30 Dishes People Should Stop Ordering, As Revealed By Restaurant Workers Online (2024)

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I'm a dishwasher at one of my local restaurants and I guess unlike other peoples' experiences my kitchen is a lot different. I myself have to clean the kitchen floor every night and I take pride in cleaning your dishes, whenever I think of half assing a job I think to myself would I want to eat off a s**t plate. The answer is no. Your silverware, I f*****g make sure that s**t is clean. Your cups I wash that s**t. The pans your food is cooked off of I make sure they are to the standards that I would want my food to be cooked off of. I don't get paid an awful lot of money even though the other dishwasher gets paid 15/hr I get paid 9/hr and I really do care about how clean everything is.

greatcali , Marek Studzinski Report

DO NOT COME IN RIGHT BEFORE CLOSING AND ORDER SOMETHING LIKE A STEAK! If the restaurant closes at 11 and you walk in at 10:50 more than likely the grill has been cleaned already and everything is put away. I realize that they are still open but in most cases the cook has already been there for 12 hours and wants to get the f**k out of there. I can't tell you how many times I witnessed the cook just throwing your nice juicy sirloin in the microwave and nuking the ever living s**t out of it.

Samsquanchiz , Rohan G Report

Shameless plug: I work for Five Guys and everything is fresh. No freezer. TONS of hand washing and glove changing. We clean the soda machine every day and the ice chutes. Everything is FIFO'ed including the imperishables. We have a private audit once a quarter to make sure the restaurant is crazy clean. The mushrooms come in a bag... That's about it. They aren't gross though.

This is the nerdiest post of all time. Who is this amped about the cleanliness of their chain restaurant? Me, apparently.

TheEmily , Marcel Heil Report

When I worked at Subway (and this isn't true of every Subway, I hope), the ice machine was cleaned out about 3 times in my 5 years there. One time I had the luxury of cleaning it. It was filled with mold. Since then I never get ice in my drinks anywhere.

Evil_lincoln1984 , Adrian Hernandez Report

Anything off of a buffet or salad bar or whatever. It took covid to make me realize exactly how gross the general population is when there’s no consequences for being so gross. I’ve had multiple people genuinely not understand why it was a problem to take the spoon from a seafood dish and use it to get some Mac and cheese or whatever. I’ve seen people lick the utensils. I’ve seen people reach in with their bare hands to get a biscuit. I’ve seen kids getting their own food and all the perils that come with that. f*ck

longdognoodle , Pia Kamp Report

Appetizers, just out of spite. I love onion rings, but paying $13 for an order because they’re served as a tower is ridiculous. Apps are now the price as entrees at some places

BucsandCanes , Mehrshad Rajabi Report

I don't have anything specific to divulge, but a little general info to look out for anytime you're in a bar or restaurant.

If you're in an upscale restaurant or a big chain restaurant, order anything you want. Standards are high!

If you're ordering food in a bar/lounge environment, be aware that the person making your food is not, by an large, a chef. I can't tell you how many places I've worked where customers have sent compliments to the chef that fell on the ears of a single 22 year old student running the entire kitchen himself who had never held a cooking job before. It's an assembly line most places.

If you're in a mid level bar/lounge/grill, stay away from menu items that seems out of place. If everything on the menu is burgers, pizzas, wings, pub grub, and there's one item on the menu that's like a Lemon Pesto Lobster Fettucini, stay away from that one. Chances are it rarely gets ordered, is over priced, is poorly made, and the guy making it doesn't really know or care about what he's doing. It also probably has a ton of ingredients in it that aren't used in anything else and that noone ever checks the levels or quality or day dots of until it's actually brown and smells, and which point they just say "f**k it" and make it anyway.

This isn't everywhere, but it happens more than people realize.

randyboozer , stu_spivack Report

Unless the place is known for homemade, soups. They're mostly either canned or frozen. Just not where I want to spend my dining out dollars.

Fremenade , Pixabay Report

Grilled cheese, because I make it better at home.

beingthebestmetoday , Pixzolo Photography Report

DO NOT ever get a lemon in your drink at a restaurant. 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

TheCountryRedditaria , Julia Zolotova Report

6 oz kids steaks, we don't season them and they come frozen. I work in a restaurant where we promise our steaks are never frozen. Thinking about it, can I sue them for false advertisem*nt?

anon , Tim Toomey Report

Lobster at a place not known for their seafood. Where the f*ck are they gonna get lobster?

TestZero , David Todd McCarty Report

On the opposite side of things...I worked at the Olive Garden for three years in college. The soup, salad, and breadsticks all come pre-proccessed just add water s**t. However, the majority of menu items were prepared fresh and monitored for temperature and quality throughout the day.

Strategery_Man , Henry Burrows Report

This reminds me of a story my high school commercial art teacher once told the class.

If I recall, he was out with his wife at an IHOP and didn't feel like eating breakfast, so he ordered the shrimp. So everything goes okay for an hour or so and then the stomach cramps start. From the way he told it, not long after that he started his twelve hour camping trip to the bathroom and couldn't leave for fear of s******g himself.

He was a weird guy, but I digress. Don't order something completely out there at a place that specializes in something completely different.

Neveronlyadream Report

Nachos. I think spending money for cheese melted on chips is ridiculous for the what they charge.

destroyer1134 , Clyde Gravenberch Report

Every Taco Bell employee I've ever hung out with has always said, "Don't get steak. NEVER get steak." When someone has asked what not to order.

anon Report

Not a specific item but I won't get sushi at an empty sushi place or on a sunday or Monday before dinner.

jabbadarth , Riccardo Bergamini Report

I'm not going to make a post about the one time I worked in some s**t hole place and some piece of s**t cook did something unsanitary or when I found a fly in the ice machine.

As a line cook of over 10 years, I will tell you if eating anywhere that is not high end. Don't order appetizers. 99% of corporate and local restaurants appetizers are frozen and made by big corporations or some off brand never heard of company.

Nearly every place you eat that has "spinach artichoke dip" it frozen in a bag and made by Nestle. Those "beer battered onion" rings you love so much, they're more than likely the cheapest pre-breaded, pre-fried, brand the restaurant can get a hold of. Love the soup at "Insert corporate place here" it's frozen in a bag and heated via steam table."

Apps are insanely overpriced and most often they are the worst thing on the menu for you health wise. However, restaurants love for you to order them because of the high profit margin.

The only real appetizers I would really suggest ordering that are made on site are normally nachos, the chips are fried when you order, and the meat is cooked right away if it's a grilled or fried meat. If it's ground beef or a braised meat then it came frozen in a bag. Whole bloom'n onions at a place like Outback, those are cut and made to order from what I understand. Also stay away from things that are out of place. If you got to a steak house and they have a chicken fettuccine Alfredo dish. More than likely it's going to be frozen and out of a bag. It may taste alright but you can buy frozen in bag fettuccine Alfredo of your own for $4 at a local grocery store.

My point to all of this is that frozen in bag foods are not much different than what you can find at your local grocer and make yourself at home. Those products are not of bad quality but they're more than likely microwaved and just a huge waste of your money. If you enjoy them, then more power to you. Keep on enjoying them, nothing wrong with that.

***TL:DR, stay away from apps, and out of place menu items.***

anon Report

I worked at a buffet (Shoney's) for a while. After witnessing first hand how nasty customers can be, and how little regard they have for spreading their germs, I will never, ever eat at any buffet.

anon Report

Mussels.We get em fresh from the fishery, and still throw out 5% while cleaning em.

Five minutes after rinsing, cleaning, draining and portioning, there's still around 2cm of nasty looking brown mussel piss in the container.

A day after, the container is 1/3 full of that same salty, nasty muddy-looking piss, so they have to be drained and rinsed again (and more dead ones thrown out).

Even when properly cleaned, rinsed and drained, while cooking they leak that same sh*t into the pan, so you gotta be extra careful seasoning the dish, cause that nasty juice is salty as all f*ck.

f*ck. Mussels.

Upper_Manufacturer47 , Nikolay Smeh Report

And in a similar vein..."I've heard that if you order a well-done steak you'll get an older cut of meat whose less-than-fresh qualities can be hidden by a longer cook time

daveden123 , Gonzalo Guzman Report

Oh, and I just remembered, quesadillas. They're my super-cheap go-to when I'm broke. I don't eat meat, so paying someone else to basically melt some cheese into a tortilla, I'm just not gonna do it.

RaniPhoenix , Lottie Griffiths Report

When I was 16 I worked at (INSERT LARGE SANDWICH CHAIN HERE... THANKS JARED). NEVER order the Tuna... I once found multiple flies in the tuna and my boss told me to just scoop them out. Granted each is restaurant is individually owned this may not happen but i never order tuna when going into that place anymore.

anon Report

ICE - NEVER GET ICE. I worked at mcdonald's and f**k was our ice gross. This is all assuming you don't like frozen bugs in your drinks.

Blacky-Chan Report

For me it's calamari and prawns, especially if it's listed as an appetizer. My first job as a prep cook was at a place that served this. We'd get bags of prawns and those frozen blocks of calamari. I would spend hours cleaning and breading. I got pretty good at shelling and deveining prawn with one run of my pairing knife, but I still hated doing it. And fingering the calamari hoods to pull out that plasticy spine and then making sure it was the spine and not just a bit of frozen ice because of course I'm having to process it while it's not completely thawed. It's the thing I've hated doing the most out of every task I've ever had to do in a kitchen (cooking or cleaning), and I refuse to order it when I see it because I remember how much it sucked.

Cynically_Absurd , Esperanza Doronila Report

I've worked at some pretty low end places over the years.....but never have I seen prepared food, bread, chips, etc that's been on a table get re-used for other tables. It's a health code violation where I live. The few exceptions to that I have seen are ketchup bottles, don't use em. They're seldom cleaned and generally just re-filled. Pretty gross. Or anything that's individually packaged - coffee creamers, crackers, sugar packets and so on.
The ice thing is definitely accurate in my experience. The ice machines are very rarely cleaned and always terribly gross by the time it gets done. Most tea is sketchy as well......and if you've ever seen the speed at which a few lemons will start to grow mold, you should probably try to avoid those as well.
I worked for Perkins for a while and you generally wanna try to avoid ALL of their seafood. Also their shakes, if it's busy there's no telling what the server might do to it, especially if you've been a particularly dickish customer. One last thing, if you've sent an item back for whatever reason at a low end chain more than once, it's best to cut your losses.....it's pretty much a 50/50 chance your food is going to be intentionally "soiled" in some way, and this is especially true later at night.

PhilMcCracken74 Report

When I was a teenager, I used to work at McDonald's -mostly nightshift. Because of that experience, I'm very wary of what I order when I go to fast food restaurants at night. Low paid workers, little supervision, and they have to put up with a lot of c**p from customers who treat the employees very badly. One thing I don't order late at night where I'm at- any drinks that sit out. Such as sweet tea. Usually it's supposed to be refilled every so often, but it doesn't happen. It gets old, sour, and nasty. Another thing- salads. Salads might be okay, but we had several incidents where the salad dressing went bad and was included with the salad anyway, because it was late, busy, and who orders a salad at McDonalds anyway sort of attitude gave way...

LoverlyRails Report

Mine for years was ranch dressing because it was one of my first tasks at my first kitchen job. I took one look at the recipe(four gallons mayo, two gallons buttermilk, five packets ranch dressing seasoning) and said, well that looks awful.

Appropriate_Past_893 , Larry Hoffman Report

I worked at an upscale, local Italian restaurant. The complimentary bread? If another table doesn't finish theirs, the 'untouched' bread goes into whatever new breadbaskets are being served. That 'freshly grated parmesan' sitting in a bowl at your table? It was probably sifted through by an unruly six-year-old. It comes from (and any leftovers go back to) a communal giant tub of grated cheese in the back.

tina_groan , Paul Hermann Report

And while we're talking about sushi..."For spicy tuna sushi rolls, places often take old, less fresh tuna and add spices to cover up the bad flavor. Stick with regular tuna rolls

[deleted] , Farhad Ibrahimzade Report

Note: this post originally had 60 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

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Ieva is a writer at Bored Panda who graduated in Scandinavian studies from Vilnius University. After learning the Swedish language and getting completely lost in the world of Scandinavian mythology, she figured out that translating and writing is what she's passionate about. When not writing, Ieva enjoys making jewelry, going on hikes, reading and drinking coffee.

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Rasa is a photo editor at Bored Panda, they have a college degree in photography and are currently studying sewing. Ever since childhood Rasa was interested in visual arts, including painting, photography, knitting and so on. When not at work or studying they like to knitting, cooking and spending quality time with their cats.

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