15 secrets your waiter will never tell you....

[cougjunkie]

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/...ll-you-2447556

[marsupial]

What You Don't Want to Know
Now that I’ve worked in a restaurant, I never ask for lemon in a drink. Everybody touches them. Nobody washes them. We just peel the stickers off, cut them up, and throw them in your iced tea.

Nice. This is good to know.

What You Don't Want to Know
At a lot of restaurants, the special is whatever they need to sell before it goes bad. Especially watch out for the soup of the day. If it contains fish or if it’s some kind of 'gumbo,' it's probably the stuff they're trying to get rid of.
-Kathy Kniss, who waited tables for ten years in Los Angeles

I won't be ordering the special anymore.

[Surfah]

Nice. This is good to know.


I won't be ordering the special anymore.

Bread gets recycled too. If you don't eat your bread, rolls, etc. they'll get dumped right back into the warmer.

[NorthwestUteFan]

...That wasn't chicken.

[BlueHair]

Bread gets recycled too. If you don't eat your bread, rolls, etc. they'll get dumped right back into the warmer.

Seriously? That is gross.

[BigPiney]

Seriously? That is gross.

You need to read Kitchen Confidential. He said never eat the bread that is cut up.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

I've never gotten why people ask the server what is good there. What are they expecting?

[pellegrino]

The first rule about fight club is . . .

[Eddie]

I've ordered the special before. Not because it was special, but because it sounded really good. And it tasted really good too! Generally this is a rule I will pay attention to now. Except in places that have a set special on certain days of the week. I can't imagine they planned to have too much of something...

I don't usually ask the server if an item is "good". But often if I'm having a hard time choosing between two items I'll ask an opinion.

[KillerDog]

Sundance used to do a "fish special" pretty much ever day. At the end of each week or so, if fish sold poorly, they would serve a "putanesca" which is a fish based soup with lots of types of fish in it. It is strongly seasoned to try and cover the taste of bad fish. We'd just pick out the shell fish that didn't open and then serve it up. People loved it but the servers wouldn't eat it. We knew the funkiness of the fish in the pot.

[Brian]

I worked as a cook in a mexican restaurant in 10th grade (Pancho Villa's on Highland Dr. -no longer there). On very busy nights, I have seen several chimichungas go from the deep fryer, dropped on the floor, inspected for severe breakage, dusted with the hand, then plated.

I try not to think about it when I'm at a restaurant, and just know that the "stuff" will exercise my immune system.

And the uneaten chips were tossed back into the chip warmer.

[Surfah]

I worked as a cook in a mexican restaurant in 10th grade (Pancho Villa's on Highland Dr. -no longer there). On very busy nights, I have seen several chimichungas go from the deep fryer, dropped on the floor, inspected for severe breakage, dusted with the hand, then plated.

I try not to think about it when I'm at a restaurant, and just know that the "stuff" will exercise my immune system.

And the uneaten chips were tossed back into the chip warmer.

Likewise when I order I try not to make special requests and I'd rather not eat a meal than send something back to the kitchen. I have seen what happens to those plates that come back.

[Green Lantern]

I worked as a cook in a mexican restaurant in 10th grade (Pancho Villa's on Highland Dr. -no longer there). On very busy nights, I have seen several chimichungas go from the deep fryer, dropped on the floor, inspected for severe breakage, dusted with the hand, then plated.

I try not to think about it when I'm at a restaurant, and just know that the "stuff" will exercise my immune system.

And the uneaten chips were tossed back into the chip warmer.

Ah, I miss Pancho Villa's. I remember them getting shut down be the Board of Health and then, when they reopened, things just weren't the same ever again.

[Donuthole]

My BIL worked at "The Shed" in St. George. It was considered one of the finer restaurants in town back in the day (and how could it not be with a name like that! Plus, it was attached to The Four Seasons). He said that if someone didn't touch their baked potato, they would take it off the plate as it came back to the kitchen, nuke it for 20 seconds, and put it on a plate going out.

[oxcoug]

This thread is completely killing my interest in eating out for a few days.

Guess I'll be ordering in then.

...wait a second.

Damn. This is how living in NYC neuters a person.