Tourist Trap Lessons

With the summer travel season underway, it’s time for a brief refresher course.  How to spot a tourist trap restaurant. 

I’ll begin by describing a disappointing meal I had in Barcelona.

Loaves & (One) Fish
After a long day on our feet, the group consensus was that we find a seafood restaurant near the beach.  We were beckoned into a large establishment with numerous empty tables.  Once seated, our energetic host recommended the fresh, locally caught fish, showing us a large lubina on a silver tray.  He promised to cook that very fish for our table.  We agreed, then began a course of overpriced appetizers.  Meanwhile, we saw the exact same fish pitched to four other parties.  Tourist trap lessons?

•Avoid restaurants that actively encourage you to enter. (Often such salesmanship includes enticements like free drinks, or fixed price meals.)

•Walk past unpopulated restaurants, especially those with few locals.  Look for smaller establishments.

•More Theatre = Less Meal Enjoyment. Stick to drinks before ordering entrees.  Leave if you see showy displays, be they of today’s catch, flaming dishes, or other tableside theatrics.  I am particularly averse to bistros with roaming musicians, notably tunas or mariachis; they will ruin even the best prepared meals.

Now, on to Galicia and another poor dining choice.

Chiringuitos
Seafood shacks/snack bars.  Our hotel in Cambados, Spain recommended that we have lunch at one of the “typical” chiringuitos along the beach in O’Grove.  OK, why not?  We drove to the indicated address.  There were no shacks to be seen, but there were hundreds of parked cars lining the road near two large, seaside restaurants.  The result?  A long wait to be seated.  Slow service.  Mediocre food and an exorbitant bill.  Just like back home on Cape Cod.  The lessons?

•Skip restaurants described as typical.

•Restaurants closest to scenic or popular sites are more likely to be tourist traps. Explore further afield.

More Rules to Eat By
And let’s not forget these time-honored, tourist trap rules:

•Avoid restaurants with multilingual menus (more than 2x languages). When you see menus with flags to indicate various languages, don’t just walk away, run.

•Unless you are in Japan, do not patronize restaurants with menus featuring photos of every dish.  And beat a hasty retreat from any place with celebrity photos peppering the walls.  (Following this last rule is highly recommended when dining in the North End of Boston.)

•Don’t eat at “all day kitchens.” No matter where you find yourself.

Finally, bear in mind that the locals in many travel hot-spots are not particularly fond of tourists. Dining in a tourist trap restaurant could get you soaked by water pistols, or worse.