How to Find Amazing Restaurants
Every so often I find a great restaurant near me and I have to share my experience (even if I’m too afraid to share actual names and locations here). Many of you have asked how I keep finding such great places. Nobody has asked me that ever, but I feel like sharing some tips and that sounded like a good framing device.
First, I almost never look online, and I never use something like Yelp or Zomato. These places are awful, full of ads and fake reviews and aren’t very useful. Google is evil and not even helpful these days, and even when it was a decent search engine, it still didn’t help in finding good places to eat. Instead, I simply go to places I pass by when I’m in town. I’ll find a place that’s full of people and looks like something I’d be interested in and I’ll put it on a mental list to check out some day. That Chinese place I wrote about a few months ago? I’d known about that place for months before I finally went there.
Second, look at the size of the restaurant. I can’t definitively prove anything, all I can say is that in my experience, the bigger the restaurant, the worse the food. The best places I’ve ever eaten at are always either a small hole-in-the-wall shop off of main roads, tucked away in an alley, or even a food truck. It’s a cliché that these places are little mom and pop places, run by a family who cares about their customers and whatnot, but I find that often really is the case.
Third, there’s no way of saying this without sounding hugely pretensions: I don’t eat at chain restaurants if I can help it. Every now and then I’ll go to a fast food place, or if my parents are offering to pay I’ll go to Outback, Applebee’s, or wherever they pick to avoid arguments. When it’s up to me though, I’ll always go to a place that has no more than two or three locations, max. Once a place gets so big it needs multiple locations, the standards start to slip. That is especially true for places so big they have locations all over the country, or even the world.
You can also talk to friends and family, of course. Results vary depending on how adventurous those friends and family members are. Most of my family struggle to adventure beyond Outback Steakhouse, but I’ve got friends who’ll try any restaurant that isn’t actively on fire.
Honestly, that’s all there is to it. Keep your eyes open when you’re in town, avoid chains, and seek out smaller places. If the restaurant is good, and it is a small business or family run joint, always make sure you’re nice to the staff, compliment the food (even tell that to the chef directly if you can) and tip well. Going there often will help keep them in business, but so will recommending the place to friends and family. And a customer having something nice to say about your food or service is always a big morale boost.
There’s a possibility I’ll be moving to a new state in the summer (more on that in a future blog), and I’ll be sad to leave the great restaurants behind. Though I am excited to find new ones that could be just as good, or even better. I’ll be close to Atlanta, which is a fair bit larger than Charleston, so I don’t think I’ll have too many troubles finding somewhere good. I’m eager to put my “methods” the to test.
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