Restaurant research....

Will check it out.

I have used Eater in looking at restaurants, generally pretty good picks. Also look for Timeout, somewhat limited in coverage, but where they do cover, the picks are usually very good. Their Timeout Markets are also neat to visit, a nice mix of stalls and options.

I also like to search for food blogs by individuals. You can see their post history and get a sense if their dining style is close to yours, and if so, I have found some gems. You can find smaller places that rarely get mentioned, that these people stumbled on or had recommended to them.

I generally avoid crowdsourced type sites like Tripadvisor, yelp, and others. They can be good for collecting names of places, but crap for determining if they are any good. Too many bogus reviews and noise. I also make a point to avoid any place featured on a celebrity chef or TV food show. Part of the time they are just out of my interest area (not into high end gourmet places) and the rest of the time the publicity has meant stifling crowds and a decline in quality.

Wow, Paul, great suggestions. I had never heard of Timeout, I will look for it next. Agree completely about the popular "ratings" sytems- TripAdvisor and such. They are highly manipulable. I have found Andrew Zimmern and his "Spilled Milk" blog (subscription) to be a good and reliable source, and I also get a lot of good techniques and recipes from him. He's the real thing, despite being a "media personality".
But how do you search for 'food blogs by like-minded individuals"? I could use some help on that one.

I usually start by searching "food blogs [city or country interested in]"

For example, doing that for Rome, turns up Katie Parla, a well known blogger, but also loads of other possibilities. Same for other cities. Amsterdam turned up "Eat and Tell Amsterdam", info by "Those Dam Guys" who also run tours, and "Amsterdam Foodie".

The only caveat is try to find dates of postings, a five year old posting is not worth much these days, except for a lead on a possibility.

You can also search Youtube, again "Amsterdam Food" and video blogs will turn up, with the bonus of more visual info.

GREAT suggestions, thanks.

Thanks for the info. Topic bookmarked!

I agree with Paul's tips above, and I have a couple to add -- if you have a like-minded source, for example Fodor's, and you put their restaurants into your google maps, you can scroll down and get google's related 'people also searched for' which will give you similar places either in type of cuisine or neighborhood or both. Then go to their webpages and see what you think.

One sort-of hack is to do this on a big screen in a browser window and then try clicking on the red dots that don't have names listed next to them -- because google pushes sponsored content to you unless you actively try to get past the first couple of screens.

I used to say that another good tip isn't just to not go by crowd-sourced ratings but to seek out places that don't have their own webpages, but that isn't as good an indicator as it used to be -- just as Rick has recently changed his mind about laminated menus.

Did The Pantry show up under EATER for Amsterdam? Its a delicious, small, very popular Dutch restaurant that is really delicious. Reservations required.

These are great suggestions, all. And to the question about the Pantry, I haven't gotten through the "Eater 38" yet. I will report back.

I am also subscribed to Andrew Zimmern's "Spilled Milk" blog where, among other things, he takes questions from members. IMHOP, to quote Anthony Bourdain, Zimmern is "the real thing"- a celebrity chef who can, and did, actually COOK, and fromwhat I can tell in print, seems like a hell of a nice guy. Here are his restaurant recommendations for Amsterdam:

Amsterdam dining guide: Bak for vegetable-forward fine dining, serious gastronomy at Kaagman & Kortekaas, fine dining at Daalder, farm-to-table in a transformed greenhouse at De Kas, casual French food at Troef, seafood at Pesca, Indonesian food at Blauw, bistro fare at Café-Restaurant Amsterdam, Rijsel for the best rotisserie chicken in Amsterdam and a late lunch at Hotel De Goudfazant.

KD, not the Pantry did not show up in Eater's "38 Best", which is a pretty eclectic hit-or-miss collection, though valuable for the most part.