You can save a fortune on restaurant guides and eat well by doing your research before you go.
Roadside
Old-fashioned US diners are increasingly difficult to find among the clutter of Taco Bells, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts. Roadside and Diner City (dinercity.com) try to preserve the phenomenon.
Fodors Restaurants
With particularly good sections on New Orleans, Paris, Provence, Californian wine country, and the 119 eating places in and around Walt Disney World in Florida. It also reviews restaurants in US national parks. The Americans' favourite, Zagat (zagat.com), whose reviews are a hotchpotch of readers' impressions, is occasionally glib but worth checking.
Tokyo Food Page
Where and how to eat and drink in the Japanese capital. You can also download the contents on to a PalmPilot.
Michelin
The new Red Guide for France is currently Britain's best-selling travel book. Do all these people know that all the listings - and directions to them - are available free on this site? The reviews are hardly lyrical, but they are in English. If you're visiting the countryside around Bergerac (as many people plan to do, now that Buzz -buzzaway.com - flies there directly), try pays- de-bergerac.com/pages/vins/. Unfortunately, the gastronomic section hasn't been translated.
New York Restaurant Video Tours
New York Resturant Video Tours
How else are some of us ever going to get into Alain Ducasse? The New York Times's restaurant critic, William Leith, narrates this vicarious taste of US haute cuisine. His most recent reviews can be found at nytimes.com/pages/dining/ columns/. (Visitors to this site need to register, which is free).
San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Franciscans take their food very seriously, even in these hard-up times. The Bay Guardian, along with its rival SF Weekly (sfweekly.com/issues/ current/dining_toc.html), reflects their obsession. The latter even publishes the menus of a few dozen local restaurants.
Wine Country Guide
The Bay Area Traveller advises visitors to the Napa Valley wineries on the best places to stay, taste and picnic. Napavalley .com does an equally good job.
Winestay
Recommends accommodation and restaurants in 23 of Australia's wine regions.
South African Wines
Print out a map of one of the suggested wine routes.
Bordeaux
More of an introduction than a comprehensive guide, Bordeaux, like Champagne (champagne.fr), is a little too much like sitting through a tourist office's slideshow. Burgundy (burgundy-tourism.com) does better.
VegEats!
Not so much gastronomy as necessity. (I'm also hoping that if I mention the World Vegetarian Restaurant Guide, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals will forgive me for implying that leather airline seats were more comfortable than the cloth variety. Let's call a truce).
