Like a lot of local guides, the free Thrillist app is grounded by a city grid that pinpoints your location after logging in and finds the nearest listings by food, drinking and shopping. Icons—knife and fork, tumbler and t-shirt—appear on the map and offer snippets of text from the recommendations when highlighted. If one is clicked, the review opens full screen with images and in some instances, video. Logged-in Thrillist users can also save articles to “My Thrillist,” their personal favorites archive, which is automatically synced with the reader’s “My” archive on the corresponding Thrillist.com.

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Lerer took pains to point out the differences between what Thrillist does—i.e., compiling a narrowly subjective list of recommendations of the “best” places to eat, drink and shop specifically for young, urban male sophisticates—and doesn’t do. “Other local city guides aggregate all kinds of info in a very general way,” Lerer said. “But you don’t have the best info of where to go to. If you’re looking for ‘sushi in Soho,’ this is not the app for you. We’ll only give you the best restaurants in in a given area, period.”

He expects that the testosterone-focused Thrillist, which claims about 2 million e-mail subs across its 16 city outlets, could appeal to more women through the app as well, particularly for the food and drink recommendations, which could in turn attract more advertisers. The launch sponsor for the app Bacardi’s new Torched Cherry flavored rum, which also includes support for the website, though the e-mail newsletter remains at Thrillist’s core.

“The big picture here is that we’ve been building this brand for the last four years with e-mail as the main driver,” Lerer said. “Having subscribers lets us control the flow of info, versus a website-focus that’s search optimized. E-mail forges a deeper connection and we remain singularly focused on the power of the e-newsletter and want to improve that product. In no way are we stepping back from that.”

But as the e-newsletter’s audience has grown, and developed a particular affinity for iPhones, Twitter and Foursquare check-ins, it made sense for Thrillist to make the leap to mobile. Aside from its flagship in New York City, the app will also be available for Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.—with additional markets launching in the fall.