Late-night diners stuck on those snaking lines out the door and down the alley at 1213 U Street NW can now preview their greasy meals on their phones. Ben’s Chili Bowl, the long-standing institution, now has its very own mobile application.

The free app, which is available on both Apple iOS and Android platforms, quietly launched in March. Its functions are quite straightforward: Various screens offer a history of the 54-year-old restaurant, its breakfast, lunch and dinner menus and, for those not already memorializing their drunken meals on Instagram, a camera tool to snap one’s half-smoke and cheese fries.

The app was programmed by 3Advance, an Arlington-based software developer. It’s not, however, Ben’s first foray into mobile applications. In 2010, as seemingly every other business was looking to brand an app for itself, owner Nizam Ali commissioned a public competition to create an app for the venerable diner, though the programs that in the Apps4Bens contest appear to have been short-lived.

The current application, however, could be a handy tool for preventing menu confusion when one finally reaches the counter, which is always obnoxious after queuing for more than 20 minutes. An app for Ben’s Chili Bowl could be the best thing to come to that restaurant since the advent of the vegetarian chili. Then again, it might also be Courtland Milloy’s worst nightmare.