Tips for Eating Abroad

The inaugural post for English With Grace shares tips for choosing the best restaurants while travelling. Why this topic? Traveling enables us to see stunning sights, meet intriguing people, and learn new perspectives that help us see the world in a different light. Food is arguably the most important part of the journey. It is through a country’s cuisine, and the customs around eating, that give us the best glimpse into the lives of others. A country’s food is a representation of its climate and agriculture, as well as a physical manifestation of its history. Through intriguing and intense flavors, we use our taste buds to transport us.

Eating is an easy way for travellers to make the most of their trip. Think: when you tell others about your travels, how often do you talk about food? Restaurant and food recommendations are usually the first thing we share when giving travel advice. Finding the right restaurant in a foreign country can be difficult, and the process is becoming harder with the growing repository of misleading online reviews. If you are not careful, you could eat at a “tourist trap,” spending more money for garbage food–a lose-lose situation that sours your trip.

Instead, you can use simple cues to source a good restaurant and put you on the path to an unforgettable culinary experience:

1. Know the meal times. Knowing what time the people in your country of destination eat should be a part of all pre-departure research. For example, people in Spain eat dinner at 22:00. Adjusting your body’s eating schedule is for a different blog, but a good restaurant will be serving food according to the local schedule, and not at all hours of the day. In Spain, it is unwise to eat at a restaurant serving dinner before 20:00.
2. Eat where others are eating. This sounds obvious but see if others are eating at the restaurant because restaurants are popular for a reason. Many will tell you to “eat where the locals eat,” but that can be hard to discern–and sometimes, quite prejudiced. Instead, I say, “don’t eat where all the tourists are eating.” This method is much easier because tourists are easy to spot. Look for people who are carrying bags/backpacks, as well as wearing rain jackets and tennis shoes.
3. Avoid any restaurant with flags on the menu. This is an instant red flag (pun). If a restaurant has flags on their menu to indicate the menu’s language, do not eat there because it is a trap. Furthermore, avoid any restaurant that has a menu in more than two languages because it is a good indicator of how much the restaurant is trying to appeal to tourists. If the restaurant does not have menus in a language you are comfortable with, Google Translate is a helpful tool.

Using these three tips, you can avoid eating at tourist traps and support restaurants offering the true flavors of your destination.

Glossary 

• Inaugural
• Enables
• stunning
• Intriguing
• different light
• Glimpse
• manifestation
• make the most of
• repository
• “tourist trap,”
• a lose-lose situation
• Sours
• Cues
• Discern
• Prejudiced
• tourist traps