A Restaurant is the maximum expression of a human basic need, eating.
People love eating in restaurants. They enjoy the entire experience; from the place, the vibe, the cutlery, or merely reading the menu, to the service and food. For all those who also like cooking, it is an enriching experience. ‘How was this dish made’, or ‘I will try it at home’ are common comments among foodies.
But restaurants cost money, some of them a lot of money so that it can become an expensive hobby with a real impact on your personal finances.
In these times of digital marketing, influencers and ratings, we usually fall in the trap of thinking that luxury/expensive is better, which is making us miss lots of excellent yet affordable opportunities.
But, before I make claims and advice, I will provide a few honest statements about me:
- I am a food & restaurant critic at gourmetian.com, I review restaurants and also food because I not only eat in restaurants.
- I didn’t study journalism, but I enjoy writing.
- I studied hospitality but worked for very little time in Hotels & Restaurants.
- My father is a cook that owned some restaurants.
- I don’t do this full time (yet), but I always find some time to take some notes/pictures of the food and write a review.
- I am not rich, so I cannot afford to eat in any restaurant that I want.
So what are the rules to eat in good restaurants be fair with restaurateurs and don’t go broke?
Forget the Michelin Guide…
For many years the Michelin guide has been the place to look at for good/unique/fancy meals.
And while the Michelin guide contains thousands of excellent restaurants, it could be a bad idea for some reasons:
- They mostly list restaurants — Recently I have also seen some pubs and coffee shops, but I would say that most of the registered venues are restaurants, expensive restaurants.
- They do not rate the place or service, nor look at the price. This is the biggest drawback of the Michelin guide. Their budget is unlimited, and to me, the service and place have a significant impact on your dining experience.
However, I find the guide more useful for non-starred listed places, which usually provide much better value for money.
…and most of the restaurant critics.
Most of well-established food & restaurant critics have focused their efforts in reviewing only Michelin starred restaurants. I guess that there are a few reasons for that. First, these are the restaurants where you can try the most innovative and creative food. Second, these are the places you see in the news and the media. Moreover, because the Michelin guide has a massive marketing apparatus, they benefit from reviewing them. There is even a competition between critics to see who visit and review more Michelin starred restaurants.
Influencers and food critics that only review Michelin starred restaurants are not doing any service to the industry but only favouring a few elites.
Cheap is not necessarily bad
There is this tendency to think that the more expensive is the restaurant, the better it is. This is a trend not exclusive to restaurants, but also to clothes, hotels, mobile phones and anything subject to marketing and influencing.
Influencers post pics and vids of a fancy restaurant, and they immediately go viral. A good example is ‘salt bae’. Honestly, I haven’t visited any of his restaurants, but they have quite poor reviews, to the point of have being sued by customers. There are hundreds of thousands of’ regular’ restaurants that provide excellent value for money. I list some below.
Places around the world where to eat a fantastic meal for less than $30 per person.
- Italy — A Casa di Pulcinella, Turin. Outstanding Italian Pizza
- Spain — BocaBoca, Madrid. Their liquid croquettes of Iberian ham are out of this world.
- France — La Maison Marie, Lyon. Delicious french food.
- England — Smokestak, London. Their brisket melts in your mouth.
- Austria — Schachtelwirt, Vienna. Is a small place that makes some of the best Austrian dumplings that you will ever try.
- Germany — Andy’s Krablergarten, Munich. One schnitzel there and you are done for three days.
Wine is fantastic but expensive
I love wine with all my heart, but I reckon that it is overpriced in restaurants. Wine is marked up to 300%, whereas food is somewhere between 125 % and 150%. Therefore you can find a massive difference between the price of the food and the wine. Did it ever happen to you that you see a bottle that you drank in a restaurant in the shop and your jaw drops to the floor?
Be careful with Google Maps
I am a level 8 guide with more than 300 reviews and 3,500 pictures in Google Maps. Google reviews are usually one of the first sources that I check for restaurants.
But in the last times, I have noticed that some restaurants are quite over or underrated.
First, I find the 5-star methodology not useful enough for restaurants (you can see why here), and second I believe there is a massive tourist>>domino>>bias effect. Let me explain:
I see a restaurant with hundreds of reviews and a 4.6 in Google Maps. What is the next I do? I visit it, and probably due to the social proof effect (copy what others say), I will give a 4 or a 5 and so goes the cycle.
You might be thinking, “this is totally fine” and in fact it is, but the downside is that you will be missing many excellent places that are not ranking high in Google because they have not entered the current of high reviews.
On top of that higher rated restaurants have expensive prices, just because they have so much demand.
Try other sources like local websites, ask in the hotel where the locals eat, or simply choose restaurants in Google Maps that doesn’t have a massive number of reviews.
In summary, eating at good restaurants can be costly, but you can make wiser choices and maximize your spending and experience by not following the mainstream.
