If You Spot This In A Restaurant Window On Vacation, It's Probably A Tourist Trap

Food is a treat for the senses. The smells are important, and the taste is obviously the point. But unfortunately, the eyes can deceive you. And if your eyes are driving you to a certain restaurant because of the gleaming food in the window, or if the menu is built like a visual sales pitch, be warned: you're probably in a tourist trap.

Imagine you're in Rome to kick off your Italian vacation, and you're looking for some authentic Italian food. You pass a small café, and in the window are rows of lurid pizza slices, overstuffed cannoli, stale panettone, and biscotti. Stromboli slices line up on a plate, half-gone as if somebody had already eaten the rest. These culinary fashion models may trick your brain into thinking this food is what you came for, but make no mistake: that rubbery food display is one of the telltale signs a tourist spot won't be worth the hype. 

Don't confuse a restaurant advertising dinner plates in a window with a pâtisserie that lines windows with fresh pastries, where you see the numbers dwindling over the day. But if the food looks untouched and staged, especially if it's a meal normally served warm, be warned. Like a street vendor who beams over his cardboard dancing frogs, only for you to discover after you've taken one home that it was attached by an invisible string to the huckster, these restaurants are all about surface over substance. They have spent money creating fake food or shellacking real dishes to hide the fact that they can't attract customers based on the smell, taste, or reputation of their restaurant. In a way, they need to bait people to come in. And what pretty bait it is.

Fast food restaurants have menus with big, beautiful pictures of their food. If you go to a nice restaurant, like one of Los Angeles' best-kept secrets, the Michelin-starred Holbox, expect a menu that simply describes the food, regardless of how complex or exotic. If the menu at the restaurant you're visiting on vacation makes it seem they need to stage photos of their food, they likely believe their food isn't good enough to bring in customers based on their reputation. A tourist trap doesn't want to challenge you to expand your horizons and taste buds by trying something you don't recognize; they want to entice your eyes and leave your other senses out of it.

That's why they spend the time and money to put a tableau of inedible menu items in the window. That's also why they spend the money to have a stylist create the most sublime images of their menu items. By the time you order your food, it doesn't matter to them if it doesn't match the picture. You might even trick yourself into thinking it was better than it was because you don't want to admit you were taken in. But make no mistake: if the restaurant has to entice your eyes, they likely don't take much stock in their ability to entice your senses of smell and taste. It's a sure sign of culinary mediocrity, up there with the waiter-as-promoter as a sure-fire sign of a restaurant you should avoid at all costs. Pro tip: Spend some time perusing travel media, including islands.com, to make a plan of attack for where to indulge your taste buds and get the most out of every meal on your next trip.