Chefs, What Should We Avoid When Going To Restaurants? r/AskReddit Reddit Stories | Top Posts

chefs of reddit what are some red flags people should look out for when they go out to eat you might have to be a chef to recognize this but my red flag is going into a busy restaurant and noticing none of the tables have food or not many customers are yet eating this usually means the kitchen is going down in flames one time i noticed this and could see some food slowly stacking up in the window but no orders coming out i mentioned it to the server and he replied i wouldn't suggest ordering food he brought our drink check and we left he was tipped well for his honesty not a chef but my best friend is and he says a large menu chances are a lot of things on a menu means that they are frozen also it's difficult to train people to be good at making 40 different things so the quality is going to suffer edit yes some places like chinese restaurants that are different combinations of about 30 fresh ingredients are an exception too many menu choices dirty restrooms service staff seems me or anxious not a chef but a who will do each ducking menu probably means you're eating out the freezer overworked staff what cleaning jobs do you think are getting missed if staff are far too stretched and or unhappy at work former health inspector here if there's a self-serve soda machine go ahead and take a napkin around the inside of the sprite clear soda available nozzle if your napkin comes out pink brown or orange skip the soda a sprite nozzle should come out clear if it's pink or orange then it's slime mold it's actually a bacteria but that's what we called it if it's brown it's likely cola but if the colon nozzle was put on the sprite dispenser and is still brown you know the nozzles aren't being cleaned properly also go ahead and look closely at the ice shoot i see green algae and those a lot edit i knew someone would teach me something today the slime mold is a protist not a bacteria still not quite a mold closer to a fungi almost microbiology is rad everyone edited it or a bacteria called s haas essence nito edit three maybe rotaltorella a yeast this is likely what all my subway commenters are seeing subway still bakes its own bread right weird the microwave from applebee's hasn't chimed in on this thread edit wow thanks for the gold my first time ever does it sound like it could be two or more restaurants example sushi and pizza at the same place they can't do either well ask where your oysters come from if they don't know you don't want them works for most seafood actual former chef here these comments saying don't eat whatever food on a day of week because it's leftovers this is called utilization specials are just that things that we'd rather sell than throw out those of us who actually know what we're doing carefully cool down and store things so they have as much menu life as possible only an idiot would throw away perfectly good saleable food if it didn't sell on the first night for my nick people great pending doesn't mean that the restaurant is awaiting judgment on their health inspection it means that they failed and are given a grace period to fix their wrongs i've heard that if you actually smell fish at a sushi restaurant it's in your and your insides best interest to hightail it out of there not a chef but ex restaurant manager how happy is the staff do they seem like they like their jobs if the staff are miserable you are not going to get quality food or service it's worth seeking out restaurants that treat their staff well if they're treated well they'll treat you well not a chef but worked at a kfc for a while so here's a kfc specific thing there are two towel colors for cleaning used at kfc franchises at least in american ones no idea about others there are yellow towels which are intended for surfaces that cooked foods will touch and blue towels which are only to be used in raw chicken areas this is to prevent cross-contamination cooked chicken never touches raw chicken areas and cooked and raw areas are never cleaned with the same towels the thing to look out for raw chicken areas are usually not visible from the front counter at least in most locations i've seen if you see a blue towel don't eat there now this isn't a hard and fast rule i would recommend asking the cashier about it if you see anything suspicious when i went to europe a kfc location in amsterdam had blue towels and cleaning solution on top of all the trash cans in the lobby they weren't for raw chicken they just had a different cleaning procedure there a green flag is an open kitchen where you can see everything getting cooked there's an open kitchen diner where i live and the food is cooler in addition to a super large diverse menu being a huge red flag that you're getting frozen meals run through the microwave watch for no substitutions if the place makes its own food they can sub virtually anything for anything else while they may try to play it up as our food is perfect and we refuse to change it on moral grounds it's almost always a sign of this was made two months ago and all we do is reheat it read anthony bourdain's book he runs down a bunch brunch is just using up leftovers from the rush of the weekend generally worse quality food smaller menu is better mondays and thursdays are typical new inventory days eat these days for freshest food only order shellfish from a shellfish restaurant know what a restaurant does well order that there were a lot read his book r.i.p tony not a chef and more a green flag if you're eating ethnic food and all the customers are of the ethnicity in question then the food is probably going to be freaking awesome rats in the restaurant cooking food i went to an ihop and there were ants crawling on the walls so i told the waitress about it and she said what again she could have covered that up in a better way i was really hungry so i just moved to another table but those pancakes were so nasty i still love ihop but i just won't go to the stroke a ligature or gravostroke a ligaturey diary so stroke a ligaturey acutostro ke ligaturograve one next time if you're gluten free for whatever reason please don't photo from scratch italian restaurant please there's literally nothing we can do to get that it out of anywhere thanks to the flower it permeates the air if you ever order something with crab always ask what kind of crab is it even though it might sound like a snobby question it will reveal whether it's scanned or not my favorite answer when i went out one time was what are you talking about clearly indicating it was not fresh edited i have worked for many restaurants and been to many others if the place has low lightning unless it's intentional roughly no customer activity floors aren't clean place smells bad booth seats move drinks that taste funny not a drug joke this is a sign that they don't clean their soda fountains or turns and low quality customer service are all signs that you should look out for if you're going to eat if a restaurant is poorly maintained the food might not be of good quality either if your meat or pasta for example has dry spots as if it was left out to dry for a good time the kitchen is not properly covering storing their prep correctly the walk-in is most likely not taken care of edit for clarity on let's say chicken it's still raw someone leaves it out it forms a skin looking almost like jerky chewy an orangish yellow color that spot won't go away because someone has cooked it same kind of thing with pasta but the pasta is always pre-cooked waiting for you there is no reason for your sensitive products to be left uncovered for that long if the place is surrounded by cops and ambulances you should go elsewhere don't complain to the remaining employees about the weight and demand a free ice cream late to this one but as an ex-waiter i can't stand seeing waiting staff grabbing clean glasses at the top when handling them i was employed by a national pest control service and the sales people told me if the dining room is dirty or gross do yourself a favor and walk out cause their kitchen is gonna be much dirtier there are also roaches at expensive restaurants the same as there are at cheaper places it's the restaurants that don't clean kitchens properly that attract pests and have continual problems this entire thread is basically kitchen nightmares by gordon ramsay very binge-worthy but the uk version is so much better than the us one asked my mom who was a chef for 30 years this is what she told me you better off sticking to restaurants you know are good if you can find a place you know is doing things right and give them your business but if you need to find a new place like if you just moved cities or something order a food you know pretty well for me that's always the soups mum did soups for a good chunk of her time as a chef if it's something you know really well then you'll know if it's good or not and if they do that well then the rest of the food should probably be all right too but if something's wrong with your order like it's too salty or undercooked or whatever then there's something wrong with the restaurant she also said that while a low price isn't indicative of a terrible restaurant be wary of places that price too high or low for the type of food they serve a burger place shouldn't cost you more than fifteen dollars for a meal and even that's being generous and if your fine dining experience is running less than ten dollars a plate something is wrong former barista and assistant manager here if the restaurant has a coffee machine visible take a look at the steamer if it's covered in white means they don't clean after frothing the milk most likely they don't run steam after heating up the milk meaning that there is residual milk inside the nozzle of the steamer which gets burnt and generates bacteria don't order coffee in there also most likely the cloth used to clean the steamer from time to time is disgusting and used for more than just wiping the milk out of it a restaurant with a good philosophy about health and safety cleans the coffee machine every night i wasn't a chef just a humble stock boy but i can say this a good amount of hot food isn't truly kosher halal and a lot of seemingly vegan food isn't nine times out of ten it's a result of ignorance a skillet that made sausage during the breakfast shift might not have been washed before being used to blacken chicken or saute vegetables for lunch simple mistakes that can be attributed to human error and shift changes one time out of ten it's a result of necessity and space two meets might share a trade due to a lack of space this is more a result of the menu dictating the kitchen instead of vice versa if you live by strict voluntary dietary restrictions dine as such kosher restaurants halal restaurants and vegan restaurants will always beat one restaurant with kosher halal vegan options if the head chef is crying and not wearing any clothes it's probably best to move on just pop your head in the kitchen if you aren't blasted with 120 db of yelling you're in the wrong place if there's a funky smell that's even slightly or stronger you're in like the restaurant probably has a rodent problem best to leave if you can't see their health inspection score posted out in the open it's probably not very good i'm not sure how it is for other states but some googling around and you can view most restaurant scores online for free sick wait staff if restaurant owners encourage their wait staff to work while sick or don't help to find a replacement you can count on getting sick too ex-husband was chef we always left if he saw workers not wearing non-slip shoes he says that's super important and if they don't care about that he doesn't even want to know what that kitchen looks like if the dining room that you can see is dirty the kitchen you can't see likely is as well specials are typically food they are trying to get rid of sometimes this stuff has been in the freezer for months other times it might be on the borderline of expiring positive story 20 years ago before good mexican food was available outside the southwest i had a business trip to california i walked into a restaurant under an overpass near arsenal the fellow behind the counter saw that i was anglo and called over his shoulder into the kitchen a 10 year old or so kid comes out and asks me what do i want to order and translates for his dad best mexican food ever a friend of mine said that in his restaurant they usually reuse the vegetable garnishes from previous customers if they didn't eat them high turnover usually means poor management and that means unhappy employees unhappy employees means that they don't give a rit about you or your food i worked at a pizza hut and was on my third gm i worked there for a year at that point and was the longest working employee the gm wasn't the best person but he could manage the store we didn't like him for a number of reasons racist misogynist slept with an employee while his wife worked there etc but he managed the store well and the turnover wasn't that high well he got fired a couple months later and his assistants took over everyone liked her and wanted her to have the position but she sucked at management so much that we started to not like harry was so bad i left before it got to bad but checked in recently and they had 13 people out of 20 quit or put in for two or so weeks management plays a big part in turnover not totally them as a person but how they run the store so bad management equals bad dirty menus if you can't keep them clean nothing else is going to be clean if it's within an hour of the establishment closing don't order anything that requires the use of the kitchen not a chef but pest control so i'm in and out of multiple restaurants all day and i can tell you this 95 of quick serve fried chicken places are vomit inducing particularly one based with an old guy as its mascot my friend is a sue's chef and has worked in small restaurant and some of the fanciest restaurants she said that all restaurants break health codes at some point all have an employee that doesn't wash their hands or picked up your steak off the floor and served it to you it's not always the restaurant's fault good restaurants will fire the itty employee the bad ones won't even notice so if you don't want to be exposed to health code violations stay home not necessarily a red flag but a warning a clean dining hall don't necessarily mean a clean kitchen if your food comes to you really fast it most likely means it's pre-made and not fresh like faster than it should take to cook a salad in a minute or two is okay but with hot chicken in that same time is a bad sign if you can order a bacon and egg breakfast and be eating in under two minutes it's pre-made had this happened before to me does the sign out front say applebee's not a chef but i do work in a restaurant dishwashing and doing prep avoid ordering fish that a server is pushing when the specific fish itself isn't one of the specials that's because there's a good chance that the fish is about to expire and they're trying to get it used up i once saw a cook eating in the food court outside his restaurant he picked up the hem of his apron and blew his nose on it i would say that was a red flag they can't do your steak rare the toilets are gross they use reusable wooden chopsticks rather than metal or disposable they're situated in a tourist heavy area as a former kitchen employee big red flag is seeing a ton of high school guys in the kitchen i've worked as a server in five busy tysons corner virginia restaurants and personally i never want to eat out ever a slow restaurant is serving old or bad food and a busy restaurant does not clean anything well enough when people are not being paid a living wage don't trust them with your life the ease and convenience of going out to eat comes with so much more than just a high price number two dollars an hour employee or 16 hours a day employee will care as much about your health and well-being as you do not a chef but if there is a red flag in your food do not eat the flag my two biggest red flags are anything with a really large menu if you have that many items chances are you don't do any of it great any big space that's empty during a rush period honestly i know you shouldn't always group think but everyone is choosing to stay away there's probably something to it not a chef but i install post systems all over and i've found that the setup in the outside service area typically matches the kitchen that is if you look around and everything is disorganized dirty etc that's probably what the kitchen looks like look for loose wires under the counter if you can see it and the server stations my dad would always walk in and ask to see the menu and then ask to use the bathroom before deciding on whether or not we would actually eat there going to the bathroom often means a walk through or near the kitchen which gives you a bit of a window into the cleanliness and in the bathrooms themselves can tell you a lot about the overall standards of the place i think he turned down at least two out of three places on average i would say be nice to your server bartender and listen to their advice i've been bartending at my current restaurant for six years and while i love the place there are things i won't eat my chef is allergic to seafood but we live in a seasonal costal tourist town so seafood is a must for guests that are nice respectful i will gently steer them away from seafood dishes if you're a d have a buddy one if you order a burger sandwich with beef and they don't ask how you'd like it cooked probably means it's preheated too as for desserts if some say homemade and some don't avoid the non-homemade it's probably been in the freezer for a week three if the staff doesn't know the menu well it's because they don't eat the food which can be a bad sign i work at a restaurant and it's ducking disgusting i don't even know where to begin one time the owner picked the nub of a carrot out of the garbage and told me to use it for soup i didn't i watched the head chef handle raw fish pork chicken shrimp all of it wipe his hands on his apron and start handling knives and vegetables one time our former head chef shoved a hot dog down his throat shorted back up called it the hot dog trick then served it to a child our former sews chef used to have six with the dishwasher in the bathroom not was his hands the soap dispenser in the staff washroom was always empty only the kitchen dispenser had soap and go back to cooking customers food all of this and our restaurant is considered the best and classiest restaurant in town with a google maps rating of 4.3 stars and over 200 reviews i don't mean to ruin anyone's experience but sometimes there are no red flags green flag there is this one restaurant in town where the local food inspection board goes for lunch meetings [Music] don't be the first table don't be the last table in fact never be the last table we've all been here for hours in a hot smokey kitchen without breaks and you'd like entrees and mains five minutes before closing dude your meal isn't getting looked after it's getting fired as quickly as possible if you're interested in the special have it monday that's waste that's getting reheated skip if it's midweek if you want a burger go to a burger bar if you want toppers go somewhere spanish etc etc don't turn up at an italian place and ask for french dressing i am seeing a lot of the no large menus call outs here for the most part i agree however there are two late 70s restaurants here in seattle that have very large menus 13 coins and boondocks sundikers and green thumbs both had the open line counter and were sote station heavy so any number of interesting things could be done with inserts of raw ingredients and various meats pounded veal and some garlic shallots and mushrooms all fresh and prepped for the meal service for one example you can do veal palm veal scallopini veal picata veal masala and then use chicken breasts to repeat but with chicken and if you are good at your planning it is all fresh and tasty have some prep test bag now for a brown sauce base and some simple white source base and then you can simplify and expand with different bits added to the sources my point is a large menu is not always a negative and can be done well and not requiring a microwave at all you just need a line that actually knows how to cook it only gets scary when seafood is not your mainstay and you have a lot of different fish dishes and you are somewhere in the midwest [Music] if you can smell the fry from outside the building get back in your car and drive on if they don't maintain the fryer oil they don't deep clean at all nifty tip if you have to go to the bathroom soon after you eat you have low level food poisoning now think of the last place you ate that didn't happen that's a good restaurant sadly they are truly few or far between that's how gordon ramsay made so many episodes of kitchen nightmares it not a chef but i worked at a fast food joint for three months in high school and let me tell you if the restaurant is dirty and everything within it looks like it the food sucks too like wow what a life pro tip the mcdonald's ice cream machine is never broken the employees just say that because they don't feel like making mickey's every five seconds for everyone who comes in or it's just being cleaned source my friend worked at mcdonald's i'm a culinary specialist in military and cooked in restaurant even before military red flags chicken is a red flag cross contamination is always happening with that and nobody can cook it right and i'm betting they don't use thermometers 165 meatloaf is another one even as an army we have up meatloaf and i know how much of a pain it is to even making it so many things can happen don't eat chicken or meat loaf not a chef but according to wheel of time and other fantasy novels i've read a skinny innkeeper is a bad sign make sure you are eating some place where the chef likes her own food enough to be b fat s if the menu is 20 pages long leave [Music] you

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Id: s37xT3IzKUc

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021