I starting making use of TRAMP recently and I noticed a huge spike in my init time soon afterward. I checked consult, TRAMP, etc, but apparently recentf-mode itself was the issue: if there's at least one remote file name in the list, startup takes longer, even if auto-cleanup is disabled. As soon as the remote files are removed my startup time goes back to normal.
Is there any way to fix this without limiting recentf to local files? It's not a serious issue, but it is annoying.