How to find the best local food in any city you arrive in, using systems that work in any language and any context.

The method that works everywhere: walk to a residential neighborhood 10-20 minutes from the tourist center. Find the streets where locals shop — look for produce markets, butchers, small grocery stores. The restaurants in these streets serve the local population, not tourists, and are priced accordingly.

Google Maps as a local restaurant finder: search 'restaurant' in an area away from tourist zones. Sort by rating and look at the number of reviews. A restaurant with 200 reviews averaging 4.3 from a local area is a better indicator than a restaurant with 2,000 reviews averaging 4.5 on the main tourist street (which may be rating-bombed by locals who work there).

The lunch rush indicator: walk through a neighborhood around 12:30-1:30pm (or whenever local lunch happens) and look for where the working-age locals are eating. This is the actual cheap good food.

Hostel staff recommendations: ask specifically 'where do you eat when you're not at work?' This gets a different answer than 'where should tourists go?' The former is local information, the latter is curated tourist information.

The language barrier approach: in a restaurant with no English menu and a language you don't speak, the safest approach is to ask the server what the most popular dish is (point gesture: index finger, questioning expression). You'll get the dish the kitchen does best.