Allegedly, the best falafel in Washington stateEven in the most promising of neighborhoods, it can be tough to find the good restaurants if you’re not a local. Smart gastronauts have developed a number of tactics for uncovering the best of everything.When looking for Mexican food, I wrote in this week’s review of Mawadda Cafe,

there’s the Pinata Principle: Find a neighborhood that looks promising, count the number of places selling pinatas, try to triangulate an area of maximum pinata density, and then eat tacos or tortas smack in the middle of that area. Finding good dim sum requires less geometry; the wise gastronaut just drives around likely neighborhoods on a Sunday morning and looks for the lines. As for French food, I look online for whatever restaurant is most beloved by the local foodistas and avoid it like it was on fire. I found Mawadda by counting the cabs parked on the side street that runs beside the strip mall it calls home. My first time through was a three-cabbie day. I knew right then–before even walking in the door–that it was going to be good.I could seriously eat two of these right nowAnd it was. So good, in fact, that I couldn’t help but order the same thing–the gyros plate–over and over again. Lucky for all of us, photographer Peter Mumford was able to control himself a little bit better and give us a peek at a whole bunch of different plates from Mawadda’s kitchen. He keeps shooting for me long enough, I swear I’m gonna make that man as fat as a house.You can read the full review here. Or, if you’re feeling frisky, just click right through to this week’s slideshow and take a gander at some of the best Middle Eastern food around. While you’re all looking at the pretty pictures, I’ll be headed over to Mawadda to get another fix of those gyros. If you’re fast, maybe I’ll see you there.