How do you feel when people ask your advice about where to eat out and then speed off as far in the other direction as they can? I had two such visitors recently - two lovely intelligent young Danish interns – who asked me to recommend some decent restaurants in London. They come from Copenhagen, a city that boasts Noma, the world's best restaurant, and they are big food lovers, so I was mindful not to let them down. They wanted curry.

I recommended the superb Pakistani restaurant Tayyabs for its outstanding pakoras and tandoori lamb cutlets. "Do NOT get waylaid on Brick Lane," I warned them. "Especially avoid any restaurant with a waiter clutching a laminated menu and beckoning you in from the doorway." On seeing two glum faces the next day I knew they had stuck to the tourist restaurant highway.



The following week they were craving steak. Where did they go? The Angus Steak House in Leicester Square. I had recommended the express menu (pdf) at Hawksmoor, round the corner in Covent Garden. This is not snobbery, it's about good food and value for money - £22.50 in Hawskmoor buys a delicious salad of nuts, blue cheese, fresh leaves drizzled with a sublime dressing, an outstanding steak and triple-cooked or beef dripping chips followed by a mini ice cream sundae. Angus is a typical tourist gaff, located in a prime spot with bright, beckoning lights. The food is truly grotesque, costs more (pdf) than Hawksmoor, and the service is lousy, as evidenced by this wonderfully repellent description. I had little sympathy for their decision, but it did leave me wondering why they bothered asking for advice.

Two American friends were quite open about their reasons for taking their 10-year-old to TGI Friday's in Cheltenham recently: because it would be in the child's "comfort zone". It was as familiar to them as many a place back home, so they thought it was a safe bet for an enjoyable meal. It was not. They said the fried macaroni and cheese could have doubled as Polyfilla, and the ribs were like sawdust. They could have gone to Brasserie Blanc, with its special children's menu of grilled chicken, fishcake, delicious macaroni cheese, mixed salads, and ice cream, far superior food and, again, spent less than at Friday's.

In Leeds some Italian colleagues decided on Café Rouge because of the central location and familiarity. Just around the corner is Brasserie Forty 4, where, if you rock up earlyish as tourists are wont to do, £22.95 buys three delicious courses and wine.

Visitors choosing to eat at bad restaurants set the reputation of British food back some significant way. Bearing in mind the relatively high quality of restaurants that now exist in the UK, it's a real shame that so many people take home tales of woe about food atrocities. Part of the problem has to be that high profile restaurants – those touting for passing trade with massive shop fronts on a main road - are as a rule not as good as those which are a bit more hidden away.

But this is true pretty much everywhere, and is surely the reason visitors ask for advice in the first place. Quite how it is that so many tourists still end up in the places they encounter on their sightseeing paths is a mystery to me.

It's only natural to behave differently on holidays or business trips than at home, perhaps it's that very thing that creates some truly awful food experiences. Maybe people want to discover something new for themselves, uncover a surprising gem, rather than follow guidebooks or personal recommendations. But then again, I can't imagine my Danish friends going to somewhere like an Angus Steak House back home, so why do so here?