You may think that a server would be ready to recommend pretty much everything from
their restaurant's menu, but that's not always the case. Some menu items are just no good,
and there are good reasons why restaurant servers avoid these foods. Here's why you should, too.
Hollandaise sauce is a French concoction and it's probably most well known as the finishing
touch to a plate of that favorite brunch classic — eggs Benedict. Unfortunately,
as scrumptious as eggs Benedict can be, Eater reports that hollandaise sauce is particularly
notorious for causing food poisoning, as the egg yolks in the sauce are not fully cooked
before serving and the sauce isn't kept at a temperature high enough to kill any bacteria.
For this reason, many restaurant servers warn restaurant diners to avoid the eggs benedict on
their favorite brunch menus, unless the restaurant is obviously turning over a high enough quantity
of eggs benedict to ensure that the hollandaise sauce isn't sitting around for a while.
On one Reddit thread asking chefs and waiters of Reddit to reveal what they
always avoid when dining out, one commenter noted,
"I don't trust hollandaise sauce to not come from a jacuzzi of aged bacterial growth."
It's a sentiment that late chef Anthony Bourdain backed up in his book Kitchen Confidential,
noting that bacteria proliferate in hollandaise and, even worse,
"Nobody I know has ever made hollandaise to order."
Like your coffee with a splash of milk? You might want to start taking your coffee black whenever
you dine out. At least, you probably will after you hear what some in the restaurant business
have to say about the milk that ends up in your coffee. According to Redditors in the industry,
if a restaurant worker doesn't rinse out a milk pitcher after steaming milk for your coffee,
it results in a steam wand with crusty, cooked milk stuck on it, which comes in contact with your
coffee. Anything leftover in the pitcher will also grow bacteria or mold over time. Likewise, some
commentators reported that some restaurants mix and match milk in one pitcher. In other words, if
you ordered almond milk for dietary reasons, you could have some remnants of regular milk in there
as well, spelling a pretty bad night for someone with lactose intolerance or other food allergies.
The same no-milk principle also applies to cocktails that contain dairy, like White Russians.
As one bartender on r/AskReddit notes -
"There are hardly any drinks with milk, meaning hardly any milk is used.
That partially-used quart they have behind the bar may have been sitting there for
QUITE a while." Specials
Imagine you're a restaurant manager and you've ordered too much of some particular ingredients.
You don't want to waste it, so what to do? Offer up a special meal that uses all that food on the
verge of expiring! At least, that's what servers on Reddit say is going through most chefs' minds
when they come up with the specials of the day, with one Redditor explaining -
"The daily specials are usually made up of ingredients that are the oldest in the kitchen."
Of course, while there may not be anything necessarily wrong
with this leftover food and it could be certainly safe to eat in the legal sense,
it still might not be the freshest item on the menu.
While some Redditors jumped in to point out that using old
food isn't always the case with daily specials, if you want to play it safe,
stick to what a restaurant is best known for and something that gets a fair amount of turn-over.
Do you ever take a look at a menu, see a particular item, and scratch your head wondering
how exactly it got there? Those items seem out of place for a good reason. They don't make sense,
are part of the menu as an appeal to a larger crowd, and often aren't in the chef's wheelhouse.
A Redditor who says they've worked in the restaurant industry for a decade,
working in just about every restaurant role, explains that ordering one of
these suspicious menu items is one of the top mistakes a diner can make. They cautioned -
"Order dishes that are 'on brand.' [...] You'll get s---ty food if you
order something they only have on the menu out of obligation."
If going out to dinner is a special occasion for you and you care about having a nice experience
that you can't replicate at home, it's typically a good idea to avoid any "signature" appetizers
that you might see on a range of menus like wings or chips and dip. You're not actually
getting anything special, according to one Redditor in the industry. As they say -
"Don't order appetizers. 99% of corporate and local restaurant appetizers are frozen
and made by big corporations or some off brand never heard of company."
In the Reddit thread, the original commenter also points out that appetizers are just in general
really high-priced and bad for you. The only exclusions they say you might want
to consider if you're really craving an app? Nachos, as they're normally made to order,
including frying the chips and cooking any meat toppings.
Ordering your water with lemon at a restaurant is pretty standard. However, some servers that
have worked in high-volume restaurants caution you to request your drink without the lemon next time.
Said one poster -
"Servers clean off food, touch the food screen, handle many used pens,
and do a lot of other things with their hands. There isn't always time to wash your hands
between taking a drink order and grabbing those lemons. It's a big source of cross contamination."
Only in restaurants with a lower turn-around, they explain, do the servers often have
time to wash their hands or grab some tongs before adding a lemon slice to every drink.
Consider also that, if the restaurant really has that low of a turn-around,
you may run into the worry of whether or not the food is as fresh as it could be.
Regardless of where you stand on the perfect steak temperature,
one thing is pretty certain — if you order a steak well done, you're setting yourself up
for disappointment. When you order a steak that's going to be cooked to that high of a temperature,
some chefs will allegedly use that extra cooking time as a way to disguise flaws in your
steak — whether that flaw is a poor-quality cut of meat or just a cut of meat that's kind of ugly.
One commenter on Reddit says,
"I've heard that if you order a well-done steak you'll get an older cut of meat
[that's] less-than-fresh qualities can be hidden by a longer cook time"
Another person chimed in to say,
"Not necessarily older, but well done is definitely a chance to dump the
less-desirable cuts with bad marbling, because it can be concealed easier."
For the best steak possible,
learn to love a steak with a bit of red. Well-done steak just isn't that great, anyway.
There are many reasons why diners love salad bars. You can fill up a plate with as much
salad goodness as you want and go back to the bar multiple times for more food.
You can make your plate exactly the way you want it, rather than relying on the chef to
create your version of the perfect salad. There's usually no wait for a salad bar salad, either.
You can just place your order and the server will hand you a plate and tell you to have at it.
However, there are some downsides to the salad bar, as restaurant workers can attest.
One Pizza Hut employee came to the chain's defense on Reddit,
but noted that even on the salad bar, old items would be kept out for multiple days, saying,
"In regards to the salad bar, most items from the previous day would be
kept on the salad bar [...] You would put enough of the fresh
item in to make a full container then dump the older stuff on top."
Salad bar items would only be thrown away once they became "slimy."
Another worker from an unspecified location seconds this,
saying that the salad bar items are just kept until they're used up.
If you do like the salad bar, it seems that the key to a more fresh salad is to avoid the less
popular toppings, like chickpeas or tofu. You sit down at your restaurant of choice,
the server fills your water glass, and then they plop down a basket of free bread
served alongside butter or another yummy spread. Great! What's better than free bread, after all?
"I don't want to live in a society where the pre-meal bread isn't free."
Unfortunately, a lot, because while that bread might be free, it might not be that
fresh. One server speaking to Reader's Digest specifically mentioned the bread baskets, saying -
"We get a lot of breadbaskets back that aren't touched or only have a piece or two missing.
When we're rushed sometimes we'll just spruce it up a little and take it out to the next table.
If you really want the bread, order it differently from how it's usually served."
The one place where you actually might be able to rely on the free bread being fresh?
According to servers posting on Reddit, it could be Olive Garden.
The high turnover rate for the restaurant's free breadsticks means that most of the time,
the breadsticks arriving at your table are fresh out of the oven.
If you've ever received a prettily plated dish at a restaurant and been tempted to eat the plate
garnish, wait just a second — and maybe take an extra step and take it off your plate, too.
One restaurant worker told Reader's Digest quote -
"Most people don't eat the garnishes on the plate anyhow,
but I definitely wouldn't after seeing how many times a chef will grab a leaf of
kale or whatever off an incoming plate and drop it onto one going out to customers."
So, if you'd rather not eat something that's been on someone else's dirty dishes,
look out for that garnish and try not to touch it.
"Pee Wee!
You're eating the garnish!"
When ordering seafood at a restaurant, if you want to be extra safe, you likely know to avoid sushi.
It's raw fish, after all, which, by nature comes with a little more risk.
While that might be true in some instances, it's not the sushi that most restaurant servers
say to avoid. Instead, they're telling diners to stay away from the swordfish.
One Redditor shared some particularly unappetizing details, saying -
"I've seen a chef cutting up and cleaning [a swordfish] before and it's not pretty.
Let's just say a fish that size picks up a good deal of parasites during its lifetime,
and they all start jumping ship at once when they figure out their host is dead..."
The parasite issue isn't only limited to swordfish either, according to the thread,
and can also be an issue with other types of saltwater fish, especially, as one commenter
notes, in larger and older fish that have more time to collect unwanted ride alongs.
When ordering a bottle of wine out at a restaurant,
you may just assume that going with the house wine means you'll be getting a good deal on
an affordable bottle of decent wine — and if you're by no means a wine connoisseur,
you'll likely find the house wine totally to your liking. However, Reddit servers say you
should really just spring for the "better" bottle of wine, rather than opting for the
house variant. Additionally, don't order by the glass. Instead, go for the whole bottle.
One commenter on Reddit explains why, saying -
"If you order house wine, you're drinking the cheapest goon the bar manager thinks
he can get away with. If you order a single glass of something that isn't the house wine,
you're rolling the dice on when the bottle was opened, and your odds aren't good."
They advise you to purchase a bottle that's at least $20
more expensive than the house wine. That way, you'll enjoy a better wine and,
at least usually, the restaurant will give you a bit better service, too,
on the assumption that you're there to spend a lot of money. And if you can't stand the thought
of spending more than $50 on a bottle of wine at a restaurant, just go with beer or liquor.
"Um that wine is also too expensive."
"How much are you looking to spend sir?"
"I don't know, somewhere between say you know 18 and and 15 -14 dollars."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Mashed videos about dining tips
are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.