Mx Johnnycakes, How do you find all these restaurants?
There are some great sites with national and local pages like Eater and The Infatuation
Many cities have a sort of chamber of commerce-style magazine promoting local business - such as Boston Magazine
Local papers, for instance the Boston Globe, NYT, or SF Chronicle
Award websites can be useful, such as World's 50 Best, Michelin, or James Beard, although primarily the upscale-luxury range
Find the pop-ups and supper clubs. (They usually work primarily on Instagram) Most of the best food and cutting-edge culinary stuff is happening in the rent-free spaces!
VERY occasionally there might be a good facebook group in a city or area. Don't expect much.
Yelp is...not great. Use it as a last resort and expect it to be wrong. Same for Zagat, not very useful.
Always look for the rapidly-gentrifying parts of the cities/regions, where rents are relatively low. We're looking for places with lots of street art and nervous yuppies checking to see if they locked their car.
If there is food for sale in the parking lot of a Home Depot, it's a lock to be delicious.
1 out of 100 random hole-in-the-wall places will be the best food of your life. The rest will be extremely mid. Proceed with extreme skepticism unless you have good intel.
If there are 3-5 people waiting in a line out the door run to it. If there are more than 20 in line, run away.
Great general websites for recipes:
Substack/Blogs I like:
Anna Jones - incredible food, usually veg and often vegan
Chucky Cruz - fantastic flavors, especially all things meat
Ruth Tam - one of the best dessert/bread/pastry recipe writers I've read, leans toward East Asian flavors/techniques
Save me a Slice - Another dessert-focused recipeer
Chinese Cooking Demystified - Pretty much what it says
Mala Market - great Sichuan food
Masienda - awesome Latin American recipes
Wood & Spoon - publisher of one of my favorite cookie recipes