UK tourists in Italy visiting restaurants in 'main square' warned

UK tourists in Europe have been warned over a tourist trap if they're heading to restaurants. People have been warned to avoid restaurants in "extremely popular" or "tourist" areas of foreign countries and cities amid the summer getaway.

The Reddit user said: “Located in an extremely popular/touristy area, like right on the main square or right beside a tourist attraction. Not always a tourist trap, but usually a tourist trap.” They went on: “In my experience, the number and variety of items on the menu is inversely related to the quality.

"So if a restaurant has a menu several pages long, especially one that combines several unrelated cuisines, this is a red flag.” The tourist added: “If the restaurant has an employee stationed outside whose job is to rope in more customers, it’s almost certainly a tourist trap.”

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“Menus that have pictures of the food. Again, not always a red flag, but still a frequent indicator of low quality in Italy," they said. “Locals don’t generally need to see a picture of the food to know what it is and whether they want it. This is usually a thing that touristy restaurants do.”

Another said: "Opening hours, genuine Italian restaurants that cater for locals will open for dinner no earlier than 7 while those catering to tourists will open all day. There will obviously be exceptions to this but I found it to be a fairly good rule of thumb when identifying authentic over tourist trap."

"This is a good tip. Look for places that are only open dinner hours — and be aware you might need a reservation for the popular ones and that you might need to make that reservation in italian," another wrote. And another said: "Oh boy.

"There's probably no one single thing that says 'this restaurant is a tourist trap', but there are many red flags you can look for. The more of these flags you see, the more certain you can be that it's a tourist trap."