Look At The Plates

When travelling, there’s a long list of advice people give about how to find a good place to eat:

• Eat where the locals eat

• Avoid menus with photos

• Look for short menus

• Check Google & Trip Advisor reviews

• Avoid restaurants with someone trying to pull you inside

All of that can be useful. But there’s another signal that’s quieter and surprisingly reliable.

Look at the plates.

A hallmark of quality - flowery plates. Koh Kood, Thailand.

If the plates are old, patterned and slightly mismatched, you’re usually in the right place.

Not modern white restaurant plates - this can be a red herring. Not colourful crockery. Not uniform stoneware chosen by an interior designer. The good places often have plates that look like they’ve been there forever.

Floral prints. Gold rims slightly faded. Different patterns mixed together. The sort of plates that feel like they might have come from someone’s grandmother’s cupboard.

Veronese bollito misto - Locanda Castelvecchio

And that usually means something important. It means the restaurant probably wasn’t designed first and cooked in second. It grew slowly and. It’s probably been serving food long enough that the plates have simply accumulated over time.

Places like this tend to prioritise; home cooking, regular customers, continuity. They don’t generally do it as a concept, branding, or pure aesthetic.

Bowls of goodness in good bowls, Kuala Lumpur

Of course, pre-planning for this is not always possible. Sometimes you only notice the crockery when the food arrives and the plate lands on the table. And when that moment does come, it often brings a quiet feeling of relief. You sit back comfortably in the chair and think, “Ah. This is going to be good.”

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