Hello fellow travellers,

Just a general question. Do people research for restaurants (cuisines in particular) before they travel to a new place? or just get there and explore places to eat?

Wondering how experimental travellers are really.

Thanks.

I rarely research restaurants but I'm not a foodie. For me, it would be too complicated to get attached to eating at a certain restaurant and having to make a reservation and think about being at a restaurant 5 months ahead of time. Sheesh, there are times my husband and I have forgotten to eat.

We've gone into restaurants and picked out something on the menu by identifying a couple of key words or pointing discreetly to another diner's plate saying, "we want that, please."

Nope. But I'm no foodie either, and tend to travel to big cities, where there are usually masses of options wherever I happen to be, and where it's not hard to work out which places fall into my various mental categories ("too muc upmarket flimflam", "standard acceptable", "good for a quick bite" and "uh-oh, they have photos of what they claim to offer, avoid like the plague"). But it helps to be reasonably confident with the language, menu conventions and the like - I'd probably be all at sea in Asia.

Nope. Never plan that far ahead. It's only in the last few years that we've make hotel reservations ahead!

A bit of both, but mostly we find restaurants when we arrive.

This is an open ended personal matter of taste question. It depends on the restaurant and for which meal and whether one wants a meal at specific restaurants. There is no need for research or reservations if you are ok with just any meal.

<i>Just a general question. Do people research for restaurants (cuisines in particular) before they travel to a new place? or just get there and explore places to eat?</i>

I prefer to wing it but I also do a quick search beforehand to see what the "must eat" places are.

I am a big foodie so, I do research for restaurants which are famous for particular cuisine as I love to explore places with their special cuisine.

<i>Wondering how experimental travellers are really.</i>

I usually eat the street food before considering whether it's wise to do so.

Absolutely!!! I love researching restaurants before and usually have several reservations before we leave - but then we travel on our stomachs!

<i>usually have several reservations before we leave</i>

Dang yo. OCD much?

We like food, and eating is a significant impetus for our travel.

I study the cuisine, and particularly the structure of a meal in different kinds of eating places.

I may look forward to eating in a particular restaurant, but it is rare for us to make a reservation from home. London is the exception as we have foodie friends who are so into the scene that they can get us in pretty much anywhere on a day's notice.

Otherwise, we check out menus as we walk around and do look at online and printed recommendations. In Paris, Patricia Wells remains reliable though not cutting edge, and she covers a wider range of price points than you would expect. The best online guide was a guy back in the Usenet days known as Jack-the-Belgian whose work took him all around France. His preference was for places where local business people, shop owners, and truck drivers would et lunch and where they might go out to dinner with their spouses in the evening. These were unfailingly wonderful, never a bad recommendation, and extremely useful for France outside Paris. We still use them though they haven't been posted in forever.

Warnings: a positive recommendation in the New York Times, particularly in a budget travel article, is often a kiss of death, sometimes for a while, sometimes permanently. The restaurant fills with Americans, the kitchen gets sloppy under the pressure of unexpected numbers, and the front of the house gets surly at having to explain for the 400th time what " bonne femme" means.

I would think your warning about NYT goes for anything that they recommend.

Totally OCD - I would never deny it

Plus I just love researching and hate searching for a good restaurant on an empty stomach and ending up eating crap food!

To each their own!

I do a little research and write down the name of the restaurants which are close to my hotel or to where I am staying. No way I'll cross the whole town for food.

Sometimes we almost start our planning with the restaurants and work backwards from there. There even was a time when we would have all but two or three meals reserved in advance before getting on the plane especially if the trip was to a place we've been before like Paris or Venice, etc. Drove my husband nuts. We even did an experiement on one trip to Paris to see what would happen with or without reservations. (I'll see if I can find the trip report from that time and post the URL.)

Now we've settled into a more reasonable pattern where I research options and have a list ready as we approach a destination--especially for lunch where our schedule isn't as controllable as we sightsee--and if we find one and it looks good we stop in, otherwise we just stroll around to find the place that looks best among those in the neighborhood where we are as we get hungry.

For dinners however, we are much more likely to have a definite advance destination--increasingly to be sure it's close to our hotel so we don't have to walk or drive very far, sometimes made from home by us or made by our hotel, and other times scouted out while doing our daily sightseeing and made during the day by dropping in to get on the reservation list or having our hotel call for us after we've seen several places and decided.

My motto--never suffer a bad meal if you can prevent it.

Ok, here's the URL for the trip report I did comparing our experience in Paris one year with and without dining reservations.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...appy-meals.cfm

Just reread that old (2008) thread. It has lots of comments about people's various styles of relying on reservations or not. Bunn 33, you might find it useful in answering your question--or comparing whether folks are changing their attitutdes toward it over the last 5 years or so.

Bit of both. If we are in London early December with some friends, it will be very hard to find a decent restaurant without booking in advance - sometimes months in advance.
Same for NYC; if you want to eat at certain restaurants, you have to book. Since we do not visit NYC often, and there are so many great restaurants, we book all dinners in advance.
Don't want to be stuck with Olive Garden or someplace like that.

But usually it's a combination; we book some places, and leave some evenings free.

I do lots of research but I almost never reserve before leaving home. I stay flexible but like to know what the options are. I always have a much longer list than I would ever be able to get to, and always get to places that are not on the list as well.