Tyler Cowen linked to some very good restaurant advice from Todd Kilman.
The basic thesis is that avoiding mid priced restaurants in favor of high end and low end restaurants will help avoid bad meals.
Anyone living in an area with good ethnic food can see the strengths of this strategy already - a good burrito or broken rice dish is going to beat most meals at casual sit down diners. Middle end sushi places will be getting their fish from the same places that low end sushi places do - they all will be serving the same mass frozen salmon/tuna/yellowtail/albacore that you can find in local Japanese supermarkets - the middle end places will just charge more for the decor and service. The places serving better sushi will be the ones at a high enough price point (or at a mid-high price point but in an area where their overhead costs are significantly cheaper) that take the trouble and expense to source better fish from their wholesalers.
There is a problem with this advice for those who live in or near San Francisco, which arguably has the best middle end food in the country. But even at the high-middle end restaurants in SF I often find myself disappointed as common tropes such as pork belly dishes at froufrou places won't be as good (but will be three times as costly!) as at much cheaper ethnic restaurant.
Kilman ends with a discussion of when middle end restaurants are unavoidable:
"Granted, there are going to be times when you can’t avoid the middle. You’re out with a group of co-workers, say, and need to find a place that satisfies a multitude of tastes and needs. Or you’ve got family coming in, and need to keep the costs down for a big group, while also making sure that a not-so-gently aging aunt is going to feel “comfortable.” These are obligation meals. And there’s nothing much to be done about them, except to go along with the wishes of the group, which, by the way, is what a good chunk of the middle exists to serve—the needs of the many."
One of the best ways to avoid middle end obligation meals is educating potential dining partners. Alternatively, now you know why your foodie friends are avoiding you.