Person Wanted To Know What Are The Menu Items Chefs Hate Making And Got These 30 Answers

Fondue, it’s a ball ache to make well even if it is just melted cheese, customers rarely eat everything before it burns if using a chafing dish and it’s hell to clean. Also it’s dated and not that nice.

Any order with a genuine allergy concern. (Not because it’s difficult but rather it’s added stress and responsibility for one guest that’s potentially life threatening in a job that’s all about speed and stress already) kitchens are usually very small and while they have adequate measures in place for allergens, the kitchen as an environment is easily contaminated meaning that an allergen order needs to have that section cleaned down and all the equipment cleaned before it’s used for this one guest, even if there is dedicated equipment for allergens, it’s not worth someone having a reaction. I wish there were better ways to do it but the truth is, if you have allergies your food is going to be slow and not as good as the main menu because of this delay. It’d be great if there were more restaurants that were operating as “free from” certain foods specifically for these guests so everyone can have a great time with out the worry. Like a nut free place, or gluten-free place as we are seeing more vegetarian and vegan places being setup.

Source: chef for independent restaurants for 17 years.

The wing flight. Yeah, awesome, try out 4 different wing flavors on 12 wings. It's only 3-4x the effort and dramatically different plating. Oh and we offer a discount during all football games and are letting people order them to go? Completely negating the purpose of a flight so they can try our beers?

Tl;Dr: wing flights can get f****d

Not a chef but I worked at subway, whenever people wanted guacamole, we always spread it on one side of the bread before adding the rest of the veggies but the way the counter was designed the avocado was the last ingredient so people would always add all their veggies and then want avocado on top. This was a nightmare to spread across the uneven veggie surface and would generally just stick in clumps :( some vegetarian customers also wanted us to change our gloves to serve them but everytime we change gloves we have to wash our hands which makes the gloves near impossible to wear - this would grind our whole production line to a halt while all staff members struggled to change their gloves. I mean I’m vegetarian too so I kinda understand but like if you’re so strict about it you want fresh gloves then you shouldn’t work at subway because the “contaminated” gloves from before still went in all the veggie boxes 🤷🏼‍♀️

I work at Dairy Queen. We have to cook some things to order, because we don’t get enough ordered to make in bulk. Most of these aren’t too bad, such as the cheese curds, or the onion rings, or the pretzel. But the one I can’t stand, the bane of my very existence, is the BBQ pork sandwich. It’s our only BBQ product. It starts with a plastic bucket of frozen meat. We have to scoop some out, into another container, and pop it into the booster oven for a minute. Now this wouldn’t be too bad, if we didn’t have to boost the bun separately. And that wouldn’t be so bad either, if people didn’t order it exclusively when we are absolutely slammed.

At my old job they had a thing called a fry sampler. It was 4 10 oz fries that couldn't be cooked together and took up either half the fryer or the entire thing depending on how many were ordered at the same time. It would suck even more when people ordered more than one during a rush because they would take forever to plate.

Chef in my own pizza restaurant. It brings me immense pleasure to serve my customers, each and everyone of them. However, when someone orders something entirely veggie I have to spend time cleaning all my surfaces and equipment. Takes a bit of time, but hey.

When I worked for Applebee's we had the "endless ribs" promotion. Apart from the colossal pain in the a*s portioning those ribs were, making them was even worse.

You'd grab a portion baggy and dump it into a bag of flour and shake it up, then throw it in the deep fryer for about 2 mins. When the timer dings, you throw it in a plastic container with whatever sauce, shake it around and plate it along with fries or whatever.

So that wasn't the awful part. The awful part was whilst in the middle of a rush, having someone order the endless ribs where they get it as an all-u-can-eat style and when a "refill" came up you had to stop everything to make them another serving. Those portions were smaller and we didn't have as many as the large portions, so if I ran out, I had to go back to the larger portions and portion them down into smaller ones before continuing on with the flour, deep fryer and sauce.

I absolutely hated that promotion

Not working in a traditional restaurant anymore but the f*****g ringmold stacked beet salad. It took like 3 minutes to make just one and if a table of four all ordered them it slowed down the entire salad line.

I waited tables when I was in college. I absolutely hated when certain foods were ordered because I knew it was going to take a long time. One of the worst offenders was a charbroiled oyster appetizer that had butter, breadcrumbs, and cheese on top. It took about 12-15 minutes to hit the table and that is an eternity for an appetizer.

Edit: The restaurant I was working in at the time usually had apps on the table in less than 10 minutes so this app was longer than most but different restaurants are going to have different appetizer timing and may take longer.

Just an occational cook. In our place, it's called 'bata'. Bata is finely ground spices and veggies to make it a smooth paste. Also, a similar dish with mutton called Halim. Very time consuming to make.