One rule of mine, much like the “bread rule” posted earlier: whether or not a restaurant can make a good cheeseburger can tell you about the quality of the rest of the food on the menu. If they fail at a basic cheeseburger, they’ll fail at everything else.
For Mexican it’s the chili relleno. If they do that well, they likely do everything else well.
but you can get better Coke in Europe, for it has real sugar
Never order seafood if you are located more than 50 miles away from where it was caught.
If you are that far inland/away from a freshwater source, chances are, that seafood is at least 24 hours too old to be considered “fresh.” And chefs in landlocked restaurant locations have less experience with properly preparing seafood, especially fish and shrimp dishes.
Corrollary to that: Never order a dish that has an ingredient in it that cannot be obtained anywhere within 100 miles of where you are. Example: Do not order Conch chowder unless you are within 100 miles of Key West. Same goes for Key Lime pie (You can get away with key lime pie pretty much anywhere in Florida; but if it’s GREEN, it ain’t made of key limes. Proper key lime pie is yellow because the lime juice isn’t that green.) Anything with mangoes: Just how old are those mangoes that went into the black bean salsa in Kentucky? Ew. Unless you’re in the area where the specialty item is found (e.g., you’re in Maine, so order lobster), stick to basics. Get the chicken.
I would never order Lake Erie perch or walleye in Florida and I’d never order Spanish Mackeral in Ohio.
I am a cook. If you have a life-threatening food allergy, TELL THEM! Really, tell them. Otherwise your food may come in contact with the allergen. Or it may be put on the dish like normal, and removed when the cook reads the message. But if you let them know it could kill you, they would do it over if need be.
Not telling them mushrooms can kill you, might just kill you.
Absolutely. Many years ago I was travelling with my family. We were headed towards Erie, and my father got on his CB to get some restaurant recommendations. A trucker suggested Howard Johnson’s. Earlier in that vacation we ate at HoJo’s – maybe that very one – and it was the most vile restaurant experience we’d ever had. So the trucker recommended another place. And we went there! The food was predictably horrible.
As for there being no bad restaurants in San Francisco, there sure are. I hit them with 100% accuracy.
Pad Thai fills that role in Thai food for me.
I would think that a red or green curry can fill it even better.
I live in Singapore. 80% of the population is Chinese. In 10 years Living here u
I have yet to eat proper Chinese food from a buffet.
Well, there’s food, then there’s fuel. Mickey-D is perfectly fine as fuel and, lunch on a 500-mile day, fuel is what I’m looking for. Dinner is for food.
Truckstops: I generally find it’s the easy parking aspect that is true. Of course, if two or three are adjacent and their parking is more or less equal, go for the crowded one.
I remember ages ago in Playboy there was a cartoon of a girl (from the back) dancing on the counter in just panties. The entire background is filled with hulking truckers, sandwiches in hand, looking on appreciatively; center-front there is this small “American Gothic” couple looking up in dismay. The counterman is telling them, "You didn’t think they came to eat this slop, did you?
We had 50/50 good luck in asking hotel desk clerks where they went to eat. In Prague, we ended up at what the clerk described as a “sports bar.” It turned out to be sort of a bar, and sort of sports, in that there was a drunken soccer team celebrating something, but we had the greatest cheap food there, but in Vienna the clerk recommended a place that was twice what we wanted to spend (wie sagt man “kickback?”) so we went to a nearby coffee shop that was what we wanted in the first place.
And if it is a mobile food coach with a huge line out front, the food will be excellent. Mmmm, taco trucks down by the car wash on a Sunday morning, with 'leventy-twelve folks in line. Carnitas to die for. The line was so long, I had to see what was going on and am so glad I did…
Related to the seafood rule:
Do not order grits of any form (but particularly not shrimp and grits) unless the place has GOOD sweet tea. If they can’t make sweet tea, kitchen staff aren’t southern enough to make good grits.
Now, please note that I am NOT saying that their grits will be good if they do have good sweet tea, just that at least then you have a fighting chance.
Having Pepsi products instead of Coke is another warning sign, but due to chain restrictions, sometimes that one can’t be avoided.
The ethnicity of the restaurant staff should match the ethnicity of the food. An Irish pub that’s run by Hispanic people is probably not going to be terribly authentic. Chinese food made by anyone but Chinese people is guaranteed to be the worst Chinese food you’ve ever had.
At least in the Eastern Carolinas (where there are many excellent barbecue and seafood places), the presence of Pepsi products is not a sign of bad food. EVERYONE has Pepsi down there because that’s where Pepsi was created (New Bern, NC). It’s just one of those regional pride things; similarly, Coke is ubiquitous in the Atlanta area because that’s where the Coke empire is.
I do agree on the grits thing. Overly fancy shrimp and grits can be another warning sign. This one restaurant near me puts chorizo of all things in their shrimp and grits (are they trying to make paella? I don’t get it), and the last couple of times I ordered “plain” grits, the cook had put herb cheese in them. Just…no. 
There are a fair number of people who like mediocre food. There are other people who prize convenience over quality when getting food. These people are found in every ethnic and demographic group, and in every profession (Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares has shown people like this who have become chefs). They’re why it’s always risky to ask a stranger for a restaurant recommendation. There’s no way to guarantee that whoever you’re asking for a restaurant recommendation isn’t someone who likes mediocre food.
When traveling abroad, I like to eat at McDonalds once. I have two rules:
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You must order something you cannot order in the US. Ebi-burger in Tokyo, spaghetti in Manila, etc.
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If you have two small children, all McDonalds pretentions go out the window.
I dunno … maybe the owner just likes to give cops a discount out of gratitude for their service and/or the perceived safety benefit of being regularly patronized by cops.
Fair enough. I make plenty of trips along the I-40 corridor in NC to the same locations: to visit my family, or to visit the beach. I’ve made this drive literally hundreds of time. The trip itself is no longer exciting to me. I’ve wanted a train along this corridor, or failing that a teleportation device, for many years. I just want to be there. The journey is meaningless in this case: prolonging the journey by eating somewhere nice will just mean that by the time I get to my destination, I’ll be too tired to visit with my family.
If I’m on vacation and traveling somewhere new along new roads, that’s a different story, and I’m very likely to be eating somewhere well away from the highway; then that rule doesn’t apply.
If you’re out of town, ask the locals. We were in Winthrop, WA and had the greatest pizza ever when we did this. On our way to Seattle, we did this again and got recommended an amazing restaurant that I couldn’t have possibly found without directions.