Guidebooks are a crutch for the food-obsessed traveler. Yes, they hold you upright and keep you moving but they're not the same as walking on your own two feet. Previously, I was the sort of tourist that let out a smug laugh of glee at the bewildered tourist on the corner, furtively sneaking glances at their Lonely Planet, while I'd sit in a café and sneak glances at mine in an equally furtive manner. After a few years of this pure conceit, I realized that everything from my haircut to the style of shoes that I wear marked me as a tourist. You couldn't stick out more if both your coif and sneakers glowed in the dark.

Over time (and mostly, as a result of blogging) I built up a network of people who could recommend places to eat almost anywhere on earth. This is the primary benefit of writing a food blog. Random strangers from the Internet tended to recommend me better restaurants and street vendors than the guides, if only because what I wrote aligned with our mutual interest of eating noodles while sitting in a gutter. I rely less on guidebooks and more on this informal web of relationships. I still stand on the corner staring blankly at a map but generally not for food counsel.

In some guides, the bias of the authors was detectable; in others, the quest for objectivity by a disembodied editorial team has gutted any local flavor and prejudice. At one extreme, you're led astray down a dark alley in search of superlative gutter-dwelling noodles; at the other, Mexican restaurants in rural Thailand appear alongside sublime local cuisine as equals.

Earlier, I berated backpackers as being the cause of the spread of banana pancakes; the bland bellwether of future culinary doom. What if it was the travel guidebooks driving the change?

Rather than the random conjecture that is stock of my trade, a better approach was to ask a guidebook author and ask them for what they are to blame. I asked my friend and occasional collaborator, Austin Bush, who contributes photos and text to a fistful of Southeast Asian Lonely Planets.

“I do know of one restaurant in Banglamphu (a district of Bangkok) that has taken a nosedive in quality since being listed in the guide,” Bush says, “I think it is a direct result”.

What was once a Thai-Muslim restaurant with a limited repertoire has seen more seafood and vegetarian options drift onto the menu with the influx of backpackers. One restaurant changed does not make a trend. I suggested that maybe there is an editorial line that empties guidebooks of their soul. Bush is more circumspect.

“You have to recommend safe places, but also need to introduce people to real food. I tend to share. I have a desire to include the good places...I might personally regret it in the long run.”

So why are people so critical of guidebook’s choices?

“The food is the one thing in them that can be criticised. It’s an easy way to get one up on the guidebook”

Where a bus station or road rarely if ever changes location, food changes on a daily basis and is subject to the whims of each individual tourist.