How Travelistas Avoid Bad Food.

Traveling in Italy poses some interesting culinary challenges. While most people think Italy is probably the ONE place on Earth where every meal is fantastic, it's very often the case that you can walk away from lunch thinking you went to Olive Garden down on Main Street, USA.

Here are the top things to look for when choosing a place to eat in Italy if you don't want to anger the foodie gods:

1) If the restaurant has a menu written in English only, or has the words “Tourist Menu”, then avoid it. The most heinous examples of this are probably in Venice where businesses have a captive audience (after all, you'll probably be on an Island), but they can be found all over Italy.

2) Ask if the pasta is fresh and not dry. The best pasta in Italia is fresh, be it pici, spaghetti, tagliatelle, etc. Dry pasta often means that the restaurant is mass producing or that pasta is not actually a specialty.

3) This is probably pretty trite nowadays but dine where you see locals dining. Most locals don't hang out in the historic centers of towns, but when they do, they know where to go. So follow their lead.

4) Don't eat next to a monument or tourist attraction, unless you're there for the view, and not the food. The silver lining is that all over Italy, good restaurants are located just a street or two removed from the sites, literally a stone's throw from major sites, but away from the maddening crowds.

5) Try dining outside the city. Our dining experiences have been best outside the city often at family farms. Who can beat Nonna's home cooking?

Follow these tips, and you'll avoid the mistakes that so many diners have made. Even in Italy!