How We Stopped Restaurant-hunting and Started Dish-hunting

It was our last night in Antigua, Guatemala. We had spent the day

on a chicken bus tour of some of the smaller pueblos surrounding the city, learning from weavers and jade artisans, and we were exhausted. We are "travelers," not "vacationers," so there hadn't been much downtime on our weeklong trip. We were logging those steps and maximizing every minute. During an afternoon rest break, I started scouring Google for the highest-rated restaurants I could find. Nothing below 4.7 stars will do! It must be the most authentic, the most delicious! We must remember this meal for years to come! This will be the one!

We strolled to the restaurant, passing cafes full of chattering locals, each one pouring warmth and laughter onto the street. We reached the restaurant I had picked out and stepped inside. It was empty. Silent. Servers were sitting around at tables on their phones. We were quickly, warmly seated at a table in the back. We ate a very solid meal of traditional Guatemalan food, and our server was kind and informative, but we left feeling like we'd missed out on the dining experience that makes a meal memorable. In our quest for the best rating, we'd definitely missed the vibes, and now we were a little (some of us a lot) grumpy.

For years, this was how it went. I’d scour Google reviews, Tiktok, and Top 10 lists, build a spreadsheet for the trip, then stand in line for 45 minutes at whatever place everyone had been filming. Some meals were great, others disappointing, but the underlying anxiety was constant: we've only got so many meals here, and we better make them count. It took us until that empty Antigua restaurant to name what was actually wrong. We were taking the joy out of the part of travel we loved the most. 

Now, when we're planning a trip, we start with: what dishes does this place make better than anywhere else? I still draft my spreadsheet for each location, but this time I'm making a list of all the dishes I want to try, rather than restaurants I feel like I have to eat at. Of course, restaurants still make the list when it's right, but it's secondary to the flavors we're seeking out.

But mealtime is where we really put this new strategy to the test, because I am a hungry girl, and functioning without a plan while I'm starving is not my strong suit. We choose an area with a lot of restaurants. We need options. Then we walk with a singular mission, sometimes even repeating it like a mantra to remind ourselves of the goal: does it have the vibes? This can mean a lot of different things depending on the location, the meal, the moment. But at baseline, it's whether the locals eating here. Does it have a good energy? Does it make us want to sit and stay? From there, maybe we do a quick glance at Google, but mainly our focus is on the menu. Are the dishes we want to experience served here? If so, it's the place for us.

This has given us some really unexpected wins. It has led us to string-light lit patios in Spain, cozy pubs with live music in Scotland, and stools in busy Italian markets. It has relieved a lot of the pressure we had placed on ourselves in our earlier travels. We're no longer trekking to a neighborhood across town, in the rain, to a cafe we saw on TikTok only to have an average experience. But most of all, it lets us spend time researching the ingredients and plates that tell the story of a place, and then tasting those dishes in an environment that reminds us how lucky we are to be away from home, exploring a new place.

Let's be clear: I still watch those TikTok videos, read the Top 10 lists, and analyze the Google reviews here and there. They're all really important sources of firsthand information that point us in the right direction. We just no longer let them be the be-all and end-all of our decision-making. In the end, we remember the first time we tried pintxos on the sidewalk outside a cafe listening to Christmas music, or the first time we tried sticky toffee pudding in the window seat of a tiny pub in Edinburgh. The restaurant itself doesn’t matter as much as we thought. Instead, what matters is the taste of the food and how we feel while we’re eating it.

And those meals don't have to be one-time events we look back on with fondness. This is where my love for cookbooks comes into play. We buy the book. Then we start cooking from it, sharing the dishes with friends and reminiscing about the trip. Those daily glasses of horchata didn't have to end when we left Mexico. Now we've got a pitcher in the fridge, and fresh tortillas and salsas have become second nature. A cookbook is how the trip keeps going long after we've come home.

If we were back in Antigua tonight, we wouldn't be scrolling for the 4.7-star place. We'd walk past the same cafes we walked past last time: the ones full of chattering locals, warmth and laughter pouring onto the street, the ones we ignored on our way to a very solid, very empty meal. This time, we'd stop. We'd scan the menu for pepian or tamales or whatever we'd come to Guatemala to eat. And we'd sit down where the vibe pulled us in.

That's the whole shift. On your next trip, before you open Google, ask yourself a different question: What should I eat here? Reibekuchen and a Kölsch in Cologne. Cochinita pibil, ideally with horchata, in the Yucatán. Sticky toffee pudding in whichever Edinburgh pub has the fewest tourists. Start with the dish, and the restaurant will follow.