Foodies rejoice, as Bing Food & Drink is released for Windows Phone 8

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Microsoft and Bing are on a streak, releasing their second app this week for Windows Phone and expanding their content. Today, Bing Food & Drink appeared on the Store with the ‘beta’ moniker in tow. The app is an extension of the already existing and highly popular Windows 8.1 version.

So what is Food & Drink? It’s a combo recipe/shopping list/news/cocktails/wines app, laid out in a gorgeous Modern UI with bold, eye catching photos. Basically if you’re a self-described ‘foodie’, this app is for you. Likewise, if you’re on a diet and trying to avoid temptation, this app is probably not for you—although if you use it for just recipes, maybe you can sneak it in.

Bing Food & Drink (Beta) 3.0

“The Bing Food & Drink app makes it easy to explore recipes, choose wine and cocktails, and learn how to make your next meal a taste-tempting success.  You’ll enjoy beautiful photos, easy to follow instructions and helpful tools such as a shopping list and collections.  Keep your shopping list synced across your devices. Share your recipes, shopping list or collections with family and friends. An indispensable companion, the Food & Drink app will have your kitchen sizzling.”

The app has the ability to Share built in, add to collection and even a Live Tile to boot. Just as cool, you can sign in with your Microsoft Account to sync across your collections to your Windows 8.1 app and vice versa. We really like that.

It’s great to not only see this gem of an app come over from Windows 8.1, but come over in style. The Bing team gets design and you’ll be challenged to not keep this on your phone. Even being able to customize recipes according to your diet needs e.g. low sodium, no wheat, raw, vegan, etc., is extremely helpful.

Bing Food & Drink is a killer app, so you should definitely give it a spin and show it off to your friends (it’s only available on Windows Phone so far).

Pick up Bing Food & Drink beta 3.0 here in the Store or scan the QR code below. (And don’t forget to check out Bing Travel, released earlier this week).

Update: Microsoft has passed on the following comments about this app, noting 

“We are testing a beta version of the Bing Food & Drink app for Windows Phone 8. The app will be available on a limited basis to undergo testing and experimentation to ensure the best possible user experience.”

Thanks, Mohamed A., for the tip

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

69 Comments
  • Cool
  • My food and drink app hasn't sync with my w8.1 app because it doesn't show my collection of recipes I have made! Not cool!
  • My collections did not transfer either, but my shopping list did after signing in though the app.
  • None of the windows apps sync with wp8.1 version. Edit : sync now. Help team said server issues. (but bing food doesn't do collections)
  • Travel app does..
  • Nice!
  • I think this app, alongside with the Travel beta, is a public beta but like the Facebook app you can't find it just searching.
    Please someone can find the Health & Fitness beta link? I'm pretty sure that it is already in the Store. :) Hey Daniel, did you see my tweet about doing a article about the best WP-exclusive apps??
  • I'm sure because this app has been available since the 20th
  • I hope Reading List is the next app to make the jump.
  • Yeah, seriously! Such a cool app.
  • What about movie moments , a nice basic video editor.
  • Glide....
    http://www.glide.me/
  • will prefer Skype and on ios facetime ;) never heard about this app.
  • I'm not going to use it... It's just becoming popular on iDroid, so WP needs it ASAP❕
  • let it become popular on spam store ! 
  • I've been waiting for this food and drink and reading list since they came out in w8.1!
  • While I hope this will be released for Windows Phone 8, I expect it to be launched with Windows Phone 8.1... Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
  • Wow. Just wow.  Looks very nice.
  • Great app such as Bing Travel beta or Bing weather, Bing apps currently one of the best looking and productive apps on WP8. Keep up the good job :)
  • At least there are some level heads at Microsoft... Their not perfect, but who doesn't have a huge PR blunder once in a while?
  • They're *
  • ^The reason why I left Facebook in one word.
  • Nice. I hope all these Bing apps don't discourage competing developers (allrecipes for this example) from updating, improving, or creating apps for the platform.
  • would be funy if everyone would just rely on one app for a thing
  • Been waiting on this. Slowly moving over sime of my recipes.
  • Downloaded and looks great however one imediate thing im disapointed at is that my collections doesn't sync from Windows 8, Thats kind of a big let down for the app.
  • My collections wont synch either :(  Hopefully it's fixed soon.
  • Yep hopefully it's just overloaded at the moment, At least it can sync them. Only thing is, Should I really have to sign into my MS account to sync them, surely It should just take my MS account from my phone and automatically sign me in and sync.
  • Microsoft prob didn't develop those APIs. No app does that
  • I know, it''s a shame, Having to keep signing into SkyOneDrive is annoying.
  • Xbox music does and this is the app where i would like to select the microsoft account for it
  • Mine is synching, but not reliably. I have to shut apps down and restart them in order for the synching to work properly. OneNote seems to synch more in real time. Also, there is no refresh button on the phone app. If there were, then entries made on the Windows 8 app might synch when  I tap it.
  • +1
    I had to reset my PC, all info lost in this app. A total bummer.
  • Why Microsoft is not confident about their Apps.. Even this app is beta...
  • I hope the Bing reading and Bing Health & Fitness apps make their way to Windows Phone 8 next. I've been really impressed with the Bing apps thus far.
  • Only, it is in fact "Windows Reading List", Reading List isn't a Bing app.
  • This app is very pretty and useful. It's fully localized to Brazilian Portuguese. I'll try a recipe right now as its lunch time!
  • Yay!
  • I love the collection syncing, nothing like setting up my recipes on my pc and having them available elsewhere. 
  • Even before it was released on IOS and Android lol..
  • I love the synchronized grocery list. I used to use OneNote for this task, but the Food & Drink app is much more elegant. I create my list on my computer, it syncs to my phone, and I check off each item as I buy them in the store. You can even pin your lists to your start screen (on both your phone and Windows 8 computer) for easy access. Nice.
  • I still use OneNote for grocery lists since I can share it with my wife. I don't think you can do that with this app.
  • I do the same. I love how shopping lists in OneNote synchs with the Family Room automatically.
  • Awesome! Now I'll be much more inclined to use the app since it syncs across devices!
  • Coming soon to Android and IOS!
  • Honestly wouldn't be a bad idea. If iOS and Android users saw how good these apps are it would remove a lot of the negativity associated with Bing and would give them a positive outlook on MS products in general.
  • Pun intended?
  • Suddenly I feel hungry. Nice app. Will try to make apple pie with the recipe. :)
  • Nice. From "what's for dinner?", to the market and then home to prepare all in one app. Pretty cool.
  • "it’s only available on Windows Phone so far". Hope it stays that way :)
  • This is great! Now it needs some more recipes and I'm in heaven.
  • These Bing apps are so well designed, and really fast and fluid.  Love them!!!
  • Looks nice, just seeing if it brings over stuff from bing food desktop version. Update : does not sync settings from windows 8 desktop version
  • ...and it's now left with my most anticipated app....BING HEALTH AND FITNESS. Hope it comes soon.
  • SERIOUSLY! When they started making these Bing Apps and I played with Health and Fitness it was clear that it was exactly the kind of fitness app I wanted. And just imagine, the ability to save your progress on both phone and tablet?! And it only makes perfect freaking sense on the phone!
  • +1
  • Love this app and glad to have on my phone now.
  • I've been waiting for this!!! :)
  • I'm not much of a Bing search user but I do love their apps. I use the news and sports apps frequently and these news apps are just gorgeous to boot.
  • NICE!... wtg Microsoft and bing
  • Not sure if I'm using the shopping list incorrectly but the live tile for it only counts how many lists you have made.....would be much more helpful if it counted unchecked items in all lists
  • I absolutely love this app on my Surface, so glad to read this bit of news!
  • Interesting apps, but my complaint goes to the name they choose for their apps in my native language (Portuguese), instead of "Bing Travel" or "Bing Food & Drink", we have "Viagens do Bing" or "Gastronomia do Bing". This makes the Bing apps to appear in multiple points of the menu, and its a little bit annoying. I would preffer the name was "Bing Gastronomia" and "Bing Viagens" so all the Bing apps would appear toghether in the menu. Only "Bing Finance" and "Bing Sports" appear as "Bing..." the others was "... Bing". Please change this Microsoft!
  • Good point.  Of course you could always create a "Bing" app folder.
  • I wish this template was made the default panorama template for windows phone instead of the ugly, stupid, BIG-header template. It would make a developer's life much easier when trying to produce a good looking app.
  • i never thought about that but thats a good point
  • Maybe its cause they just got flamed for the Bing dashboard app not coming to windows phone
  • This thing is beautiful. The devs at Microsoft need to put out a guide to "Making Apps With Style on Windows Phone". So well done. Thanks Dan for the article. My new slogan for great WP apps: Makes you proud to be, WP.
  • I just made sugar cookies using the Bing food & Drink app for WP.  Everyone's invited!