In this sentence :
If you ask passers-by , they may or may not know if there were any restaurants in this area , but if you ask a local , they will give you many options for sure .
should i say "there are" or "there were" here ? can either one be used in this context ?
If the questioner is looking for a place to eat, then they would want to know if "there are" any places open for business. Use of "there were" would suggest asking for an historical response for eateries that have been in the past (and might still exist), making a response potentially useless for a hungry questioner.
Simply put: Use present tense of "to be" (is/are) for that which exists now; use past tense of "to be" (was/were) for that which is a past thing.
