Unfortunately, a great number of turistas must like eating at chain places. It must be true, because otherwise, I cannot imagine why in NYC places like Chilis, TGIFridays and their ilk have a HUGE presence.
VCNJ~
Heh, I’ve been a woefully ignorant front desk clerk. I made minimum wage. Trust me- you didn’t want spend your vacation at the motley assortment of taco shacks and dive bars that constituted my world. I’d never been to the bistros and ocean-view pseudo Italian restaurants most people would consider to be “nice places”.
Beyond that, I found when I gave recommendation for my favorite pieces of local color (like the tiny one-chef open kitchen fine Italian restaurant that plays ear splitting gangsta rap and has disco lights, or the best burrito in town, which they make at the back counter of a non-descript mexican grocery) people would return pissed off. I found that most people want crap- someplace that isn’t Denny’s but JUST LIKE Denny’s for breakfast, fast food for lunch, and mediocre “continental” food at an overpriced restaurant with a large “ocean view” sign out front and free garlic bread and white tablecloths to distract people from the frozen seafood for dinner. Try telling them about the authentic “Chinese food you could actually find in China” place or the fresh oyster man at the farmer’s market and their eyes glaze over. For a lot of people, a night at the Olive Garden is a fancy meal out.
shudder
Hubby and I went on a trip with a couple like this. We ended up eating at loud bar/resturant places with names like “Alligator Joes” that had the menu printed on the place mat (consisting of mainly burgers and mixed drinks.)
We were in a huge city, and Hubby and I were longing to try the myriad Japanese, Kosher, Slavic and Mexican resturants, but ended up, every night, eating wings and fries.
I do have to say that the Maine tourist office (somewhere near Freeport, I think) was really helpful. I had a tip that Mount Tumbledown was a nice day-hike. None of the people had heard of it (it was a couple of hours away, near a tiny place called Weld), but they found it in a hiking guide, and gave me a photocopy. Very helpful people there.
Eehm…if you want concierge service, please stay in a hotel that has a concierge not a Red Roof Inn. Front desk attendants are hired and paid to check people in and out of hotel rooms. The job has a huge turn over and almost anyone who applies will get hired. Now if you cannot afford to stay in a hotel that has a concierge just call or stop by a hotel with one. Ask your questions and you will get well informed answers. Do not forget to tip. Quality service and information is worth a generous gratuity.
Hey, you must be referring to my favorite people-watching restaurant in Santa Cruz!
Back to the OP: most tourist centers in the US are run by the local Chamber of Commerce, and there seems to be an unfortunate natural relationship between such things and chain restaurants. When the local CofC wants to make up a new brochure, they can call an easily-rechable corporate flack who can send them their standard multi-color professional ad that they use chain-wide, with just the location added. When they call Joe’s Crab Shack, there’s either no-one aswering the phone or Joe is too busy serving customers to talk advertising.
The result is that it’s the chains that provide money to the CofC, and I’ll bet they want kickbacks by means of referrals. If a Captain D’s exec is on vacation and stops at a local tourist center with whom they spend advertising bucks, he/she is going to want to hear Captain D’s mentioned before Joe’s Crab Shack.
It’s a shame that in so many fields, large advertising budgets and mediocrity correlate so closely.
I see you’ve met my mother.
Several years ago when my folks were RVing around the South, my mom got up the gumption to take a bus tour of the French Quarter. Spent the whole day in the heart of New Orleans, home to some of the best food in the country. Where did she dine?
Subway and Taco Bell.
There aren’t enough :smack: in the world.
Now I know my mom is (1) cheap as cheap can be and (2) afraid of unusual cuisine; I didn’t expect her to go Cajun or spend a lot on a fancy place. And I’ve never been to New Orleans. But there have GOT to be little coffee shops, diners, bakeries, pushcarts, SOMEPLACE where she could have had a sandwich, a pastry, SOMETHING that didn’t have a national franchise logo stamped on it. Nope. Subway and Taco Bell.
I can’t believe I’m related to these people.
I used to live on Seabright and Murray- there is a row of blue shack-apartment-house things a couple blocks down Murray. Lucio used to give me discounts and I’d go in for pasta primavera once a week or so. I even worked there for a day.
I’m currently visiting San Francisco (and fighting a major case of bronchitis, but that’s another matter) with my husband. We were here for a couple days a full year ago, and are currently touring without the benefit of any map. So on Monday we were sitting in this Irish pub, eating lunch and dodging the rain, and thinking gosh, maybe we should check out Ghirardelli Square, wasn’t there an Indian food restaurant there a year ago that we didn’t get to eat at but wanted to? We asked the waiter how far off the square was, thinking that we were pretty darned close but maybe we were mistaken. Turns out that he’s lived here for three weeks, but he thinks it’s probably close because he’s heard the stop announced on the bus line he takes to work.
Deciding to trust our year-old memories, we stepped out into the rain and headed one whole block to find - voila, Ghirardelli Square. One block away, and on his bus route.
Then again, we also found another Irish pub from a year prior by taking a trolley then getting off at a point we thought maybe looked kind of familiar, then wandering several blocks in the direction we thought was right, not to mention a great, obscure hole-in-the-wall Thai joint as well. So maybe we’re just good at finding our way around. (The Thai place was still great! Caters mainly to a lunch crowd, mostly laborers with some businesspeople. Kitchen all up front galley-style, super-fast service. No atmosphere but who cares? They had the Teletubbies on TV for an extra-surreal experience.)