How to Find the Best Local Restaurants When Traveling

 

A place is often associated with its culture and cuisine. The latter half of that statement might be tricky for a traveler who wants to get the best first impression of authentic food.

With that in mind, here’s how travel and food blogger Irina Bukatik thinks you can find the best local eateries while traveling.

Ask Around

If your idea of asking around is consulting the hotel concierge, you need to rethink your strategy. Hotel concierges do many things for their guests, but their recommendations are pretty mainstream. Local food is anything but.

You’ll usually find the best restaurant picks from people you meet along the way. You could also ask employees working along your tourism routes for the best places to eat that aren’t too overcrowded with noisy tourists. They’re bound to know a quiet restaurant or two that serves delicious food.

View the Queue

While crowded places aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, the waiting lines outside these establishments say a thing or two about their food. If they have people queuing up, they definitely know their way around the food.

Start by doing a quick search for regional eateries in your area. Then walk around the neighborhood and whittle your hits down to those with people lining up outside. Once you know where you want to go, you could:

·Wait with everyone else.

·Come back during off-peak hours.

·Make a reservation for a later date.

Walk Around the Local Markets

Local markets have a lot of fresh produce to offer. They also happen to be surrounded by restaurants and vendors that probably source their produce and protein from these markets.

While there, browse the seasonal fruits and vegetables to know what to eat around that time of year and pop into a restaurant or drop by a street vendor to sample a grub.

Read Updates by Travel Food Bloggers

Local or travel food bloggers consider hidden gems and niche eateries their bread and butter, and rightly so. Their entire food blogging career depends on providing something different to their readers. Instead of recommending a pizza joint in Italy, they would search for something completely out of the left field and wholly regional and talk about them in their blogs.

Pick your restaurants by reading up on such posts, starting with Irina Bukatik’s local food blog, Wanderlust Food. A self-proclaimed food and coffee snob, the travel blogger, has travel experiences around the world, explored their foods, and has had something to write about all of them via blog posts and social media.

Connect with Bukatik via the contact form here.