The Three Tiers of Dining (A Working Theory)

In my travels, I have learned a lot about eating abroad safely, mainly through trial and error. Over the years, I’ve had the misfortune of catching a fiendish trifecta of salmonella, e. colli, and cholera. The last one was by far the worst of the three. Given my upcoming trip to several countries in Asia, I thought I would reflect on a theory (I’m using the word “theory” in a very loose context) I developed a few years back regarding how to eat safely abroad.

While it’s not been peer reviewed, I’ve rigorously tested this theory and have experienced the burning consequences of deviating from it. I present to you the Three Tiers of Dining (copyright Vinnie Travels 2025).

The Origins of the Theory

Starting in 2016, I had the pleasure of traveling to China four years in a row. It was always a fascinating experience, but stomach troubles were a frequent occurrence. Seemingly reputable restaurants often gave me the worst trouble. Add to this the abundance of squat toilets and lack of toilet paper in most restrooms in China, and you are looking at an uncomfortable time! Needless to say, I spent considerable time and energy thinking about how to avoid these unpleasant stomach episodes.

After enough experimentation across a dozen or so Chinese cities that I’ve visited, I established my Three Tiers of Dining theory (patent pending). Each tier is organized by price, not quality.

The First Tier – A little dirt doesn’t hurt, A little grime is just fine

In China, the cheapest restaurants often do not have a formal storefront. The “restaurant” might just be a couple of stacked bamboo steamers cooking baozi (包子), or a Mom and Pop shop in a gritty alleyway, or a wok attached to a rolling cart. Don’t be scared off by the rustic nature. I have never gotten ill or had stomach issues at one of these eateries – provided I don’t pile on the spicy sauce or oil.

Contrary to what you might think, the cheapest and dingiest looking food stalls in China are often among the safest to eat at. How can this be? The key is serving temperature. Everything is freshly cooked and served individually. Nothing has been sitting out at room temperature – the most dangerous condition for improper food handling. I tend to frequent the little food stalls with only a few tables and chairs. The cook is probably sleeping with his head on the counter or is smoking a cigarette in the corner. I’ll walk in to order a dish from his wife, who yells at him to wake up. He stumbles over to the open kitchen, just behind the seating area and fires up the grill. Within a few minutes, a piping hot plate of noodles or stir-fried meat and vegetables are served. The whole dish costs two or three US dollars. Simple, authentic, tasty, and safe.

Tier 2 – Danger behind a Gold Fleece

This level of restaurant pricing is where I got sick from most often, in China and elsewhere. These restaurants often have big, bold, brightly colored signs – promising extravagance at an affordable price. In China, they present an authentic and luxurious dining experience, using traditional or classical Chinese characters to evoke a return to a culinary golden age. Beware!

These restaurants may be quite large inside, with a spacious dining area. This space affords the restaurant plenty of room in the back where pre-cooked food can sit out for hours. The food will likely come out much too fast because it will have been preheated. It may even be lukewarm when it arrives at your table. That’s a really bad sign.

In China, when I see a restaurant with décor that leans heavily on Chinese historical symbols, such as red banners, dragons, and gold decorations, I try to steer clear. If you also notice that you are one of the only customers in this massive restaurant, proceed with extreme caution. Seafood and meat are especially risky to order. The faux chic elements of this tier of restaurant make it all the more dangerous for unsuspecting customers who see the fairly high prices and think the food will be safe. The first few times I visited China, I made the mistake of eating at Tier 2 and paid the price in more ways than one.

Tier 3 – Splurging with Purpose

The final tier in this system I’ve theorized is for the established, albeit pricey, restaurants with an international reputation. In China, there are some well-known high-end restaurant chains, such as Dadong (大董烤鸭）or Haidilao (海底捞), that have even made it other parts of the world. I’ve never experienced any issues with them.

Michelin star/guide restaurants exist in the biggest Chinese cities as well. The best tapas I’ve had, believe it or not, was at a restaurant in Shanghai that I found through the Michelin guide. You will end up spending a decent amount of money – a shock when you get used to eating at tier 1 restaurants almost exclusively. The quality, and food safety, make up for it. Nowadays, I will intersperse several visits to these tier 3 restaurants throughout my trips in order to get a bit of variety and higher quality in my meals.

There you have it, the Three Tiers of Dining theory. Using this approach, I am able to minimize my risk of food-related illness without just eating cornflakes and other dried food throughout the trip. For those as frugal as I, the amount of money you save by sticking mainly to the no-frills restaurants in tier 1 will subsidize your visits to the high-end restaurants of tier 3.

There are a couple corollaries that I would further like to introduce to this working theory of mine. These were devised through additional experiences I’ve had outside of China.

Corollary 1: Don’t Mistake a Tier 2 Restaurant for Tier 3

More and more often – all over the world – I see cafes, food trucks, rooftop lounges, craft artisan mobile kitchens, fusion vegan vending machines, and pop-up conceptual dining experiences marketed towards the social media addicted millennial. These restaurants may serve perfectly safe and delicious food. Or they may be tier 2 restaurants in disguise! If you are paying a premium for the “experience” but not necessarily the quality of the food, you may have found yourself a tier 2 eatery. In fact, the higher prices might drive away the locals who would normally contribute to a healthy churn of regularly cooked food. When someone, probably a tourist, falls for the trap of paying extra because of the upside-down bicycle hanging on the wall, the food might have already been sitting out for hours.

Last year, I stumbled upon one of these tier 2 hipster cafes in Mexico City. After viewing the Dia de los Muertos parade, we were hungry. The streets around the trendy Juarez neighborhood were swelling with other hungry people as well. Our first-choice dining option, a tier 3 restaurant, had a two hour wait. There were no tier 1 restaurants in sight. All the tried-and-true taco stands had been priced out of this neighborhood. I settled for what looked like a safe if pricier option.

The restaurant, which served designer cocktails and fusion Mexican-Asian food, was a serious disappointment. I am tempted to write a diatribe of my experience – the overpriced Mexican staples ruined by the “fusion” nature of nondescript Asian cuisine, the rancid goat meat I ate against better judgment, my battle with the pompous waiter. In the end, nothing I write can change the fact that I was the real loser of the visit, becoming violently ill with food poisoning for the next several days. If it wasn’t for the abundance of cheap antibiotics and nonchalance with which the pharmacies in Mexico hand them out, I could have been even sicker.

To avoid being mired in the bitterness of it all, I like to focus on the larger lesson that you cannot trust a restaurant’s espoused image. You must remember the natural laws of food safety that exist among us –no one is above these laws. Look for the signs. Has the food been sitting out? Are there enough customers – particularly locals – to create a healthy rotation of food being cooked? Are you pay five times as much for an inferior version of a tier 1 staple? Answering these questions will help you identify tier 2 from tier 3.

Corollary 2: Each Country is Unique. When in doubt, follow the locals

For the last addendum, I turn to a more recent experience while visiting Barcelona. I ended up staying in the working-class suburb of Badalona. Fueled by an ever-present swarm of tourists descending upon the city like photo-obsessed locusts, Barcelona has a serious lack of housing. Hotels and Airbnbs were prohibitively expensive, so we stayed quite a ways outside of the center. The happy consequence was getting to know a more local neighborhood where Catalan was spoken and not a tourist was in sight.

At a local Badalona restaurant, I ordered a pincho alioli bocadillo, a roast pork and garlic aioli sandwich. I noticed after a few bites that the pork was severely undercooked (in my eyes). It was red and fleshly, like a rare steak. I started panicking, worrying that I had doomed myself to another instance of severe food poisoning. I googled what could happen if you ate raw pork: trichinella, a horrible parasitic illness that could lead to weeks of stomach issues and other severe symptoms. Before continuing down the rabbit hole of potential malaises I had unleashed upon myself, I decided to reach out to a close friend who lives in Barcelona with her Catalan boyfriend. I sent her a text message, asking if this way of preparing pork was normal around these parts.

To my great relief, she replied back quickly telling me that it was really common and that she was not a fan. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, loved to eat pork rare, considering it akin to filet mignon. You wouldn’t want to overcook filet mignon, right?

I later came to learn that while trichinellosis is a very serious disease, food handling practices in Spain have led to practically 0 cases in the past ten years – only privately hunted boar or bear meat bearing any real risk at all.

Food practices that might seem strange or risky in one country are not necessarily so in others. I am particularly wary of food that has been sitting out, but in Spain, this is the norm. Tapas are often left out on display and served when ordered, but they don’t seem to pose any real risk. I recommend asking what the locals are eating and following suit. If they trust the food, you probably will be fine as well (using common sense practices as a supporting supplement of course).

Similarly, Japan’s strict food handling procedures mean that salmonella risk is far lower than in the United States (around 5 times less likely than in the United States). Raw or par cooked eggs are a common ingredient in Japanese cooking. In fact, in some parts of Japan, raw chicken sashimi is even eaten. Personally though, my experience contracting salmonella from (unintentionally) raw chicken in Colombia was enough to pass on the chicken sashimi!