How to choose a restaurant when traveling
I’ve been asked how I decide which restaurants I go to when visiting a city for the first time. Here are my thoughts about picking where to go:
- Recommendations by friends or family who have actually gone to a restaurant in that city, with bonus points if the person knows my tastes and preferences (so the recommendation is based on what they know about me, and what kind of restaurant I’d like).
- Concierge recommendations. These need to be taken with a grain of salt. You can’t always be certain that they aren’t being ‘encouraged’ to direct customers to these restaurants (not that I’m suggesting some kind of referral fee, but I’m sure you’ve seen the paid endorsement model). If the concierge has actually been to the restaurant and seems really enthusiastic about it, then there are extra points. I had this experience in Dundee, Scotland once. My usual go-to restaurant had closed, so I decided to ask at hotel reception where I should go. The hotel Concierge was absolutely glowing about a new restaurant in town – and, he was right (he also got me a reservation at the last minute when they were ‘fully booked’ online). Another time, while on vacation in St. Malo, France, I happened to be there on a Monday when just about every restaurant in the country is closed. After making several failed attempts to find something open, the criteria for the Concierge was, ‘find me something that’s open.’ Her recommendation turned out to be a really wonderful local place – the menu was written in French script with very fancy descriptions that weren’t up to my high school level French, so it was a fun evening trying to ‘dumb down’ the French so that I could know what exactly they were serving that night (since the waitress had very limited English).
The opposite example is a restaurant in Barcelona I went to with my son before running our first half marathon. We asked for a place to get some good Paella (carbo-loading before the race). It was absolutely terrible (rice was mush, spices were blah, fish wasn’t particularly plentiful) – the Concierge hadn’t been there, and she was just looking at a list of restaurants to send people to given to her by the hotel. Naturally, she was horrified when we returned afterwards and told her how bad it was – hopefully, she crossed that one off her list.
One caution with using the Concierge – when you look for restaurants online with Apps or even Google, you can filter by price. Often, the Concierge may be helping you by looking only at what you’re requesting (for example, ‘I’d like a steak restaurant within walking distance that has a nice Australian wines list’), without checking your price point. I had a very expensive experience in Melbourne, Australia once when asking for just this type of recommendation. Yes, it was a very easy walk from the hotel, the steak was amazing, and the wine was to die for – and, we got a slap on the wrist when we got home for spending so much money on a meal while traveling for business. Likewise, in Paris, my daughter and I had a really amazing dinner at a very nice restaurant, that kind of blew our budget. When talking about options with the Concierge, we asked for a restaurant where we could get a table (not cafeteria style), within walking distance, and relatively quiet so that we could talk. Though we had a great time with an excellent meal and spent about 3 hours savoring our dinner and talking, I had to ignore the € signs on the menu. Of course, both these examples were times when I said, ‘well, that was worth it anyway.’ If your budget isn’t as flexible, you will want to be aware and maybe confirm with the Concierge, the restaurant’s website, or an App what the actual menu pricing range is for that particular recommendation.
- TripAdvisor ratings (I’m not a huge fan of Yelp, though some of my friends prefer it) – these can be tricky since sometimes you get things like my experience in Dundee. Dundee is primarily a university town, so the ‘top rated’ restaurants are curry houses (aka British-style Indian food), chip shops (aka fish & chips) and pizza parlors. While these are popular with college students on a limited budget, they’re not exactly at the top of my list for dining out (maybe if I’m at an athletic event or wanting something quick and easy for take-away). What I do is to look at the area I want to go to on the App – sort by ratings (and $$$ if needed). I then skip the student rated restaurants, ice cream or coffee shops (lol), and look at the ‘regular’ restaurants. Once you have the ‘top’ restaurants, look at the top reviews as well as the bottom.In the ‘terrible’ or ‘poor’ reviews, I’m looking for complaints about cleanliness, flavor, variety, portion sizes, insects or other undesirable characteristics. If someone starts complaining about noise or that it’s too crowded, I figure that unless the restaurant specifically claims to be an intimate or romantic location, then being noisy isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. Of course, if I want to go out for a romantic evening or am looking for a quiet meal, then a restaurant being noisy or ‘always crowded’ could take it off my list.
Consistency of complaints – if I see a lot of complaints about really slow service, or surly wait staff, then I may steer clear. In my mind, one night when a waiter is having a bad day doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t visit a restaurant. In some cases, it can be that someone is just cranky (either the waiter or the customer), or that for some reason they didn’t get on (maybe there’s a culture clash? Language barrier? Someone just taking an immediate dislike to another person?). If there are loads of complaints about the restaurant staff, then I’ll steer clear – part of the experience is actually having a nice time overall. If I’m going to be spending time and my hard-earned money (or my company’s), I want to at least be comfortable and enjoy the people that I’m interacting with at the restaurant.
One question to ask when you see a bad review is, could this reviewer just be an angry person? Sometimes I see reviewers who are frequent posters in a city, and they seem to hate every meal they’ve ever eaten. You see their names pop up, or you can click on their name to see other reviews they’ve written. In some cases, even a restaurant that is highly ranked has some issue that they seem compelled to complain about. In my opinion, these people are just bitter and angry, and I don’t take their opinion into account too much. The old adage, ‘you can’t satisfy everyone’ comes into play – or, in this case, you can’t ever satisfy Mr. Jones (and maybe he should just learn to cook so that he can eat at home 😊 ).
- Open Table or the equivalent on-line booking App in other countries – I don’t always look at the reviews here, mostly because I don’t put any reviews in myself (I generally do reviews on TripAdvisor). However, there are often some good deals on things like a bottle of wine with a dinner, a set-price menu or some special menu for an occasion or holiday. I’ll look at these and then match them up to the TripAdvisor review to see whether there’s a good match. Open Table also highlights certain new restaurants or specific types of restaurants, so if you want to try out the latest trend, you can find lists or recommendations for restaurants that serve goat, for example.
- Online newspapers or area magazines that feature restaurant reviews or things like ‘top 10’ lists. To me, these are similar to the Concierge – you need to be careful whether the ‘story’ is actually a paid advertisement. Also, recognizing that the reviewer may have tastes and preferences that aren’t aligned with my own, I make sure to note how they’re describing the meal. If I have time, I’ll also bounce these back to TripAdvisor and see what the regular, unpaid or not professional foodie customers have to say about the place. Depending on when the article was written, you could encounter times when a restaurant has closed after being reviewed. So, these articles age rapidly, and you’ll need to take some extra time to ensure that the hot new Malaysian place written up 6 months ago is still in operation. Or, the restaurant that got rave reviews when it first opened is still as good as it was when it opened.
- Facebook – this is one that I’m a little more careful about. I still don’t like how much Facebook (or Google, for that matter) know about what I’m doing and where I’m going. That said, when you start searching on events near you, or check-in to your hotel on Facebook, sometimes your feed gets populated with interesting things to do or restaurants to go to. . . Again, I’d probably test these against TripAdvisor or another App, just to be sure I’m not being lured by fancy graphics and paid advertising.
In the end, whether you like a restaurant or not is driven as much by your personal tastes and preferences, as it is by the actual menu and talents of the chef. Even a highly rated restaurant could leave you questioning why anyone in their right mind would go there. Whether you like small, family run type restaurants or large venues that allow you to fade into the background, you may find that a restaurant your cousin likes doesn’t suit your style. While I enjoy new and different flavor combinations, I have friends that are the ‘meat and potatoes’ type that want a predictable steak with roasted potatoes and green peas. There are restaurants that I’ve gone to based on a recommendation, and thought, ‘well, I know that a lot of people like this kind of thing, but I don’t care for it.’ I don’t necessarily give a bad review, but I will warn people (or put it in my review) so that others can see whether a certain atmosphere appeals. It’s ok not to like a restaurant that everyone else seems to love – it’s all part of more clearly defining your tastes and preferences as you explore the world of food and cuisines.
