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Most disappointing meals abroad are not the restaurant's fault. They are the result of ordering the wrong thing — asking a kitchen to make something it does not make often, does not care about, and only has on the menu because visitors keep asking. The fix is a handful of rules about what to avoid, and they work in any country.
Don’t order the thing the region is not known for
The single most reliable rule in eating abroad. A coastal town does seafood. An inland mountain region does not, and the fish on that menu traveled a long way to get there.
The same logic applies within a country. Ordering a dish from four hundred miles away because you saw it in a guidebook means a kitchen making something it does not make daily, for someone who does not know how it should taste.
Instead: find the one thing this specific place does better than anywhere, and eat that. Every city has exactly one. It is the meal you will describe to people back home.
Don’t order your own food in someone else’s country
The burger in Hanoi, the pasta in Bangkok, the full breakfast in Lisbon. These exist for homesick visitors, they are cooked by people with no particular investment in them, and they are usually the most expensive thing on the menu relative to quality.
Instead: if you genuinely need a break from local food — which is a real thing on a long trip and nothing to be embarrassed about — find a place that specializes in it. A dedicated Italian restaurant in Bangkok run by someone who cares can be excellent. The pasta on page nine of a Thai menu will not be.
Order what the kitchen makes a hundred times a day, not what it makes twice a week. Volume means practice, fresh ingredients and a cook who knows exactly when it is right.
Don’t order from the photographs
A menu with pictures is built for people who cannot read it and do not know the food, which tells you who the restaurant is for. A menu with no photographs and no English is a good sign rather than a problem — it means the place was built for people who already know what it serves.
Instead: point at what the table next to you is eating. It bypasses the language barrier entirely and it has the pleasant side effect of delighting the person you pointed at.
Don’t order the “tourist menu” or the set deal outside
The laminated three-course special in six languages is designed around margin and shelf life, not around what the kitchen is proud of. The dishes on it are the ones that hold.
Instead: ask the question that works almost everywhere — "what are you making today that isn't on the menu?" It is understood far more widely than you would expect and it frequently produces the best plate in the building.
Be careful with these, rather than avoiding them
Raw things, in places where you are not confident about the water or the cold chain. Salad and unpeeled fruit are washed in whatever the local water is.
Pre-cooked food sitting out at a quiet stall. The street-food safety rule is simpler than the internet suggests: go where it is busy, watch it cooked in front of you, and eat it hot. High turnover means fresh ingredients and a stall that cannot afford to make anyone ill.
The most expensive item, which is frequently the one with the highest markup rather than the best cooking.
Anything with an unpriced "market price" unless you ask the price first. This is the mechanism behind a great many shocking bills.
What to order instead, as a system
The dish the place is named after, if it is named after one.
The thing on every table. Look before you sit.
The daily special written by hand, which usually means it was decided this morning based on what was good at the market.
Whatever has a queue of people in work clothes at a quarter past twelve. That is the most reliable review system ever invented, and the only one that updates daily and cannot be bought.
The cheapest thing on the menu of a place that only does one thing. Specialists are almost never expensive and almost always good.
The bottom line
Avoid what the region is not known for, your own cuisine cooked by people who do not care about it, anything with a photograph next to it, and the multilingual set menu. Order what the kitchen makes constantly, what the next table is eating, and what is not written down. That is most of the difference between a forgettable meal and the one you still talk about.
Everything from this article — plus seven more travel systems
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