"If you notice your feet sticking to the floor, turn around and leave immediately."
"Number one evaluation effect for me is smell. If it’s a sour smell or disinfectant smell — red flag."
"A huge menu is a sign that food is either frozen, precooked, and reheated — or ingredients are not very fresh."
"When there are pictures of food on the menu that clearly aren't from the restaurant."
"Seeing fruit flies. Fruit flies are an indication of a dirty kitchen."
"Stay away from buffets and salad bars. A lot of the time it is the same stuff that just gets refilled over and over. Super gross."
"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.'"
"When the menus are super dirty and never cleaned, that means everything is super dirty and never cleaned."
"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."
"No matter how well managed a buffet is, it can never be sanitary. It is not reasonably possible to run a sanitary buffet business."
"The bread. It has to be good bread. If they can't get the bread right, they don't know anything. No chef in their right mind half-@$$es the bread."
"If the waiting staff grabs clean glasses at the top when handling them."
"Most often, lemons for water are really gross and dirty."
"Carpet is a red flag. Yeah, it's quieter and doesn't get slick, but it is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen in restaurants. Vacuuming only goes so far in a restaurant and I know they never, ever shampooed the one at my place."
"A very well-hidden kitchen is usually a bad sign."
"If you order a meal that should take a long time to cook and it comes out very quickly, it’s been pre-cooked."
"If the area is busy but the restaurant is empty, that’s usually a bad sign."
"If you can smell the seafood when you walk in, then it's not fresh. Fresh seafood doesn't have that scent we usually associate with it — it doesn't get that until it's old."
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So if the fish are floating belly up I should leave?
Not yet, ear them first!!!
I love your avatar, and I think that is the place Haseltine was referring to.
If you want the lemon, make sure it comes on the rim of the glass. Squeeze in the juice, don't put the whole thing in your drink.
I've worked in dives and fancy steakhouses, and it's always the same. Lemons for water are never rinsed off.
yeah, kitchen food is fine but drink lemons are cut by servers that just want to get their station prep done as quick as possible