6 Red Flags You're About To Eat At A Tourist Trap Restaurant

Food · Posted 1 minute ago 6 Red Flags You're About To Eat At A Tourist Trap Restaurant These are the cues that can signal you should seek a better meal elsewhere. by Su-Jit Lin HuffPost Writer Link Facebook Pinterest Twitter Mail Urbazon / Getty Images For those who travel to eat, meals while away from home are precious. A marquee meal can be the most memorable highlight of a trip, and when you only get so many per day with no do-overs, there is literally no room for mediocre food.

And even harder to stomach is when it’s expensive, inauthentic, or — even worse, in a world with such diverse cuisine — boring. In other words, a tourist trap restaurant. What is a tourist trap restaurant? Mongkol Chuewong / Getty Images According to a study by online passport photo service provider PhotoAiD , the top three criteria that make a place a tourist trap are above-average pricing, amenities tailored for tourists, and a lack of cultural authenticity.

But these traits aren’t always immediately apparent, so we asked a diverse panel of culinary research-driven travel tourism pros and chefs to add more perspective. From a publicity standpoint, Taryn Scher (“The Sparkle Boss”) of TK PR considers a tourist trap “a spot that has a lot of buzz but doesn’t really have the flavors to back it up.” Sadly, this can also include famous institutions.

“There are long-standing restaurants that exist on buzz, simply for the sake of ‘You have to go to X if you’re visiting Z.’ Som.