30 Restaurant Red Flags That Chefs Say You Shouldn't Ignore

I will never forget what the health inspector teaching my food safety class told me.

If they don’t sell popcorn and it smells like they just made some, tap out.

That’s roach spray.

If I see Gordon Ramsay eating with a camera crew at the same restaurant I'm in, bye my guy.

Massive menus. A good restaurant, specifically finer dining, will not crutch on a large menu, but will have a consistent one - maybe a page or 2. Bigger menus usually mean that some items won't get ordered as often, and will have been likely sitting, especially if they're on the menu (i.e. lower cost).

Edit: Big menus can be very appropriate in context - such as those of ethnically specific restaurants. I've been to my share of Indian, Thai, and Japanese that had extensive menus, but expertly prepared dishes. This is mostly feasible though because a small number of ingredients are usually used in many dishes, such as rice or chicken.

If your arms stick to the table...

A health inspector told me he never eats in 24hr restaurants. He said there's never time to break down the equipment and properly clean it.

As a Chef it is always important for me to eat at a locally owned and operated establishment instead of a massive mega corp restaurant. There, even if you possibly have a poor experience you are at least supporting your community. Also I believe you greatly improve your chances of having a delicious meal made from the heart, rather than a plate designed for max profit in a board room.

Not a chef but a 15 yr server. If the servers take 10+ min to greet the table when the restaurant isn't full, it has always been a poor experience overall. It tells me nobody is managing the entire restaurant correctly. And that carries over to food.

I was a line cook for four years "special" just means that we have a surplus of or is expiring soon.

Fish on the sunday brunch menu. It got there thursday and they are trying to get rid of it before it spoils. If the dish is fish with hollandaise DO NOT EAT IT!!! The fish is more than likely bad and they are hiding the smell with the hollandaise

A big one is definitely an empty parking lot during Lunch and Dinner. If the entire town is skipping out, you should too.

My friend was a chef and he told me, unless they're Greek, if you can hear the chefs yelling in the kitchen, get out. If they’re fighting they’re messing up the food.

I never thought to ask him about the Greek exception .

I’m sure others have said this but the general smell. Not only can smell deter me from visiting a restaurant but the restaurant I work at recently had our pipes replaced and the dining room smelled of raw sewage for about 2 weeks. We lost a lot of business because of it.

Not a chef, but a restaurant manager for circa 10 years until I left the industry last year. Obviously I'm *extremely* aware of these red flags, as it was my job to notice them for a decade.

To name a few; huge menus, dirty tables, exhausted/anxious looking waiting staff, no cocktail menu, beer tastes "odd", no beers/ciders on tap, no one greets you at the door, odd atmosphere, dead plants, overhearing waiting staff saying "I'm sorry that's not actually on the menu tonight", intros/listing specials when sat that takes longer than 30 secs, over-friendly/overbearing staff, sad/ill looking chefs if an open kitchen, inappropriate/inconsistent/too loud/no playlist (a personal hate of mine), anything that mention's a chef's name in the menu (Pete's Chicken Special), menu descriptors that don't describe what food you're having... this is kind of inexhaustible, not gonna lie.

Sometimes, though... you just want a McDonalds.

Line cook chiming in here:

1) Don't knock places with microwaves, all the stuff that goes into mics (at least at my place) is just heating up sauces (mac and cheese base, caramel etc) or warming up the rice for a minute.

2) Definetly look at the employees, you'll be able to tell if the food is gonna good or not, solely based on body language.

3) Dont get things that are out of place, example: don't get the fish and chips at a sports bar (in the states/canada atleast)

I worked as a server and occasional line cook for several years.

Number 1 red flag is the spouts on the soda fountain. Those things are one of the easiest things to clean in the entire place, so if they're mildewy that kills my interest in eating there. Im fine with a bit of mess elsewhere, especially in a high volume place since it will get messy over the course of the day. But those spouts take multiple days of no washing to get to a point where they are noticably disgusting.

If a place is understaffed.
If the place has more than 30 seats and just one person working the floor and one in the kitchen (or worse, one doing both jobs), then I'm usually out.

The great French chef Fernand Point left us some advice: "If I go somewhere new and the chef is very thin, I know my meal will be bad. If he is both thin and sad, I leave as quickly as possible."

I rely more on the sad thing than the thin thing. If I walk into a restaurant and I can feel sadness and anger from the staff- I leave.

1. If you can see whether they get ice with a scoop that goes back into its own container or with the glass.
2. By the condition of their garnishes.
Get out if they're dried up, smells off, or plain looks gross.
3. What are they cleaning your tables with? Smell disinfectant? Is there a bucket?
Rags brown and greasy?
If the latter, never go back.

Worked in restaurants, dad owned restaurants and is a chef. These are basic things every person should watch out for. You won't know if your food is clean or delicious until you order it but you can test it with a drink.
I've worked in restaurants where the ice maker would have dead roaches in it because they're using buckets that go to the floor for transporting the ice upstairs.
Another restaurant doesn't use disinfectant for their rags, just rinsing it in the sink with cold water!
Coffee shop doesn't use soap for their mugs, didn't run them through the dishwasher either.
Oh and flies landing on the raw chicken that's sitting out on a summer day in the kitchen.

You know they don't care in the back if the front of house don't either.

Bathrooms. If dirty or missing paper. GTFO. Same with dirty menus.

Edit: For clarification purposes, a dirty restaurant does not necessarily determine the quality and taste of the food you would be eating.

Example: A restaurant has one bathroom for both workers and patrons. The chef uses that bathroom to poop, they wipe their a*s and head to the sink. They turn on the sink with their hands and wash their hands, but are out of paper towels, so they shut the sink off with their hands, the same hands that had poop on them. Now their hands have poop on them again and now their hand is covered in poop bacteria. The chef then opens the pull door with their poop hand (now imagine how many other patrons touched that door handle, so now their grossness is now on the chefs hand.)

Now one can argue that they may have a sink in the kitchen to wash their hands, my thought with this is that if a cook thought it was okay to touch the faucet again with no paper towels and to touch the door afterwards, that person is not going to wash their hands correctly out back either.

All I am saying is that your food will taste fine and there’s a tiny chance of you getting sick due to the cleanliness of the restaurant/cook. Point of it is that the chef still has s**t bacteria on their hand when they’re handling your food. In reality you are eating their poo

Also, recently when into the bathroom at my local grocery store, no soap, no paper towels. F*****g disgusting. I brought the attention the store manager and called health inspector. Not a lot of businesses realize the nastiness of their facilities.

If I'm somewhere that fries a lot of their food, I'll look for exceptionally dark fried foods or food with the "dirty fryer" taste. If this place makes their money off their fryers and they aren't having their oil regularly changed and cleaned, then they aren't doing any other important cleaning either.