it would be nice if this was stored somehow), as well as any special dining requests that you want the restaurant to know about in advance. From there, press the Confirm button, and you’re done.

You will get an on-screen confirmation message, as well as an e-mail sent to the address you used when registering with OpenTable. At that point, you have the option to send the reservation to a friend via SMS, and you can see the restaurant location on a map, too. (Although, for now, the mobile app is using Yahoo Maps – maybe that will change later in the year.)

As I noted, the OpenTable app is really easy to use, and you can create a new reservation in just a few minutes if you have all of the details at your fingertips. You can also use the app to explore, and learn about new places to go eat, too. In that case, give yourself a little more time to linger, but make sure you aren’t too hungry while browsing!

My one hope for new versions of this app would be the addition of searching by type of cuisine, like you can do on the OpenTable website now. It’s one thing to bring up a list of restaurants by location, but help me refine my search and get me a table at that new sushi place everyone is talking about! It seems like an easy option to provide, and it would enhance the app a great deal.

Right now, OpenTable for use on your Nokia device is available in the United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, and Ireland. If more locations are added, we’ll be sure to update this post.

OpenTable is free to download in Ovi Store.

For more background about the creation of the OpenTable app for use on Nokia devices, watch this short interview with Josh Garnier, product manager at OpenTable:

Now, let’s go eat – I’m hungry already.