When I travel I have a dining bucket list. I research restaurants, scour travel blogs and trawl through review sites to the nth degree. I’m a woman on a mission. The mission? To ensure each meal I eat is authentic and delicious. But sometimes things don’t go to plan. Planes are delayed, tours run overtime and you miss out on reservations or getting in early so you don’t have to queue for hours. When this happens you’re left to decide on where to eat simply by looking at a place. I’ve fallen victim to choosing convenience (and a hungry stomach) over effort and stumbled into the first restaurant I came across without doing due diligence. I’m left unsatisfied by an average meal that I’ve paid way too much for. But throughout my travels I’ve curated a mental list of red flags that indicate a restaurant is a tourist trap. Here are the things to look out for to ensure you don’t waste your time, money and appetite on a half-decent, overpriced meal.
Yes, the host is just doing their job to get bums on seats, but if a restaurant is good then you will often find that people will know about it. The host yelling the menu specials to people walking past is not a good sign.
This doesn’t apply in every case, but most of the time if a restaurant is near a major attraction or landmark you can expect it to be a tourist trap. It might be busy but that is usually down to the convenience factor. Being near a tourist attraction also means that it’s almost guaranteed hungry tourists looking for a quick feed will come to eat and also high rents, so the restaurant can overcharge and get away with it.
Restaurants are accommodating and often have bilingual menus, but if the only menu they have is in English and you’re in a foreign speaking country then you know the restaurants only clientele are tourists. Plus, if you can recognise all the dishes on the menu you can bet on the fact you will get westernised versions of traditional dishes rather than an authentic meal.
In the same vein as my previous point, if you do a quick scan of the crowd seated at the restaurants and it is packed with tourists you know you’re about to join them and be trapped. Look for places locals are dining at as good indications you’re about to be fed well.
If a menu is good it doesn’t need to be supersized. Great if you’re long sighted, but if it’s a gigantic board out front of the restaurant you’re guaranteed to be walking into a tourist trap restaurant.
This one is trickier to spot, but if you see that the staff and people working in the kitchen are English-speakers or don’t appear to be locals then you know the restaurant is there to cater to tourists and tourists alone.
Lots of tables + very few staff members + a small kitchen = quantity over quality. This restaurant’s main objective is to pump out as many meals and turn over as many tables as possible. Service and quality is not a priority for these types of establishments.
