🍝 The local Guide 💚🤍❤️ - How Italians Really Choose a Restaurant

The local Guide 💚🤍❤️ - How Italians Really Choose a Restaurant

How do Italians always manage to eat so well? They have a system that doesn't involve reading reviews

We employ a different, more gut-feeling approach to choosing a restaurant, and it works for us.

✅ We Judge a Restaurant by the Vibe and Authenticity

Is the restaurant populated by locals? (A sign that the food is genuine and well-regarded in the community).

✅The appearance of the bread—specifically if it looks sad, dry, or mass-produced—is a major red flag."

✅ We judge a restaurant by the length of its menu. A short, curated list suggests that the dishes are being freshly prepared by a dedicated chef. Conversely, a menu that reads like a novel often implies the kitchen relies heavily on pre-made and frozen ingredients to manage the volume of options.

✅ Pasta shape diversity is key. Different noodles like farfalle ,  penne paccheri, and tagliolini are a good sign of quality. If all the "pastas" are just one shape served with various sauces, we lose interest.

✅ We always vet the atmosphere before committing to a table. Any place with staff soliciting patrons on the street, using laminated picture menus (especially for simple dishes like spaghetti), is an immediate 'no.' These places are strictly off-limits

✅ Our rule of thumb is to skip any place displaying giant English banners. While English menus are necessary for tourists, we figure if a restaurant has to loudly proclaim they have the 'BEST PIZZA or BEST PIZZA ' in English, it's likely not authentic enough for locals.

✅ We judge a restaurant by its simplest offerings. If the paccheri  alla genovese  or pasta al ragu'   looks genuinely authentic and well-prepared—not like yellow cream or thin ketchup—we'll take a seat."

✅ Always check the daily specials; they usually signify that the kitchen is cooking with the freshest ingredients sourced from the morning market—a true sign of quality

✅  In Italy, good food draws an early crowd. If the dining room is deserted at 1 PM, we should steer clear, it is a red flag !

✅ The final rule is to trust your sense of smell. A gentle aroma of frying garlic is the signal you should enter; a lack of smell, or the presence of burnt/fried oil odor, means you must continue your search

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