What’s your favorite method for finding a good restaurant in a new town? Ask friends before you go? Ask a cabby? Grab a guidebook? Dumb luck?

What if you could ask chefs in the new town where they like to go (besides their own restaurant)?

After all, chefs eat out a lot, and they are good judges of restaurants!

So: Who would know better than a chef?

Where Chefs Eat: A Guide to Chefs’ Favorite Restaurants (Phaidon 2013)- chef selection and reviews by British journalist and writer Joe Warwick – aims to do just that. It’s a thick book (663 pages) full of plenty of useful information for a tourist traveling around the world. The first section includes a listing by chef of their favorite restaurants around the world – organized by the chef’s name. If you like Heston Blumenthal, then you can look up the eight restaurants he recommends.

The second section includes reviews organized by country. If you are jetting off to Istanbul, slide the yellow ribbon into that section of the book. There is a handy map, and then a series of reviews. Cinaralt Manalbasi, a grill restaurant in the Bostanci area of the city. Recommended by Peter Gordon. There is a short review – really a description of the “rowdy” restaurant. Like it, then flip back and see what else Peter Gordon recommends – turns out this New Zealander has a restaurant in London called The Providores, as well as restaurant in Istanbul and Auchland. No wonder he knows Istanbul! The other chef recommending restaurants in Istanbul is Turkish – Semsa Denizel, whose restaurant Kantin is mentioned in the front section (but not the reviews – seems chefs can’t recommend their own places).

Where Chefs Eat is a fat treasure – worth the extra weight when flying abroad, or just taking a road trip.

Tuck those airline tickets inside the front cover for a really big smile on Valentine’s Day.