Five Warning Signs to Look Out for in Any Restaurant
Eating at a restaurant should be a pleasure: the joy of being able to relax and enjoy food that you don’t have to sweat over, the luxury of service from professionals, the taste of a well-prepared dinner. That’s why a bad restaurant experience gives you a lot of regrets: you didn’t enjoy the meal, you wasted time and money —probably a lot of money these days, because restaurants are getting more and more expensive . This makes knowing the signs of a bad restaurant an essential life skill.
If you’re looking for a new place to dine with friends, keep an eye out for the following restaurant red flags—and if you see one (or more), turn around and start looking for an alternative.
Outdated website or promotional materials
Restaurants (should) be constantly changing. The staff changes, new chefs join the kitchen, and the menu (hopefully) changes over time. A restaurant that hasn’t bothered to update things like reviews posted on its walls or on its website (or the website itself) has probably overlooked other things over the years. As food critic Tom Sietsema noted, if a restaurant’s reviews are so old that their authors are already dead , it may indicate that no one has said anything good about the place in a very long time. And if the website was last updated with pandemic-era mask etiquette in mind, you have to wonder what else has slipped their minds over the last, oh, few years.
Bleach (or other strong odors)
Smell is always an important indicator of what you’re about to experience, and restaurants should smell like food. So if you smell rot, rancid oil, or something downright unpleasant when you walk into a restaurant, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you’re in for a subpar experience.
However, if the smell of bleach or other chemical cleaning products hits you in the face, turn around and run. Yes, the restaurant should be clean, but if it smells like a CSI just investigated a murder, then there’s probably a big sanitation problem. Alternatively, if you find yourself choking on the smell of air fresheners, you might want to wonder what’s hiding underneath all those perfumes.
Large, unfocused menus
If you’ve ever been handed a seven-pound menu that offered everything from steak to sushi, you should be prepared for a disappointing experience . There is a simple reason for this: most quality restaurants pay special attention to the theme of the dishes they prepare. They offer a select number of dishes and sides that they do very well. The more varied and lengthy the menu, the more you have to question your thought process (or lack thereof) while eating.
What else is worth paying attention to? Typos. If a restaurant doesn’t take the time to adjust the menu and make sure it’s correct, what makes you think it takes the time to prepare the food correctly?
Dirty bathrooms
You should always ensure that the restaurant is clean when you enter it. Heading straight to the bathroom is a good time to check yourself : If it looks like it was last cleaned a few days (or weeks) ago, you’ll have to wonder how much effort goes into cleaning the kitchen or anywhere else.
Speaking of the kitchen, if you can look into it, look for gloves and hats. While the guys at The Bear don’t seem to worry about hair getting into your food, you absolutely should. Don’t you see anyone? Find a new diner.
Finally, think about your desk when you first sit down. Is it clean and free of crumbs? A menu, a salt shaker, or something … sticky? This means that the place is not particularly well decorated, even if it looks nice at first glance. Go home and order pizza.
theatricality
There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun while dining out, so restaurants that make a show of serving your food may not necessarily be a red flag. But as the existence of Salt Bae Burger (formerly New York’s worst restaurant ) proves, sometimes theatrics hide some truly crappy dining experiences. The more sparklers, ceremony and staff required—and the fewer plates —to simply put food on the table, the less likely you are to have a four-star experience. When you eat at a really good restaurant, they just bring you your food and tell you to enjoy it.