While abroad, Sid and Chand Sahrawat recommend speaking to local food reviewers for off-the-beaten-track spots.
Lacklustre holiday meals are a disappointing drain on your travel kitty. Here, Sarah Pollok asks the experts how to avoid them altogether.
It takes a while to learn the ways of a city; what transport is best and when rush hour is, the streets to avoid and how to dress for each season. Or, for the food lovers among us, where to find the best places to eat.
So, we asked a handful of world-class chefs, discerning restaurant critics and well-travelled foodies how they sniff out a great restaurant in a new city.
Al Brown, the chef behind Depot, Federal Delicatessen and the beloved Best Ugly bagel shops, said there was one place you likely won’t find a great spot; in or around a tourist attraction.
“Stay away from the tourist gaffs, often near the attractions, and walk the alleys,” the chef advised, as eateries next to major tourist draws, such as San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf or Rome’s Colosseum can often be overpriced or underwhelming (or both).
Once he’s found a restaurant or cafe, Brown said he always tries to thank the kitchen team on his way out.
“It’s easy to do in kitchens that are open to their dining rooms, and for kitchens behind the wall, just ask your waitperson or dining room manager if you could have a quick word or thank you to the kitchen team,” he said.
Kitchen staff love a spontaneous thank you from customers, so much so that they may share some helpful suggestions of where to eat next, Brown said. “You give a little, you’ll be pleasantly surprised what intel you are given back.”
Simon Gault agrees that when it comes to finding great restaurants overseas, the kitchen is the place to go.
With years of experience as an executive chef at Euro Restaurant and judge on MasterChef NZ, Gault said he usually knows someone in the food industry he can ask for recommendations. However, if he doesn’t, he’ll find a highly-rated restaurant online, then show up with a big box of beers.
“The maitre d’ will look very concerned and probably think, ‘Is this guy going to drink a whole box of beers?’ and I’ll say, ‘No no, this is for the boys in the kitchen, point me in the right direction,’” he said.
“You just roll into the kitchen and go, ‘Here you go guys, for after work tonight, looking forward to dinner.’”
Play your cards right and you’ll reap the rewards, Gault added.
“At the end of the night the chefs will sit down at your table because they’re so stoked, because nobody ever does that. Waiters get tips but, generally, chefs don’t.
“Generally, by the end of the night, if you’re not the booze and going out to another bar with them, you’re hooked up on where to go and given connections or had a booking made for you.”
However, that isn’t the only way to get a booking, as food writer and restaurant critic Kim Knight has discovered.
The Kiwi journalist and long-time food writer critic for Canvas, said simply being friendly and chatty went a long way during a trip to Melbourne, after failed attempts to get a table at Town Mouse.
“We were at a fabulous pasta restaurant, Tipo 00, and I recognised the waitress had a Kiwi accent,” Knight said. As it turned out, the waitress was from Bluff and after further conversation, they discovered Knight knew her cousin.
“She asked where else we’d eaten and I told her where we really wanted to go. She took my number and next morning there was a text to say we had a bar seat booking for Town Mouse that night.”
In this case, things worked out, but if they hadn’t, Knight said flexibility was another important part of finding great eateries.
“In 2018, before I went to Tokyo for the first time, I became obsessed with getting a reservation at a place I’d read about that was doing incredibly inventive modern Japanese for a fraction of the price of other high-end places,” Knight said.
She set midnight alarms to call when they opened and sent many emails but had no reply. Yet, for all her efforts, she can’t even remember the name of the place.
“One of my favourite meals on that trip was a soup we ate after waiting in a random queue and asking the person in front of us which button to push on the automated ordering machine,” she said.
Celebrated food writer, food stylist and recipe developer Jennifer Yee Collinson can also attest to how good recommendations from strangers can be.
“When I travel solo and sit having coffee or eating something delicious, it’s often a total stranger who gives me the best tips,” Collison said, recalling the time she spent in Vietnam while setting up a food tour in 2000.
“I would quiz my xe om (motorbike taxi) driver, the street food cooks, local chefs and the family that I stayed with to learn Tieng Viet and sometimes hotel front desk staff or the doorman who greeted you every morning, ‘Where do you eat?’”
From these people, Collinson gained dozens of recommendations, from fine dining restaurants to alleyway gems, wholesale night markets to local food merchants.
Collinson’s other tips included visiting farmers’ markets, talking to people in the food industry from fishmongers and butchers to waiters and chefs and giving yourself some time to “wing it”.
“You will almost always stumble across somewhere unplanned, unexpected, and untapped. This is the stuff of dreams when it happens and makes me giddy for travel,” Collinson said.
Nick Honeyman, on the other hand, said his wife and two daughters prefer to always do a little research when travelling.
“We almost never take a meal to chance and do a little research before we leave the hotel because you will never make a good choice walking around hangry,” said Honeyman, who owns Paris Butter in Auckland and Le Petit Leon, a seasonal restaurant in the south of France.
For the Honeymans, this involves asking the taxi driver who collects you from the airport, then the hotel concierge. “They have the keys to the city and also to the bookings,” Honeyman revealed.
Then, they turn to established food guides, which have done the hard yards of researching and reviewing, Honeyman said.
“We always cross-reference the Michelin Guide and the world’s 50 best restaurants list. Here you have a traditional list that is meticulous with their standards and reviews crossed with a list that focuses on the X factor,” he said.
The final step was checking out the restaurant’s reviews on Tripadvisor. This platform was the “ultimate leveller” according to Honeyman, as it showed what everyday people thought of the place.
“I have never had a bad meal at a Top 5 Tripadvisor restaurant, it could have been sitting on plastic chairs with cheap food or a five-hour-long degustation experience,” he said.
“A restaurant that has consistently good reviews is listening to their customers and when you go to a restaurant I believe there is nothing more important.”
Sid and Chand Sahrawat, who own Auckland institution Cassia, also recommend trusting the experts behind awards lists or well-known publications when in a foreign destination.
“On trips to Singapore and Dubai we look up known publications and awards lists like world’s 50 best and La Liste,” said Chand. “We make a food itinerary for each day and ensure we have a mix of laid-back local dining like street eats and medium to high-end spots that are unmissable at each location.”
Although, lists and awards are plan B for the couple, who said speaking to locals or frequent visitors was how they often found great restaurants.
“When researching for Bali, we found some of the best spots there by asking our foodie friend who frequently travels there,” said Chand, adding how Sid’s habit of chatting to chefs also helped.
“When we eat out he’ll often go and chat with the chef, thank him for the meal and ask what and where they would recommend eating. Some places, especially in India, are well known for doing one dish really well, so it’s important to know not only where to eat but what to look for on the menu.”
Cazador’s Rebecca Smidt and Dariush Lolaiy agree that knowing what you’re looking for can help a lot when seeking recommendations. Are you after a silver-service restaurant or casual food market? A particular cuisine or a local speciality?
“When we’re travelling through Mexico we take time to be more chatty during exchanges with locals,” Smidt said. “If we’re shopping at the market, getting coffee, or taking a cab we’ll try to engage in conversation and ask specific questions like, where’s your favourite taco stand? Or where do you buy your tortillas? So we get specific answers.”
Not only will you get more useful recommendations, Smidt adds, but show locals you are really engaged with their food culture.
“We got chatty with a guy in the market, we were both buying vegetables and we got talking. It turned out he was a chef and was hosting a pop-up, after learning we had travelled from Aotearoa and that we have a restaurant back home he invited us to his pop-up,” Smidt said. There, the couple enjoyed an authentic dining experience among locals, eating the produce the chef bought that very same morning.
From skipping the queues to planning your parade spot, here's all you need to know.