28 Chefs Reveal Restaurant "Red Flags" That Indicate You Should Eat Somewhere Else

If a restaurant has a HUGE menu...it's all frozen

The first thing they told us in culinary school when you're learning food safety is: If you enter a seafood restaurant and smell fish, leave

When the menus are super dirty and never cleaned, that means everything is super dirty and never cleaned

In culinary school, every single chef instructor says the same thing: If it's misspelled on the menu, that's on purpose. It's so they don't have to sell you the real thing. A prime example is 'krab cakes'

If a restaurant has a one-page menu, that's usually a pretty good sign. It means their line cooks have become specialists and can usually nail all the dishes listed. Conversely, if a restaurant has a giant, multi-page menu, that's a gigantic red flag

We have a sushi place me where the chef gives you free samples of future dishes. This usually means they take pride in their work and want to see peoples reactions before committing it to the menu.

'Catch of the day' restaurants better have a lake or an ocean within a 50-mile radius. If they are advertising fresh-caught Alaskan salmon and you aren't in Alaska, chances are that [thing] is not fresh

If the area is busy but the restaurant is empty, that’s usually a bad sign.

I always look for how the staff interact with each other. If they all seem to enjoy being there, and coordinate well, more often than not it's because everything is running smoothly and they have a good system, which usually means they know what they're doing and you can expect good food

No matter how well managed a buffet is, it can never be sanitary. It is not reasonably possible to run a sanitary buffet business

This is late but I clean kitchen exhaust systems. If you walk in a restaurant and can smell grease walk out. That means the place isn’t clean. From the exhaust system to cooking equipment.

We clean some places where grease drips off the hoods onto cooking surfaces.

If employees try to argue with you about food quality in order to dissuade you from sending something under cooked back, just leave. It means they have a cook who can't take criticism and your chances at getting a sneezer are greatly increased.

Ask where your oysters come from. If they don’t know, you don’t want them. Same for most seafood.

When my boss (the owner) used to host and people would complain to her about the hour wait on Saturday night at 7pm and then threaten to leave, she would tell them, "If the restaurant you choose does not have a wait on a Saturday night, you may not want to eat there." And then turn her biggest sh*t-eating grin on them

Watch the wait staff. If the majority of them seem disgruntled or upset, things probably aren't great. They probably don't care about your food if they aren't being treated fairly.

Pro tip: Look up the health inspector reports for your county.

Most often, lemons for water are really gross and dirty

Easy way to tell if Mexican food will be good. If the salsa is bad, then the food is likely bad.

Mexican places that take pride in their salsa take the same pride in their food. If you get the watery, tomato sauce with chips then more than likely the food will be uninspiring.

If you order a meal that should take a long time to cook and it comes out very quickly, it’s been pre-cooked

I have a family member who’s worked in multiple different restaurants, and they always advise me never to get drinks with ice because too many places don’t keep their ice machines cleaned because it’s so often overlooked compared to other kitchen equipment