18 Warning Signs That Should Encourage You to Keep Away from a Restaurant

Going to restaurants is one of our favorite pastimes as it offers such a pleasant alternative to the chore of everyday cooking. Once you go out, however, how can you tell whether the food will be tasty and the service kind? Some of the restaurant personnel give away hints that we can’t ignore. When you see them, you’d better get away!

If a restaurants located at a busy street is empty, it is an alarming symptom. Good places attract people.

Ordering fish, seafood, poultry or red meat always ask about the origins. You have the right to know where your food comes from and the staff are obliged to provide you any requested information. If they don’t know it, they should ask the cooks. If nobody knows anything, you should be worried.

If the menu is very long, it is very likely that many ingredients are kept frozen. The rule is simple – the shorter menu, the better food. Also pay attention to seasonal products.

Restaurants should not smell of grease. If this is the case, the personnel might not clean the kitchen equipment very carefully. The smell of old frying oil should scare you away immediately!

Restaurants often seduce us with ‘fresh fish’. How is that possible when there is no sea or lake around? It is also difficult in case of some fish species, as they are protected during particular periods and must not be caught at all.

Clumsy and dirty menu may mean that the whole place is not very clean. As menu is the first thing we are given and it is really easy to take care of its condition, a worn-out and stained one should be a sufficient motivation to stand up and go out.

Take a look at the waiters. If they are annoyed, lethargic and generally slow, it means there is something going wrong. When the personnel isn’t treated right, that translates into their approach to customers and the quality of service. Of course we all can have a bad day from time to time. But with this job, you need to leave your bad mood behind.

When a restaurant serves seafood, it should smell of the sea. A very intensive smell of fish might mean that the products are not very fresh.

When a dish that normally requires some time to prepare is served very quickly, it means it must have been pre-cooked or was made of semi-products. Some things have to be waited for.

If a hot dish cools down very quickly, it means it was heated in a microwave. And this is just unacceptable!

A short menu means that the cooks know what they do very well and they have mastered the recipes. And if they rely on seasonal products, you just stay there. It’s going to be delicious!

Avoid places with coughing and sneezing waiters. This means they are underpaid and the labor regulations are not respected there. Moreover, professional restaurant personnel cares about their hairstyle. We don’t want any hairs in our dish!

How can you tell whether a Mexican restaurant serves good quality dishes? Just try their salsa. This sauce is the essence of Mexican cuisine. A restaurant that declares to be Mexican needs to take pride in its food.

Any flies spotted in a restaurant are a symptom of badly managed kitchen.

Restaurants should smell of tasty food. If you can smell perfumes, air-refreshers or a cleaning agent, this can’t be a very good place.

When you look at the backdoor of the restaurant, there should be its dustbins around. If the place is messy, there is a lot of garbage around with food leftovers scattered all over, the cooks can’t be doing their job well. Messy dustbins can reflect a badly run kitchen with careless and chaotic staff.

Carpets and restaurants don’t go together. This decoration is very impractical as, with so many people walking on it, it is really hard to keep it clean.

Bathrooms can tell you a lot. If they are dirty, the kitchen could be dirty, too. A clean toilet should be one of the restaurant’s calling cards.