Traveling to eat is a pleasure for many, but a weak meal can ruin a full day of travel. Tourist hunting restaurants continue to make victims in popular destinations: above average prices, menus designed for foreigners, little culinary authenticity and a lot of promotional noise. A Fotoaid study, quoted by the digital newspaper HuffPost, and the opinions of various chefs and experts heard by it, help identify some warning signs when you reach a restaurant: aggressive approach, too tourist and giant location, endless letters, genetic desserts and drinks, exaggerated spectacle, and full -time visitors, almost without places.
According to PhotoAid, three factors usually walk together: inflated prices, services assembled to please tourists and absence of local gastronomic identity. The problem is that this does not always jump in sight in the showcase. Therefore, the previously mentioned source asked for help from professionals linked to gastronomy and tourism to explain how to recognize the coup before sitting at the table.
For TK PR’s Taryn Scher, a trap restaurant is “a place with very buzz but without flavors.” There are famous houses that live on “you have to go there if visits to the city”, even when the food is in the median.
Pastel chef Claudia Martinez and chef Hector Santiago underline their intention: when the restaurant “does what the traveler wants” instead of cooking with his own identity, the alarm plays. Martinez also warns of spaces that are not local, rotate running tables, charges dearly and serves food below expected.
Insistent approaches and flashy decoration
All experts, cited by the same source, placed this signal at the top. Very brilliant entrances, employed to call those who pass, shaken menus in front of the face and promises of immediate discount are classic. In Türkiye’s tourist areas, reports chef Okan Kizilbayir, it is common to see menu hosts in his hand talking nonstop to pull customers.
Plasticized menus in various languages and photographs of the dishes at the door? Jared Hucks avoids. And if someone distributes menus in “hundred different languages,” says Santiago, it is better to change direction.
After hours of walking, the impulse is sitting in the first restaurant next to the monument. But high lace in iconic areas require massive volumes and almost industrial operations. Martinez recalls that spaces with over 200 seats in centers full of visitors tend to be controlled by corporate groups and not local kitchens with time to work fresh products. The question that Taryn Scher suggests that herself is: how many residents of this city eat here regularly?
Endless letters and food for all
A menu with dozens of dishes from different countries is almost always a bad sign. “Too much items,” warns Kizilbayir. Already Santiago avoids houses that “throw everything to the dish” to please everyone.
When generic hamburgers appear, global -style breaded chicken or Americanized versions of Italian dishes, it should be suspected.
Piero Premoli draws attention to lists full of fried entrances and frozen trucks parked early in the morning: they usually announce prefabricated kitchen.
Desserts and Catalog Drinks
Martinez identifies traps from the final table. “Classic” cheesecake, perfect lava chocolate cake, lime pie in identical slices are almost always purchased ready. If the letter shows photographs or if all desserts appear with the same whipped cream in Estrela, Mint and Powder Sugar, there is hardly a pastel working in root.
The bar can also report a lot, according to the same source: supermarket shelf -style lists, basic cocktails, only international beer brands. When there is no connection to local supply, the probability of centralized production increases.
Places mounted for selfies, with lights, props, flaming dishes only for video, can make the alarm between travel chefs. Santiago criticizes the “table shows” mounted only to draw attention.
Martinez suspects spaces that promoted themselves as “the best” or “amazing” without saying where they gained the distinction. “Anyone can say it’s number one; it should be confirmed,” recalls Taryn Scher.
Rooms full of tourists, almost without places
When the restaurant lives on bus excursions, the food tends to be produced in mass and shortcuts. Okan Kizilbayir describes the usual script: tourist visit, installed hunger, stop in a large space that serves quickly groups. High music, flashy decoration, sparks and staff in caricatured costumes often appear in these formats.
Jared Hucks prefers rooms where the local language is heard above all. Santiago follows the same rule: in a tapas restaurant in Spain wants to hear Spanish at the next table and even looks at the photos of customers; If everyone seems tourists in a supposedly elegant space, it suspects.
How to avoid falling into the trap
According to the experts, cited by, should walk away or two blocks from the main attractions and observe who is eating. Look for short menus, linked to the station and the region. See the desserts, the bar and the clientele before asking for a table. A minute of attention can be the difference between a memorable meal and an expensive dish without flavor on a trip that only has room for a few meals a day.
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