A few weeks ago, I was walking near Pike Place Market in Seattle in search of snowy market photos. No snow, of course. Seattle is always a bit of a tease; you'll see a handful of flurries, and then it's just freezing rain for the rest of the night.
But while I was down there, I was walking next to two men, roughly in their early to mid-30s, when one pulled out his phone and said, "Hey Siri, take me to the best seafood restaurant nearby."1
I had questions. Many questions. First, do people actually use Siri? Second, do people actually trust Siri? It was a very confident command, too; this wasn't his first time asking Siri for epicurean advice.
I'll give those two dudes the benefit of the doubt and assume they were tourists because I can't imagine a self-respecting local eagerly handing over such an important question to Siri.
As someone who writes and makes things in the food and drink space, I'm genuinely curious about where people get their recommendations when traveling. Social media? Google reviews? Publications like Eater/Timeout? Or even some AI recommendation engine these days?
At one point, I was probably what you would call a foodie. In my younger years, I prided myself on cultivating a sensibility for food and drink. I never brandished the foodie label, though. Hell no. That's the equivalent of having a "live, laugh, love" sign proudly displayed on the fireplace mantle.
But I might as well have.
How often have I searched "best restaurants in Lisbon" or "where to get the best cocktail in Rome" or some variation. How many times, when I'm feeling a little peckish, have I pulled out Google Maps and performed a quick scan of the nearby restaurants - 4.5 stars and above only though because I have taste.
But without fail, whenever I would go to one of those restaurants, or bars, or whatever “hidden gem” the internet told me to “eat like a local,”2 I always end up next to some other American tourists who read the same damn blog or used the same map filters I did.
Which made me ask myself, why exactly am I here?
A few days ago, I was listening to this podcast with Ezra Klein and
about taste - what it is, how you get it, and how we lost it. I've been reading Kyle's work for a while now, and we share the same general malaise around the intersection of tech and culture. Anyway, it's a good listen.I was reminded of this old website I used back in the day called StumbleUpon. The concept was pretty simple: you'd click a button, and StumbleUpon would bring you to a random website on the internet. Take a look for a few seconds. If it's not interesting, click again. Each click was a new portal to some part of the world. It made me voraciously curious, eagerly clicking away to find something new to learn or a niche of the internet to explore.
There were a lot of clicks, though. I’d be willing to bet that most of the time, I clicked away pretty quickly. Not because the website it sent me to was inherently bad but because it just didn’t fit my interest. But when I found something cool, oh man, was it magic.
Eventually, social media became more dominant, and StumbleUpon went away. Our taste became distilled into a series of metrics, and we ceded our sense of self discovery to The Algorithm. Which jives pretty well with our relentless desire to optimize our lived experience. But in doing so, it feels like we’ve settled into a generic, pervasive sameness.
I think about this when I'm on the road because it's where I should be having a diverse range of experiences. But travel and food media has a pretty bad echo chamber. If you take a cross-section of most travel publications and influencers3, they all tend to recommend the same places. Or worse, restaurants making foodie clickbait. So, if I let reviews and guides dictate too many of my culinary decisions, more likely than not, I’d be left with something that doesn't look all that diverse. Chances are you could plop whatever cafe I ended up at into the middle of downtown Seattle, and I wouldn't know the difference. Is that what I traveled all this way for? It’s also particularly stark when everyone inside the cafe looks like you and everyone outside the cafe doesn’t.
The quantified taste means that, if I’m not careful, it's entirely possible to have a perfectly serviceable and frictionless experience wherever I am in the world. But we're stories, not data. And there are few mediums better for storytelling than food (and drink), which is probably why I feel this algorithmic overreach so acutely at a dinner table. Especially outside the U.S., where, in my experience, reviews are a far worse predictor of a quality meal.
For me, the antidote is randomness - more of that old StumbleUpon energy. A way to introduce me to things that I didn’t even know were out there. So, over the last few years, I started this secret rebellion against the foodie tourism complex. Often, I’ll try to forego any rankings and reviews and rely on instinct. No travel guides, no reviews, nothing - just walk and see what looks good. It's laughable because it's an act that was necessary only a few years ago, yet these days feels so novel. But it offers the unexpected, and that feels like precious currency.
Of course, I've had plenty of meals that just aren't good, or overpriced, or both. But you have to risk a bad meal for a great one. And if you spend enough time somewhere, you start to learn what to look out for, how to order, what to order, and when to order it. Eventually, you'll stumble upon something truly phenomenal, and chances are you'll have it all to yourself.
A few pictures from the last ~ month around Seattle.
Oh, and this gull was just not having it
As always, thanks for reading.
-Skylar
Good Reads
The discovery of the Americas' long-lost 'Rome'
I Hate Myself Because I Don't Work For BuzzFeed (old, but still very relevant)
Now that my rant is over and I’m off my soapbox, if you’re curious what seafood restaurant Siri will actually take you to around Pike Place Market, here ya go:
On a related note, I think it's time to retire the "eat like a local" bit. Frankly, the locals don't have time to eat where we're eating because the Airbnb we stay in is pushing them to live an hour outside the city. The locals are cooking at home, and when they're not, in many places around the world, they're going to McDonald's. Which is fine, it's totally fine, but let's not pretend the locals are going to be found in a restaurant named “sparrow.”
A sub-rant: taking a bite of a taco, looking at the camera, and going "mmmm,” tells me nothing. Can we stop?
My wife and I actually say to each other, “I miss Stumble Upon,” for exactly the reasons you said, and we’ve resorted to just trying places when we travel. Some are dull, but some are pretty awesome. We found a place in Paris that way that was one of the highlights of our trip, in part because there was no English on the menu and the wait staff didn’t speak English and so we just took our chances with our crap French and had a great meal. Anyway, a piece of counter-evidence: a local guy writing a Substack about the best bagels in Seattle that I’ve come to enjoy. https://itsashanda.substack.com/
You've definitely tapped into something here. I love traveling and eating, but there are so many great reviews that lead to "meh" places. I have tended to like Rick Steves recommendations because they feel less touristy and somehow more authentic? But also the act of him funneling Americans towards x or y restaurant feels like it will change the place. Maybe randomness is the answer.