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Every city has a layer of restaurants that exist purely to intercept visitors: priced for people who will never return, cooking for people with nothing to compare it to. They are not hard to spot once you know the signals, and every one of these is visible from the pavement before you have committed to anything.
1. Somebody is standing outside inviting you in
This is the strongest single signal in the entire business, and it is close to universal.
A restaurant that locals want to eat at does not need a person on the street. It has a queue, or a reservation book, or a steady flow of regulars. Paying somebody to stand outside and catch passers-by is what you do when your business model is volume of strangers rather than people coming back.
The friendlier and more insistent the greeter, the more reliable the signal.
2. The menu is in six languages, with photographs
Photographs on a menu mean the restaurant expects customers who cannot read the menu and do not know the food. Six flags down the side means it expects them from everywhere.
A menu with no photographs and no English is not a problem — it is a sign the place was built for people who already know what it serves. Point, sit, trust.
Walk five minutes away from any major sight before you eat. Rent, foot traffic and one-time customers ruin the food nearest a monument — a restaurant that will never see you again has no reason to be good.
3. The menu is enormous
Eleven pages covering pizza, sushi, curry, steak and a full breakfast means one of two things: a freezer, or a kitchen with no point of view. Real kitchens have a small number of things they do properly, because that is what a limited number of cooks and a limited amount of prep time actually permit.
A short menu that changes is the opposite signal, and it is one of the best in the business.
4. It has a direct view of the famous thing
You are paying for the view, and the view is the product. That is a legitimate trade if you know you are making it — a drink in front of something spectacular is worth money. Just do not expect the food to be the reason you are there, and do not be surprised by the bill.
Eat two streets back, then walk to the view with an ice cream. Same evening, a third of the cost, better food.
5. The room is full of people who look like you
Look through the window at who is actually eating. If every table is visitors, the kitchen is calibrated for visitors. If there are people in work clothes at a quarter past twelve, or families eating at the hour locals actually eat, that is the most reliable review system ever invented and the only one that updates daily and cannot be bought.
6. It is open at the wrong times
In countries with strong meal-time conventions, a restaurant serving dinner at 6pm in a place where locals eat at 9pm is not serving locals. Turning up at tourist hours gets you the tourist shift — different staff, different kitchen energy, food that has been sitting.
This one cuts both ways and it is genuinely useful: eat at local hours and you get fresher food and a working kitchen even in an otherwise ordinary restaurant.
7. The reviews are all first-timers
Open the map view rather than sorting by rating. A 4.3 down a side street beats a 4.7 beside the monument almost every time, because the monument spot is rated by people who ate there once, on holiday, and had nothing to compare it to.
Look at the photographs diners uploaded rather than the owner's. Owner photos are styled and lit. Guest photos show real portions, full tables and the actual color of the broth.
What to do instead, in ten minutes
Search in the local language, not in English. Type the local word for the dish you want rather than "best restaurant". English results are optimized for tourists and reviewed by tourists.
Ask one local a deliberately specific question. Never "where should I eat?" — that gets the safe answer they think a foreigner wants. Ask "where do you personally go for [the specific dish] on a normal weekday?" The specificity is what unlocks the honest answer.
Follow the queue, not the sign. And order what the table next to you is eating — point, smile, nod. It bypasses the language barrier entirely and delights the person you pointed at.
The bottom line
A greeter outside, photographs on the menu, eleven pages of it, a monument in the window, and a room full of visitors. Any two of those together and you are paying tourist prices for tourist food. Walk five minutes, look for the queue of people in work clothes, and eat at the hour the locals do — the difference is usually a third of the price and the best meal of the trip.
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