Helen, Help Me: How Do I Get Beyond Tripadvisor?
Ilove to travel, and I love to eat, so whenever I go to a new place I want to eat well there. In particular, I want to eat at a restaurant where I would want to eat if I lived there, but it’s hard to figure out where to start! In a city like Paris or London or New York, there’s analysis paralysis; for a smaller place like, say, Lewes, Delaware, there often aren’t many obvious sources of information other than Tripadvisor rankings. I have all the standard gripes of any tourist uncomfortable with over-tourism, and I don’t want to go to a place that mainly caters to out-of-towners. What do you do? —Alex R., Maryland
For a long time, I travelled almost entirely to eat. Any trip, to anywhere in the world, was built around meals. I would pick a hotel in Barcelona specifically for ease of early-morning access to El Quim de la Boqueria, for breakfasts of chipirones and eggs. I’d time my flight to Nashville so that my cab could drop me off at Arnold’s Country Kitchen with plenty of time to tuck into turnip greens and a slice of hot-pepper chocolate pie before the place closed for the day at two-forty-five. I once gamed out a route through Mexico City’s sprawling Mercado de la Merced that would allow me time to revive my appetite between downing a huarache near the entrance and picking up tacos de cabeza at a cart near the back. I’ve put in the work, is what I’m saying, and what I’ve learned, over and over again, is that effort is almost always rewarded, sure—but also that optimized itineraries are not synonymous with maximized delight. There is no single best taco. There is no ultimate, Platonic ideal of a bistro. There is no one magnificent bowl of ramen that casts shame on all the others.
Still, every time I have a trip coming up, I drive myself a little bonkers. Often, I turn to food-world friends for recommendations—I’ll shower blessings forever on the Paris-based cook and writer Rebekah Peppler, for example, who helped me figure out the lay of the land for a recent trip to the South of France—but you don’t need to know inside sources to get good intel. Most of the hot tips that Peppler gave me, like the fact that you can find the finest pan bagnat in Antibes at a beachside shack called Chez Josy, are also found somewhere in the pages of her gorgeous cookbook “Le Sud,” so I needn’t have pestered her at all. Indeed, place-specific cookbooks are among the most underrated travel guides: their introductions, chapter openers, and recipe headnotes often name-drop particularly excellent restaurants, culinarily exciting neighborhoods, and other insider tips that might otherwise have been cut for concision in an internet listicle or a printed travel guide.
One simple truth, somewhat bittersweet, is that there just aren’t that many real dining secrets out there anymore. If a food or travel writer has been to a restaurant, and that establishment is even a smidge better than average, you can be sure that ink has been spilled. When I’m searching out recommendations, I privilege individual social-media accounts and newsletters over crowdsourced websites and apps like Yelp, Beli, and Tripadvisor. (According to Tripadvisor, the No. 1 and No. 23 restaurants in New York City are Sicily Osteria and Piccola Cucina Osteria, neither of which I have ever heard of.) I like going to at least one super-touristy restaurant when I’m somewhere new, because it’s fun to see how any given city thinks it ought to be packaging itself to visitors, but mostly I’m with you on wanting to avoid tourist traps. I seek out a great place for a local-style breakfast, always—it’s my favorite meal, when I’m travelling, and an easy way to avoid touristic banality. I look for places with great sandwiches, great late-night spots, the oldest restaurant in town, the second-oldest, anywhere Anthony Bourdain ate, and then anywhere that some guy on Reddit says Bourdain should have eaten. Most important, I believe, is to build in flexibility, both in your plans and in your expectations. We made it to Antibes, on that recent trip, but nowhere near Chez Josy and its Peppler-approved, allegedly exquisite sandwiches—so I got a pan bagnat from a different beach stand, and it was horrible, an appallingly bad example of the form, with dry bread and hardly any tomato and listless hunks of tuna and egg. But it sated my hunger, and anyway I was standing in the warm sun on a Riviera beach, with the waters of the Mediterranean lapping at my toes.
So, O.K., let’s put my preaching into practice. For a visit to Lewes, Delaware—jewel of Sussex County! One of the first Colonial settlements in America! Home of, apparently, a flower festival!—I’d focus on cutting through the noise of the big, obvious tourist spots. A search for the oldest restaurant in town doesn’t turn up much. Sussex Tavern, a re-creation of a circa-1740 inn that’s managed by Lewes’s historical society, serves no food but does offer drinks based on recipes from an eighteenth-century ledger found in the village archives. A three-year-old Delaware Today article about restaurants operating in historically significant buildings mentions a trio of very lovely-looking Lewes spots in adjacent Victorian-era mansions, the most appealing of which, to me, is a place called Heirloom, which seems both modern and a bit fussy, perfect for a special-occasion dinner. On to Reddit: a recent post asking for dinner ideas between Lewes and nearby Bethany Beach surfaces some expected answers, such as the tourist-fave Matt’s Fish Camp, but also some more interesting ideas, such as Cabañas, a no-frills Salvadoran restaurant, whose Google reviews (always cross-check!) overwhelmingly wax rhapsodic about the pupusas. Seems like a terrific option for takeout to bring to the beach. Another commenter suggests the Surfing Crab, “a hidden local gem,” they say, though it can’t be that secret, since it’s ranked pretty high on Tripadvisor. It is reportedly operated by third-generation seafood shackers, with a wood-panelled interior and a sun-faded vinyl sign outside. Seems promising! The menu offers devilled eggs and an all-you-can-eat crab dinner with a two-hour limit and the exhilarating disclaimer “NO SHARING! MUST EAT ENTIRE CRAB (including Claws), Violators Will be Charged, Children Do Not Eat Free.” This, to me, sounds like heaven.
Helen, Help Me!
E-mail your questions about dining, eating, and anything food-related, and Helen may respond in a future newsletter.
I’ve been making Caesar salad for more than forty years. Same basic dressing recipe: lemon juice, olive oil, anchovies, red-wine vinegar, perhaps a splash of white-wine vinegar if it’s around, usually a small dollop of Dijon, a few glugs of Worcestershire, an egg, and, of course, garlic. For the first thirty-odd years, I painstakingly mashed four or five cloves of garlic into a wooden bowl. I’d mince the anchovies by hand. Then I’d shake it all up in a container until everything blended into a dressing. This was time-consuming, and sometimes messy. Now I just emulsify all the ingredients in a blender. I still like my Caesar. Am I evil? —Gary M., British Columbia
I myself use a blender nearly always, and I’ve been known to use mayonnaise in lieu of a raw egg. If a vegetarian is around, I drop the anchovy entirely and crumble in a sheet of toasted nori for umami instead. So, no, your Caesar technique does not make you evil. But I suppose you could still be evil for any number of non-salad-related reasons. ♦
New Yorker Favorites
In the weeks before John Wayne Gacy’s scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate.
What HBO’s “Chernobyl” got right, and what it got terribly wrong.
Why does the Bible end that way?
A new era of strength competitions is testing the limits of the human body.
How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons.
An essay by Toni Morrison: “The Work You Do, the Person You Are.”
Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker.
Helen Rosner, a staff writer at The New Yorker, received a 2025 James Beard Award for her Profile of the food personality Padma Lakshmi.
More:
Yelp
Recommendations
Out of town
Delaware
Read More
“Final Boy”
Fiction
“Final Boy”
“Oh, you write fan fiction,” she said. “We all write fan fiction,” I told her. “Some of us are just more honest about it.”
By Sam Lipsyte
Winter Culture Previews
Goings On
Winter Culture Previews
What’s happening this season in music, movies, television, dance, art, and theatre.
By Marina Harss
A Superbloom of Daring Theatre Hits New York
Goings On
A Superbloom of Daring Theatre Hits New York
Also: Ben and Amy Stiller’s poignant documentary about their parents, the lustrous songs of Neko Case, a new dive bar with pizza, and more.
By Sheldon Pearce
Richard Move Channels Martha Graham
Goings On
Richard Move Channels Martha Graham
Also: idiosyncratic bookstores, a retrospective for Vaginal Davis, the new Springsteen movie, and more.
By Sheldon Pearce
Mark Bittman’s Experiment in Sliding-Scale Fine Dining
On and Off the Menu
Mark Bittman’s Experiment in Sliding-Scale Fine Dining
Fine-dining restaurants are premised on exclusivity and scarcity. What happens when patrons can pay what they want?
By Hannah Goldfield
Can the Golden Age of Costco Last?
Annals of Business
Can the Golden Age of Costco Last?
With its standout deals and generous employment practices, the warehouse chain became a feel-good American institution. In a fraught time, it can be hard to remain beloved.
By Molly Fischer
Renoir’s Surprising Experiments in Perception
Goings On
Renoir’s Surprising Experiments in Perception
Also: a Quadrophenia ballet, the brave women of “Liberation,” the cultural business of affairs, and more.
By Sheldon Pearce
Mo Amer Has Survived by Being Funny
The New Yorker Interview
Mo Amer Has Survived by Being Funny
The comedian discusses flying in Jimmy Kimmel’s jet, beefing with Jerry Seinfeld, and the “weight” of talking about Palestine on his new standup special, “Wild World.”
By Andrew Marantz
How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood
A Critic at Large
How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood
For most of human history, monsters were repugnant aberrations, breaches of the natural and moral order. What’s behind our relentless urge to humanize them?
By Manvir Singh
David Byrne’s Career of Earnest Alienation
Profiles
David Byrne’s Career of Earnest Alienation
At seventy-three, the former front man of Talking Heads is still asking questions about what it means to be alive. But now he’s also offering ideas of hopefulness and service.
By Amanda Petrusich
A Dark Ecologist Warns Against Hope
Books
A Dark Ecologist Warns Against Hope
For years, Paul Kingsnorth was one of the most visible members of the green movement. Then he walked away from it. Now he wants us to walk away from everything else.
By Cal Revely-Calder
David Grann on St. Clair McKelway’s “Old Eight Eighty”
Takes
David Grann on St. Clair McKelway’s “Old Eight Eighty”
The three-part series, about an elderly counterfeiter, established a template for narratives about small-time grifters.
By David Grann
The New Yorker
Sections
NewsBooks & CultureFiction & PoetryHumor & CartoonsMagazineCrosswordVideoPodcasts100th AnniversaryGoings On
More
Manage AccountShop The New YorkerBuy Covers and CartoonsCondé Nast StoreDigital AccessNewslettersJigsaw PuzzleRSSSite Map
AboutCareersContactF.A.Q.Media KitPressAccessibility HelpUser AgreementPrivacy PolicyYour California Privacy Rights
© 2025 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices
Privacy Information