Assuming I’ve just moved to SLC, making life as easy for myself as possible while I’m first settling in would be my top priority. Whenever I’m in a new area, whether it be for traveling or living, I love to explore restaurants in various parts of that place as a way of familiarizing myself with it. If I enjoy a place, I will visit regularly as, in my opinion, this is an effective way to start establishing roots and building community with others. (1st stage)

Because I am unfamiliar with SLC, the first place that I looked for a restaurant is on the app Resy. Similar to OpenTable and Yelp, Resy is a reservation-making platform that also enables customers to leave reviews. I prefer this app because it suggests recommendations based on my previous reservations, and makes it easy for me to note my dining preferences, special requests, and the severity of my food allergy. Resy did not have any Italian restaurants listed for SLC, so my next choice was to look up ‘Italian Restaurants in Salt Lake City’ on Google.  This yielded a list of results with their reviews and photos of the restaurants and food. (2nd stage) When searching this way, I first look at the pictures of the food to see if it looks appetizing to me and to have a sense of the restaurant’s atmosphere, then I read reviews. After doing this, I settled on looking at Osteria Amore and Valter’s Osteria’s websites. (3rd stage)

I don’t spend a lot of money on anything aside from my necessities (and I heavily believe in making my life as easy and enjoyable for myself as I can), so the number one thing that I take into consideration when browsing a menu is if there’s a decent mix of dishes I’m familiar with and unfamiliar with. After taking a look at both restaurants’ menus, I chose to go with Osteria Amore because they have a great mix of pasta and non-pasta dishes and because I like their wine list. Additionally, since they have pizza and pasta on their menu, I would feel confident that I could order a couple of additional dishes that would reheat well to eat throughout the week. (4th stage)

After completing this exercise, I am left surprised at how quickly I can make decisions about what I’d like to eat in this sort of scenario. I am the kind of person to eat the same types of food for weeks/months at a time and spend a long time thinking about which restaurants to order from after I’ve become familiar with a neighborhood. For example, when I first moved into my current apartment it only took me about 5-15m to choose where to eat because everything was fairly new to me. After having lived here for 2 years, I sometimes take an hour to decide. I think this is because I’ve found so many restaurants I like and because I have so many other factors to way into the decision, the largest ones being my social life and needing to factor in time for transportation. 

I think that where my decision-making process might differ from other consumers is that I don’t take price heavily into consideration when choosing where to eat out, especially in a scenario like this where I have moved to a new place. I have a very demanding workload time-wise, and I always include a significant budget for eating meals out in my moving budget. Moving is a stressful time, let alone moving while balancing work and all of the emotions that come with the process –  It’s important to me that I show up for myself in these stressful moments by not only providing ease for myself where/when I can but also by doing it in ways that provide me with comfort and nourishment.