“10 Alarming Red Flags That Reveal You’re Dining in a Restaurant Disaster!”
There are a number of other things, but most of those would be circumstantial.
Edit: Coworkers found me. It’s my best comment and now I’ve gotta cut and burn. Adios.
Go to their bathroom and see how well kept it is . that should tell you everything you need to know about the place .
PS:This trick also works for anywhere .
This is a bit of a different one, but ask about their allergy policy.
A good restaurant who cares about their customers will have a strict policy in place and educate all staff on it. It should include using seperate knives, prep boards, and designating a specific staff member to check every ingredient while preparing that dish. They may also have a specific station. But they absolutely will have a policy and the wait staff should know it immediately.
A poor restaurant will have staff that ‘will go check’. Maybe they’re new? But it’s not a great sign.
Edit: a word.
Once I saw someone barfing outside of an Old Country Buffet. I thought that was an appropriate indication of what the food situation was inside.
I went to a Chinese food restaurant once, the “Happy Dragon”. When we got in, the place was empty save for one woman dining alone in a booth. There was no hostess or waiters around so my SO and I stood there for a while waiting to be seated and wondering what to do. We thought maybe they were in the back or something and they’d be out shortly.
About 5 minutes later, the woman in the booth stands up, wipes her mouth with a napkin, and then grabs 2 menus, walks over to us and says “Table for 2?”.
I think when you have to wait for the waitress to finish dining before you’re served, that’s a bad sign. Also it unsurprisingly was total s**t food and for too much money. One of the worst restaurant experiences I’ve ever had. BEWARE HAPPY DRAGON!
The Denny’s near my house has had a “Help Wanted: Servers and Kitchen Help”sign for about 6 months. If it’s a bad place to work, don’t bother dining there.
I went to a restaurant a couple weeks ago that was called Somethingsomething Sushi and Oyster Bar. In their menu it had a section for fresh oysters, with a blurb that said “Ask us about our daily oyster offerings.” When our waitress came over to ask us if we’d like to order appetizers, we asked what the daily oysters were. She said “Yes, we have oysters today.” When we asked her to clarify on the kind of oysters, she made some vague comment about the fact that they just came in that morning and she didn’t know. We asked if they were east coast or west coast and she just shrugged.
If your server cannot tell you anything about the raw food you are about to eat, that is a bad sign and you should not eat that thing.
If the employees take their aprons with them into the bathroom.
If you can see into the kitchen, and you see the cooks, watch for sweat dripping into food, not changing gloves/washing hands between raw meats and other food, and how clean the area is. If it is busy, it won’t be pristine, but it shouldn’t be disgusting.
If the menu either has pages of choices, or a wide variety of ethnic foods (like cheeseburgers, sweet and sour chicken, and escargot all on the menu for instance), usually the food that isn’t ordered often is old, and close to if not expired.
The quality of their Mac n’ Cheese. If they put effort into that, they’ll put effort into everything.
From experience of the restaurant I worked in:
If its slow (less than half of the tables full) and there is more than one dirty table with nobody stopping to clean it, run.
If your plate is hot on the edges but only warm or cool in the middle, its been microwaved.
If any hot dip, sauce, or gravy has a film within a minute of it hitting your table it has been sitting in the window for at least 5 minutes.
If you see a female server cleaning the men’s restroom during business hours then the bathroom will be filthy. The female servers I worked with barely gave it any attention when they were forced to clean it they just wanted to do the bare minimum and gtfo.
Check glassware because 9/10 times in our restaurant they were barely rinsed let alone sanitized. Check for fingerprints, lip marks or lipstick marks, or chips.
Speaking of: chipped dishes or glasses will never be completely clean. They’re unsanitary and bacterial landmines.
You walk in and the staff don’t stop chatting to each other to greet or seat you. And then when they finally notice you they seem annoyed that you interrupted their gossip session. Then they don’t bring a menu or take your drink order, but don’t seem to be doing much else.
Just turn around and walk out. They just failed the easiest part of hospitality and probably aren’t going to do a great job on the other parts.
