Cleanliness means nothing. Or at least, it means very little. McDonald’s is clean and so is KFC. But does that mean you want to dine there on your holiday?
Now consider the street side taqueria in Mexico City, where meat is being hacked up on thick wooden boards and chefs drip with sweat.
Think about the street food stand in Chiang Mai, the entire kitchen on a handcart, the lack of refrigeration and fresh water. Where would you prefer to eat? I’ll take a taco or some noodle soup, thanks. Any time.
The traveller’s choice of a streetside Mexican taqueria versus the sterile fast food chain. Credit: Getty Images
This is one of the cliches about picking a good restaurant when you travel: you’re always told, look for somewhere clean. But I’m here to assure you that that will not always steer you on the course to the best cuisine. It might not even keep you healthy.
There are, however, other signs of when things are going off the rails, things to avoid if you’re hoping for dining success on the road. These are the red flags that are far worse than a bit of wear-and-tear in the food prep area.
If you want to eat well on your holidays, keep an eye out for these warnings in our “bad food guide” to the world, and avoid them at all costs.
Anywhere advertising English menus
Translated menus translate to tourist dollars rather than food excellence.Credit: Alamy
Major red flag. “We have English menus,” the sign proudly proclaims outside. “Our staff speak English”. This might make your life easier, but it still points to the fact this restaurant is very much about serving the tourist trade, customers who will never come back no matter how great or terrible their experience. So why would they try?
Street food stalls with no queues
Street food, generally, is good food. Any city with a healthy street food culture will be home to a host of high-quality purveyors of that affordable cuisine. There is, however, a caveat: they won’t all be good. And to judge this it’s a simple numbers game. The vendors with the long queues are turning over produce quickly, and they’re popular with locals. The vendors with no queues are … not.
Anywhere with an incredible view
A great view is no guarantee of great food. Credit: Getty Images
There are exceptions to this rule. Sydney’s Quay, for example, or Melbourne’s Vue de Monde. In much of the rest of the world, however, you need to be wary of restaurants in gorgeous locations, as quite often the spectacular view can be used as an excuse to serve up some average, overpriced cuisine.
Restaurants (in Japan) with sky-high reviews
Normally, you can rely on online reviews, particularly if you avoid Tripadvisor. You can look on Google and if you find a restaurant with 4.5 stars or above, you can rest assured you’re onto a winner. Except, that is, in Japan. Japanese people tend to be hard markers in their restaurant reviews, with even the absolute finest three-star sushi joints earning less than 4.5 on Japanese review site Tabelog. So if you find a restaurant in Japan with sky-high Google reviews, that just means it’s filled with tourists.
Places with terrible reviews
It should come as no surprise to discover that most restaurants with terrible online reviews – across Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor and any local platforms – will indeed be terrible. The trick is to do enough research to discover that.
Restaurants (in Italy) with chequered tablecloths
Beware the chequered tablecloth, it’s not usually a winner.Credit: Getty Images
This is shorthand, really, for restaurants that indulge in cliche, for those that present to tourists what they think a country is all about, even if it isn’t true. The red-and-white chequered tablecloth in Italy is a sign that this place is trying to attract tourists. It’s giving them what they want, what they think Italy is. And if they’re not bothering to appeal to locals, you have to ask why not.
Places with indifferent staff
You know the feeling you get at the door to the restaurant or cafe when no one inside will give you the time of day? No one looks up? No one seems to care whether you sit down or walk out? Do everyone a favour. Make it the latter.
Revolving restaurants
Revolving restaurants are generally not revered for their culinary offerings.Credit: adobe
This feels intuitively correct. Right? Revolving restaurants offer great views, they offer the novelty of a moving floor and panoramic scenery. But truly great food? A proper culinary experience? Nah.
Food courts
See the breakout for exceptions to this rule because it’s not hard and fast – increasingly in the likes of Japan, South Korea and even Thailand, you will find excellent food in shopping mall food courts. Everywhere else, however, you will discover a hodgepodge of American and international fast food chains doing bland, mass-produced cuisine.
Almost any American chain restaurant
Brace for disappointment at chain restaurants around the world. Credit: Getty Images
Speaking of American fast food chains: don’t go there. They’re terrible. You might be tempted to try, say, Panda Express, or Chipotle, or White Castle, or Olive Garden, out of morbid curiosity, but you are bound for disappointment. Look for the small, locally owned food outlets instead.
Anywhere right near a world-famous attraction
There’s a good rule of thumb for eating in tourist-heavy cities: find the main tourist attraction, and then just walk a couple of blocks to look for somewhere to eat. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to go far. The restaurants and bars that are right next to those icons of the tourism world will almost invariably serve food and drink at sky-high prices, without the quality to back it up.
Giant restaurants (in Asia)
Asia is a huge, diverse continent, so you can’t take this as a fail-safe rule. However, you will get a feel for when you’re in a country or region where most restaurants are small. They might seat 50 people at a time; they might seat five. So when you discover a whopping, cavernous place that could hold 200-plus diners at a time, you know you’ve arrived somewhere designed to churn out bland cuisine to the tour-group masses.
Servo restaurants (in most of the world)
Don’t do it … steer clear of servos.Credit: Getty Images
Certain bizarre countries such as France and Italy (we love them) place high-quality eateries right next to roadside amenities. The rest of the world fills its servo spaces with fast food chains and purveyors of lukewarm snacks.
High prices for normal food
It pays to be a little suspicious when you’re doing online research and deciding where to eat. Most countries will have a set of standard dishes that many restaurants and other eateries serve, and a roughly standard price as well. If the place you’re looking at is much higher than that, it might be a very well regarded restaurant. Or, it could be a rip-off.
‘World famous’
Any restaurant that is, in fact, world famous will not need to say so. Give it a miss.
Touts
Waiters outside restaurants are often ready to pounce. Credit: Alamy
Think of all the great dining and drinking experiences you’ve had while travelling. Have any of them begun with a waiter standing outside the establishment, clutching a menu and screaming at you to come in? No? There’s a reason for that.
Restaurants that accept group bookings
There are better ways to eat while travelling than competing with tour groups for a waiter’s attention. Credit: Alamy
Many restaurants do this, and that’s fine. But the ones that advertise this fact, that make a big deal of it, are therefore going to be popular with groups, which means you will probably be sharing your dining experience with gigantic tables of tour passengers. This is not your ticket to a good time.
Vintages not specified on the wine list
Alarm bells ring and red flags are raised whenever I’m presented with a wine list that doesn’t specify the vintages. This is an establishment that doesn’t take its wine seriously. And if it doesn’t take its wine seriously, what’s it doing with the food?
Street stands using ice
Hold the ice if you can when buying drinks from streetside stalls. Credit: adobe
There’s a standard piece of advice travellers are usually given: don’t order drinks with ice. Reason being you don’t know where the ice comes from, and if clean, filtered water was used. This is something to be particularly aware of when buying your drinks from streetside stalls. This is also, I have to admit, a rule I break frequently because in the likes of Thailand you will find some sensationally refreshing beverages sold with ice.
Big sell on the specials
You might be in a great restaurant – good reviews, pleasant atmosphere, filled with locals – but the waiter is going hard on the specials. Harder than you might expect. This could be a sign the restaurant is trying to clear excess stock, palming it off on unsuspecting tourists, and you should probably just stick with the standards.
Tripadvisor stickers
Credit: eugen - stock.adobe.com
Any restaurant proudly advertising the fact it is popular with Tripadvisor reviewers is not the spot for you. There’s a certain, ah, demographic that Tripadvisor is most popular with (OK we’ll say it: it’s Americans) whose dining preferences don’t always align with those of Australians. Plus, the sticker on the door is a tacky move.
Wines poured in tiny glasses
Have a quick scan of the tables as you stand outside and see what everyone is drinking out of. If it’s tiny wine glasses that are filled to the brim, this is not a place to drink. If, however, people are sipping out of large, fine stemware, you’re probably onto a winner.
No prices on the menu
Here’s another problem with specials: often, the price isn’t given upfront. And if you forget to ask – as a Japanese group did in Venice, and ended up being stung $1700 for four steaks and a platter of fish – you could be in a world of trouble. Some restaurants don’t list any prices at all on the menus displayed out the front, which is another warning.
Anywhere with robot waiters
It’s probably best to give robot waiters a wide berth.Credit: Alamy
A good restaurant shouldn’t need a tacky gimmick. And let’s be real here, a robot waiter is a tacky gimmick.
‘Western’ alternatives on the menu
I once travelled to Laos with a group of friends, one of whom was reluctant to eat local food, and who kept ordering things like ham sandwiches from restaurants that otherwise served only Laotian cuisine. And guess who got sick? Not the noodle-eaters.
Bars screening football
You see these around touristy parts of South-East Asia, bars that cater entirely to Antipodean and British visitors, playing AFL and Premier League football on TV and serving Guinness with curry chips. Spot the groups of men sitting outside in their white sneakers and football shirts. And give it a miss.
‘Mugaccino’
Run.
Out-of-season cuisine
Most locals in Spain, France, Japan, China and so many other great foodie nations understand the seasonality of cuisine, and are happy to eat only what’s good right now, instead of all year round. If you find a French restaurant that’s serving, say, asparagus in winter, this is not your place.
‘All you can eat’
Quantity trumps quality at all-you-can-eat buffets.Credit: Alamy
No one ever left an all-you-can-eat buffet saying, wow, that was the best food I’ve ever eaten. This is very much a quantity over quality sort of thing. Which does have its place.
Asian restaurants outside Asia (and Australia)
Plenty of the most disappointing meals of my life have come in the form of Asian food in Europe and North America. Here in Australia, we are absolutely spoiled with some of the finest Asian cuisine going, with everything from Thai to Vietnamese to Indian to Chinese done spectacularly well. So even if you’ve been travelling for a long time and are missing the Asian cuisines of home – don’t do it.
People eating at the wrong time
You’ve heard people eat late in Buenos Aires, that locals won’t even think about making a dinner reservation until 10pm. And yet, this place is full at 7pm? You can connect the dots.
‘Resident mixologist’
Surely, we’ve got to the point now where bartenders have stopped referring to themselves as mixologists? Everyone understands it’s a bit cringe, right? So if you ever find a bar that’s still advertising the presence of a “resident mixologist”, you know you can turn right around and find another establishment.
Five restaurant cliches that often don’t apply
The empty restaurant … usually a bad sign, but not so everywhere.Credit: Getty Images
The empty restaurant
An empty restaurant means a bad restaurant, right? You’re walking around Rome at 7pm and you’ve spotted a place with not a single customer, which means it must be terrible? Well, no. In cities such as Rome it’s customary that when you book a table at a restaurant, you have it for the whole night – so the place might be empty now, but it will fill up with reservations in a few hours.
Average reviews
You’re in Japan, you’re standing outside a restaurant, you’ve just checked its Google reviews and it gets a paltry 3.5 stars. That’s disappointing. Except, wait. In Japan, locals tend to be pretty hard markers, with glowing five-star reviews rarely doled out. Insiders know that 3.5 stars in Japan is actually a good score.
Picture menus
Ordinarily, picture menus would be a red flag, a warning you’re about to get fed some trash. However, you can throw this knowledge out the window in plenty of low-budget eateries in many parts of Asia, where picture menus are just there to help clueless foreigners, and the food is actually excellent.
Recommended by locals
Here’s the flipside. You’re often told, as a traveller, to ask a local where the best food is. Sometimes, however, locals give terrible advice. I was on a train to Naples once and asked the locals around me where to get pizza – they ended up sending me to Antico Forno da Michele, which featured in Eat Pray Love and was as touristy as you could get.
Seafood in places a long way from the sea
Here’s another hoary old rule of thumb: don’t eat seafood in places that are a long way from the sea. To that I would respond by asking, where do you think the seafood comes from in cities that are next to the ocean? Do you think it’s all pulled from the water right in front of you? No. Most of it was probably frozen. Same as it is in the other places.
Five restaurants that break all the rules
Quay could get away with serving average cuisine, but it certainly does not.Credit: Jennifer Soo
Quay and Bennelong, Sydney, NSW
Chef Peter Gilmore’s twin harbourside establishments, Quay and Bennelong, occupy some of the most sought-after real estate on the planet, and as such could probably get away with serving pretty average cuisine. But they most certainly do not. A shout-out to Opera Bar too, which could easily be a touristy rip-off, and yet isn’t. See quay.com.au; bennelong.com.au
Armando al Pantheon, Rome, Italy
This restaurant should be a tourist trap. It’s right next to the Pantheon, one of the most famous and popular tourist sites in the world. It’s in Rome’s Centro Storico, an area filled with tourist traps. Armando should be terrible. And yet, this is the cosy trattoria of your dreams, a place that takes care with its cuisine and treats its customers like honoured guests. See armandoalpantheon.it
Senkyaku Banrai, Tokyo, Japan
You often can’t get a good meal in a food court, and you definitely won’t find anything tasty in a faux-historic tourist trap created entirely for foreigners. Except, Tokyo’s Senkyaku Banrai, a new complex of restaurants and a food court in Edo-style surroundings, features plenty of legitimately high-quality cuisine at reasonable prices. See toyosu-senkyakubanrai.jp
Mil Centro, Cusco, Peru
A purpose-built restaurant sitting directly above an Incan ruin in an area where there are no other dining options without about a half-hour drive has all the hallmarks of a touristy rip-off. However, Mil Centro, above the Moray ruins outside Cusco, is run by superstar chef Virgilio Martinez, and the experimental Andean cuisine is astoundingly good. See milcentro.pe
Peppina, Hobart, Tasmania
You just wouldn’t go to a hotel restaurant, would you? You wouldn’t travel all that way to dine in a hotel; you wouldn’t hope to find crowds of locals and cuisine that’s reflective of local produce and passions? Normally, no. But Peppina, chef Massimo Mele’s Italian eatery at the Tasman Hobart, is not your average hotel restaurant. See peppinarestaurant.com