10 dishes you should never order in restaurants, according to professional chefs

The plate lands in front of you with a practiced flourish. Candlelight shines on a glossy sauce, steam rises in elegant swirls, and someone at the next table leans over just a little to see what you ordered. It looks perfect. But if the chef who designed this menu were sitting beside you, there’s a very real chance they’d whisper, “Oh, no. Not that.”

Professional chefs eat out for a living in ways most of us never will: late-night industry hangouts, quiet recon visits to new places, quick bites at competitors’ lunch services. And over time, they all learn the same, slightly uncomfortable truth—some dishes are red flags. Not because they can’t be delicious, but because, in the ecosystem of a busy restaurant, they are the most likely to be tired, reheated, mishandled, or simply not worth what you’re paying.

So pull up a chair. Imagine the faint clatter from the kitchen, the murmur of voices, the soft scrape of cutlery on plates. Let’s walk through what chefs quietly avoid ordering—so that, next time you open a menu, you’ll see it through their eyes.

The Seductive “Special” That Isn’t So Special

The server’s voice lowers just a touch as they describe it: the daily special. Braised-this, confit-that, a sauce that takes hours and three kinds of stock, a garnish of something you’ve never heard of but immediately want. It feels like the chef is whispering directly to you: This is what I really want to cook.

Sometimes, that’s true. But ask a few chefs after a long shift, with a drink in hand and their guard down, and another story emerges. The special, they’ll tell you, is often the restaurant’s most elegant way of cleaning out the fridge.

Imagine a walk-in cooler humming quietly at the back of the building. Yesterday’s roast chicken, a pan of cooked vegetables that didn’t sell, half a tray of fish that’s still technically fine—but not what they’d put front and center if they had a choice. A clever chef can turn all of that into something deeply satisfying. Yet the more ingredients you hear crammed into a single special—five proteins, three sauces, a garnish parade—the more likely it’s a patchwork of leftovers, not a focused, fresh idea.

This doesn’t mean you should never order the special. But it does mean: listen carefully. Does it highlight a seasonal ingredient—spring asparagus, summer tomatoes, fall mushrooms—in a way that sounds simple and clear? Or does it sound like the culinary equivalent of “and then we found this in the back”? Chefs often say: if the special is short, confident, and ingredient-driven, it’s probably worth trying. If it’s a whole paragraph long, proceed with caution.

The Steak You Asked to Ruin

Picture a hot line on a Saturday night: steaks hitting the grill, flames flaring, cooks moving with sharp, practiced motions. At one station, there’s a tiny, unspoken hierarchy. The best-looking, most even cuts of beef are chosen for the diners who order their steaks medium-rare. Those steaks show off the chef’s skills—the perfect pink center, the slick of resting juices, the careful seasoning.

Now consider the well-done order. Most chefs will do their best for you, but there’s an honest, behind-the-scenes reality: if something’s going to be cooked until all trace of pink is gone, the line cook is more likely to reach for the less ideal cut. A steak with slightly more gristle, an odd shape, a piece that wouldn’t impress in a photo. Why sacrifice the best cut to an order that, by definition, erases the nuance of the meat?

By the time that steak arrives at your table, it’s often been on intense heat long enough to squeeze out much of its moisture. Chefs know this. It’s why most of them quietly wince at a well-done order. The cost, the waste of quality, the loss of what that ingredient could have been—it all hurts a little.

If you love beef but fear pink, ask yourself how far you can bend. Medium? Medium-well? Or consider a braised dish—short ribs, oxtail, slow-cooked shank—where the long cooking time develops flavor instead of flattening it. Chefs design those dishes for tenderness and depth, not in spite of it.

Seafood That Should Have Stayed in the Ocean

The smell is the first thing a chef notices. Fresh fish doesn’t reek; it smells like the sea on a cold, clean morning—salty, faintly sweet, almost metallic in its brightness. But when seafood goes wrong, it goes very wrong. And restaurants, especially busy or unfocused ones, do not always keep up with the unforgiving clock of the ocean.

Chefs are particularly wary of two things: bargain sushi and seafood in landlocked, all-purpose spots. That platter of rolls on a buffet, glossy under the sneeze guard at two in the afternoon? It may have been rolled in the late morning, or even sat through an earlier rush. Those “special” rolls drowning in sweet sauce, crunchy bits, and mayo? Sometimes they exist to hide fish that’s lost its delicate edge.

The same goes for generic “seafood medleys” in places that don’t specialize in fish. If the restaurant is miles from the coast, doesn’t have a reputation for seafood, and still offers shrimp, scallops, salmon, and some white fish on one plate, chefs get suspicious. How quickly does that kitchen really move its inventory? How many days have those fillets spent wrapped in plastic, losing their sheen and firm texture?

The chef’s move is simple: order seafood only where it’s clearly the star. A place with a chalkboard showing today’s catch. A kitchen that changes its fish menu with the seasons. Or don’t be shy: ask, “What came in freshest today?” A confident server with a good kitchen behind them will have an answer ready.

The Fancy Things That Are Secretly Fake

Some words sparkle on a menu like costume jewelry in low light. “Truffle.” “Kobe.” “Extra virgin.” Names we associate with luxury, scarcity, and deep, haunting flavor. But in the hands of a trend-chasing restaurant, those words can be more smoke than substance.

Take truffle oil. It sounds decadent, like a forest floor in autumn, mist and loam and quiet. In reality, almost all commercial truffle oil is not made from truffles at all, but from a synthetic compound designed to mimic one narrow note of truffle aroma. It’s loud, one-dimensional, and once you know it, it’s hard to escape—the same harsh perfume of “truffle fries” in every city, every bar, every airport.

Chefs often dislike it because it bulldozes everything else on the plate. It doesn’t deepen the flavor; it shouts over it. A dish drenched in truffle oil can also be a signal that the kitchen is dressing up something plain or tired with an artificial flourish, hoping you’ll taste price instead of quality.

The same skepticism applies to menus touting “Kobe sliders” at suspiciously low prices, or “white truffle” shavings in out-of-season months at a casual spot. Many chefs will skip those dishes entirely, opting instead for the quiet confidence of simply grilled vegetables, a straightforward roasted chicken, a bowl of pasta where the sauce is made from little more than butter, cheese, and time. When the ingredients are real and well-handled, they don’t need a costume.

Brunch Traps and Overcomplicated Eggs

The dining room at brunch is a different animal. Sunlight instead of candlelight, the clink of coffee cups, the soft chaos of strollers and half-awake laughter. In the kitchen, though, brunch can be a battlefield. Tickets print endlessly, eggs pile up in orders of twos and threes and sixes, and line cooks try to bend something as delicate as an egg into industrial-scale production.

Under that pressure, eggs become data to be managed. Chefs will quietly tell you: the more complex the egg dish, the more likely shortcuts are involved. Giant omelets with a dozen fillings, scrambled eggs promised for hundreds of covers, bottomless buffets with vats of “fluffy” eggs—these are the places where eggs might be pre-mixed with liquid, held warm for too long, or cooked in big batches and portioned out.

By contrast, a simple poached egg demands to be cooked to order. A sunny-side-up egg can’t hide behind cream, cheese, and chopped herbs. That’s why chefs usually order the simplest egg dishes on a menu: they reveal exactly how much care is going into your breakfast.

The other brunch trap? Pile-on dishes where every trend lands on a single plate: fried chicken, waffles, hot honey, bacon jam, a poached egg, and truffle oil for good measure. They sound thrilling, but often, they’re designed more for social media than for a balanced, freshly executed meal. In the weeds of a Sunday rush, these monster plates are assembled like edible Lego sets from prepped components, more construction project than cooking.

The Shareables Chefs Side-Eye

“Let’s just get a bunch of starters for the table,” someone suggests, already envisioning a landscape of wings, sliders, nachos, and fried everything. Starters can be the most joyful part of dining out: communal, casual, fun. But chefs know they can also be where quality takes the biggest shortcut.

Think of wings that arrive suspiciously fast, with a texture that suggests they were par-cooked hours ago and left to wait in a cooler. Calamari rings that taste more of fryer oil than of the sea, their chewiness revealing that they’ve been frozen and handled by many hands before reaching your plate. Giant nacho platters where only the top layer is properly melted and seasoned, because getting heat and care all the way down is more effort than a slammed line can spare.

Chefs tend to avoid the most generic, reheatable items—the ones you can find, identical, in airports and chain pubs across the country. Instead, they scan the small plates for clues of actual craft: house-made pickles, a seasonal vegetable dish, a dip clearly built from scratch rather than poured from a bag.

It isn’t about being a snob. It’s about knowing that, in many kitchens, starters are the workhorses of the menu—expected to be fast, filling, and profitable. If a starter sounds like it could come from a frozen box, many chefs simply skip it and spend their appetite where the kitchen’s creativity is more likely to show.

So What Do Chefs Order Instead?

Listen closely when a chef opens a menu in an unfamiliar place. They don’t look for the flashiest wording or the longest descriptions. Their eyes go to the dishes where ingredients are few, cooking methods are clear, and seasonality is obvious.

They ask questions. “What are you most proud of tonight?” “What dish sells out first?” “What came in fresh this morning?” They trust the line between the seasons and the plate more than they trust any single buzzword.

Most of all, they understand this: a restaurant is a living, breathing system, and not every corner of the menu gets the same light and air. Some dishes shine because they’re made from the day’s best deliveries and the cook’s full attention. Others exist because someone in accounting needed them to.

Next time you’re out, hold the menu a little differently. Feel its weight not just in pages, but in what might be happening behind the kitchen door. Choose the dish that sounds like a story the chef wants to tell today, not a puzzle they’re trying to solve from yesterday’s leftovers.

FAQ

1. Are these dishes always bad, no matter where I go?

No. A great restaurant can turn any of these into something delicious and safe. The point isn’t to ban them forever, but to recognize that, in many average restaurants, these categories are more likely to hide shortcuts, older ingredients, or reheated components.

2. How can I quickly spot a “safe” dish on a menu?

Look for short, clear descriptions with a few high-quality ingredients and a simple cooking method (grilled, roasted, poached). Seasonal vegetables, daily fish from a reputable seafood place, and house specialties that the staff clearly loves are usually good bets.

3. Is it rude to ask the server what’s freshest?

Not at all. Ask kindly and specifically: “What’s tasting really good today?” or “What do the cooks like to eat from this menu?” A good server will appreciate the question and often steer you toward the kitchen’s best work.

4. Should I avoid all buffets entirely?

Not necessarily. High-end or very high-turnover buffets that monitor temperature and replenish frequently can be fine. The bigger worry is low-traffic buffets where food sits out for long stretches, especially seafood, eggs, and dairy-heavy dishes.

5. What’s one simple rule chefs wish diners would follow?

Order with the season and with the house’s strengths. If it’s a steakhouse, get the steak, not the sushi. If it’s a small bistro boasting seasonal produce, lean into vegetables and simple preparations. When you let the restaurant do what it does best, everyone wins—especially your plate.