we do a lot of ‘off-the-cuff’ travel - especially driving point A to point B.
asking a teenage motel/hotel check-in clerk “local” with nose/ear/tongue/other… piercings . . . is probably not a good approach…
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Have you tried that thing? It’s wrong A LOT.
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Really? Why?
Not trying to be argumentative, but appearances can be deceiving. Some of the most notable chefs are exactly as you describe … and I would think they would be a good source of information.
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Why would someone’s piercings have anything to do with how knowledgeable they are about food? Age, I could see - they haven’t been on the planet that long.
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Yes
So is HO.
But, in all seriousness, it was in jest.
See, there’s your mistake. Jesting in all seriousness. Confusing!
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Don’t walk into any professional kitchens. How can you trust a chef with multiple piercings and/or ink?
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a chef, yes.
a clerk, perhaps not…
+1. There is no single best source. I’ve stumbled upon fantastic restaurants through hotel concierges, tripadvisor, google maps, local airbnb hosts, guide books, instagram, and indeed HO though mostly for the USA.
It also depends what I’m looking for. Could be a hole in the wall char siu place in Hong Kong, a see and be seen glamorous place in Paris, local seafood in San Francisco, a business dinner in Rome.
At some point you’ll develop a sixth sense for good places.
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And sometimes, you just happen to walk by a place that looks promising, take your chances & sit down. Looking at the plates of other diners can be helpful as well.
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That’s what happened when a friend and I were in Madrid in 2000. We stumbled upon a tapas place called Casa del Pulpo, and it was amazing. I believe she still has the cocktail napkin with the cartoon octopus.
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Asking random locals never made sense to me. The only time I’d do that is when I get a chance to know them better. My host in the last place we stayed in Italy was exhibit A - Liked her steak very well done and hated seafood.
If you like to ask locals, why not simply look at Google reviews. You can get a pretty good sense if the place is popular with locals.
No mentions of Food Blogs? Most are crap, so you need to look for the ones by food enthusiasts and/or locals. You can often find food blogs by food tour operators. Thats how I get some of the ideas before vetting them against Google and Trip Advisor depending on the country. Unlike in Europe, in the US, TA reviews are useless.
I’m also finding Yelp almost useless these days. When you look at newer places in the US, they get a lot more reviews on Google than Yelp.
My Yelp theory, in NYC at least, is that the best ethnic food, especially Chinese have a generally low score, around 3.5.
Trip Advisor rankings are crap. They created an algorithm that essentially rewards the more touristy places, and punishes newer, smaller, and more obscure places. I have a business on TA so I’m a little familiar. The TA forum is a better source but you need to get familiar with it first and understand whose taste aligns with yours
Overall, I find Google Maps as the single best source these days. The more reviews you read, the better you get at parsing out info to get the full story.
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“Ask the locals” is terrible advice. My local newspaper has an annual advertising campaign masquerading as a “best of” reader survey series, and it’s the surest way to find the most mediocre food in any style. For example, Red Lobster regularly places in the top three for seafood. Some years, it’s number 1.
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Years ago, on a “Beethoven pilgrimage” to Vienna, I asked a local in a store about if she had an opinion on a high-end restaurant we were considering, to which she responded, “That’s for tourists. We Viennese can’t afford it.” We had a great meal there, but were glad we had consulted a guide book that said “be careful with the appetizer cart; you can easily double your bill.”
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That’s a real interesting theory. So is your theory that the middle of the road NYer actually has pretty bad tastes for ethnic food if you really care about finding good interesting food? I could see that. I know someone who is about middle of the road as one could be in terms of taste in food. No weird ingredients or too much spice. If there was something he was served that didn’t fit in what his expectations were, no matter how good his only description was it was disgusting. Sad way to go through life. Afraid of new and unfamiliar food.
By the way, I thought the original NY Times article was total crap. I’ve read some of Nikita Richardson’s stories on the Times. She’s relatively new and almost everything I have read by her has been trite and unhelpful. Part of the dumbing down of everything I have seen going on at the NYT.
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I think its a combination of factors. Its something I noticed mainly in Sunset Park, and to some degree Hell’s Kitchen and other areas years ago. And about a month ago my wife sent me a ticktock by a Chinese guy saying the exact same thing on Chinese restos.
Basically the idea is that they attract a loyal base, that either dont speak English or simply not the Yelp type. Where people come for the food, and ignore issues that Yelp reviewers normally complain about… service, ambiance, and like you said, food that doesnt appeal to them.
This. I think Yelp is very useful for stuff like reminding me what’s near what, and letting me see portion sizes and menu prices for restaurants too coy to post theirs online. But if you actually read the reviews, the vast majority are either bitching about service issues or swooning over stuff like “melt in your mouth” sushi. Ish.
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just wanted to point out that the section on “ask the locals” has advice that is not just about random locals, and seems like a good point:
“My first move is to mine my contacts for locals to hit up for advice or contacts who might be able to introduce me to locals,” Brett told me.
(Brett Anderson is one of the author’s colleagues at the NYT Food desk)
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Sure. Many of my contacts are into food, so their contacts would hopefully be as well.
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In his weekly chat, Tom Sietsema (WP food reviewer) was asked about finding places to eat while traveling.
His response:
One strategy I use in a city with which I’m unfamiliar is to ask the server, sommelier or manager of a restaurant I’m enjoying to recommend a place where they would go off duty. That trick has worked like a charm all over the world for me. Other good sources include antique store owners and book sellers.
It’s important to ask the right question, though. “What’s the best restaurant in town?” is likely to land you in someplace fancy. “Where would you go if you’d been away a few years?” invariablty leads you to something more personal.
A reader offered this response:
I once heard something Calvin Trillin said about how he likes to find a new restaurant, and though I can’t locate his specific words at the moment, so this is only a paraphrase, I’ll never forget it. He said something like:
“When asking people to recommend restaurants, I’ll say, don’t tell me where you’ll take your boss to impress them, or your spouse for your 25th anniversary. What I want to know is, you’ve been overseas for two years, and you just arrived back home. What place have you been dreaming of getting back to all those months? Where will be the place you’ll rush to for that first taste of home?”
I’ve always used a version of that phrasing to find places to eat in unfamiliar cities. It helps avoid getting sent to the spots people think tourists want, and is the best way to make sure I taste the true city.
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