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When dining out, I love to enjoy great food. After all, that's why I'm there in the first place. But if youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on a restaurant meal, there are some things you want to stay away from when you go out to eat so youre not just throwing away money.
This advice comes from someone who has spent the better part of his professional career managing the kitchens of various restaurants. Although most places are committed to the highest food service standards, there are a few common traps to avoid.
So without further ado, here is my list of four things to skip when ordering at a restaurant.
1. Fish on a Monday. Have you ever heard this phrase? I sure have. The reason behind it is that even if a restaurant claims their fish is "fresh daily" or "flown in fresh," most fish markets and purveyors do not deliver on Sundays. Therefore, the majority of the time, the fish you order on Monday was actually delivered to the restaurant on Friday or Saturday. Although fish going on three-days-old probably won't get you sick (i.e. food poisoning at a restaurant), why take the chance? It isn't exactly "fresh" as advertised either.
2. Featured items. This word is a definite red flag to me. When I worked in the restaurant business, we featured food we were trying to get rid of. In many cases, the food had not sold well or was about to expire, so we drew extra attention to it or advertised it at a lower price. The bottom line was that we wanted to sell what we could while it was still acceptable for human consumption. In most corporate kitchens, recipes are produced in batches and used over time. If a restaurant has chicken and cheese nachos on their menu, it's a safe bet that the cook mixes the chicken and cheese sauce in advance and marks it with an expiration date. Leftover and expired portions have to be discarded, and it goes without saying that throwing out food can put a serious dent in a restaurant's profitability. Add in the fact that restaurant managers are under great pressure to produce a profit, and voila!, you have a featured item. If my chicken and cheese sauce imagery didn't do the trick, I'll say it again: Stay away from the featured items. If you wanted leftovers, you would have stayed at home.
Read on for more things to avoid at restaurants.
