Restaurant menus can be more revealing than you might think — and areas of specialization correspond to a deeper knowledge of particular flavor profiles. Maybe you can order to-go Pad Thai from the bodega in the Polish neighborhood, but at a traditional Thai restaurant, the chef will likely know a lot more about cooking with coconut milk and shrimp paste. Plus, if a restaurant is known for one type of food in a highly competitive food industry, it has to be pretty good just for the place to remain open.
Also, fewer dishes mean fewer ingredients to stock, and chances are that restaurants with simpler menus can better focus on the freshest ones available. Sure, you could order lobster from the sit-down pizza joint, but how often are people really ordering lobster? How long has that little guy been in the tank? And how skilled or experienced is the chef at preparing that dish? Chances are they’re more in the pocket when expertly tossing a circle of dough. Opting for a restaurant with a short, simple menu can be a particularly solid tip for avoiding food poisoning when traveling. As Anthony Bourdain once shared in a CNN interview, “You are far more likely to get ill at the … tourist-friendly restaurant that tries to be everything to everybody, [where] you can have the local specialty but also nachos.”
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