9 Nasty Truths About Your Favorite Foods
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There's a reason most restaurants keep the kitchen doors closed -- and it's not just because it's so hot back there.
It can be tough for restaurateurs to turn a profit and Slashfood has uncovered some of the ultra-dirty deeds even the best restaurants commit in order to pinch pennies.
Read on for 10 true stories about the subtle, sneaky and sometimes downright disgusting ways restaurants cheat to save a buck -- and how you might be paying the price.
It can be tough for restaurateurs to turn a profit and Slashfood has uncovered some of the ultra-dirty deeds even the best restaurants commit in order to pinch pennies.
Read on for 10 true stories about the subtle, sneaky and sometimes downright disgusting ways restaurants cheat to save a buck -- and how you might be paying the price.
10. Using Cabbage in Place of Seaweed
Says a former maître d' at an expensive Chinese restaurant known for its celebrity clientele: "The owner figured his customers knew nothing about Chinese food (he was right) and was a genius at saving money. A specialty supplier used to provide edible seaweed for the popular seaweed appetizer, but when that got too expensive the boss began experimenting.
"The 'seaweed' on the menu ended up becoming thin strips of cabbage leaf, deep-fried, and then rolled in equal amounts of salt and sugar. It's possible even cardboard would taste good if prepared like that, but the dish remained a bestseller."
9. Deep-Frying Everything
But that's not all! At the same celebrity-friendly restaurant: "In addition to the 'Chinese seaweed,' the other two most popular dishes on the menu were a 'Mongolian lamb' main course and caramelized banana dessert," the insider says.
"Often a diner would order all three, and not realize that every item was cooked in exactly the same deep-fry basket. Although the restaurant denied the lamb was fried, in fact the cabbage (ahem, 'seaweed'), lamb shank and sugared banana would all go into the same oil."
8. Substituting Top-Shelf Alcohol with Generic Booze
One of the most common scams at restaurant bars is to replace premium vodka with generic brands, subscribing to the theory that most customers can't tell the difference. (We know of one restaurant which even did that with Scotch, but experienced whiskey drinkers could often tell and the scam was not so effective.)
A New York City bartender says, "The way of doing that is to start them on the bad vodka right away. You can't sub it in once they started drinking the top shelf brands or they'll notice. But if you serve the cheap stuff from the beginning they never know."
7. Topping Pitchers of Beer with Seltzer Water
Don't think the fiddling is restricted to top-shelf liquors, either. "In sports bars that sell pitchers of beers, the thing to do is to top the pitchers off with seltzer after the table has ordered like the third one," a source says. "The drunker the guys, the more seltzer they get."
6. Refilling Pricey Bottled Waters with Tap
It turns out not all water bottles are created equal. You might already suspect that some restaurants refill water bottles with tap water, but some places turn it into an art form. "Where I worked we served Voss water because it has the easiest screw top to re-seal," a waitress says. "You can't do that with the brands that have a bottle cap."
5. Recycling Baskets of Chips
One diner at a landmark cafe in Bethlehem, Pa., reported digging in to some bagel chips and finding they contained old pineapple rinds.
"Someone else got served the chips, didn't eat them all, threw their rinds from some other dish into the basket, the waiter picked it up without looking and threw more chips on top and re-served it to us," the customer claimed on an online ratings Web site. "Yeech!"
Management didn't seem to care and the patron says "they were trying to economize their chip ration, and it was probably standard practice to re-use uneaten chips."
4. Serving Rotten Meat
A steakhouse employee in New York says that sometimes not all the meat is as fresh as it should be. "It's an old trick to keep the steak that's past its prime and wait until somebody orders it well done or medium-well," the insider says. "The more you cook the meat, the more you disguise its flavor. When I'm eating out I never order anything higher than medium rare, because I know how the kitchen gets rid of bad meat."
3. Using Fake Creamer
A former waitress at an upscale restaurant in Philadelphia reports that one of the daily duties of staff was to mix a large pot of non-dairy, powdered creamer. When coffee or tea was ordered, the small milk jugs were to be filled halfway with fake creamer, and then topped off with the more expensive real milk.
2. Serving Caffeinated Coffee as Decaf
If your body has a problem with caffeine, it might be safer to make your own coffee at home. The same Philadelphia source also reports coming back to the kitchen with a cup of regular coffee when an elderly customer had requested decaf. "The head waiter took the cup from my hand, handed it right back to me and said, 'There -- now it's decaf,'" she says.
1. Souping Up Big Ticket Items
The most shocking story came from an internationally well-known West Coast restaurant -- trust us, you've heard of this place. Part of the shtick of this very fine-dining establishment is the presentation of a truffle at the table, so that customers have the opportunity to order some (super expensive) shavings to be added to their food. But while white truffles are more expensive than black truffles, their aroma is more subtle, meaning that they make less of an impression when presented during the sales pitch. "What the staff would do is add black truffle oil, which is more pungent, to the white truffle, to give it more 'pop,'" the insider says. "It's an absolute no-no to do, especially at those prices. But who's going to know?"
Got a gross-out restaurant kitchen tale you've been dying to tell? Share it in the comments below and we'll round up the best ones for a future post.
Ben Widdicombe is a former gossip columnist for the New York Daily News and Star and can be found dishing the dirt on fashion celebs at Stylelist.com. Click here for more annoying restaurant trends.
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9-22-2009 @9:14AM AL said... When asked how is everything. DON'T complain until after your meal. I was in an upscale restaurant when asked that question. I replayed "the jasmine rice doesn't taste like jasmine rice...The waiter went in back...told the chef/owner...who came running out and then told me to leave his restaurant. Maybe I travel to Asia too much...chinese food in the USA is not the same.
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9-22-2009 @9:15AM drj1990 said... With all these disgusting practices, I'm sure people are getting sick and dying all over the place, right? Or maybe, just maybe, people can handle a little bit more dirt than they realize.
Microbiologists and food safety scientists love to overstate their case. It makes them seem more important than they really are.
"OOOOOOOOEEEEEEEWWWW!!!. There's e.coli in that ground beef. It's not safe!!!!" O.k., how much e.coli is in the beef? Is that enough to make you sick? Hint: one e. coli cell is not enough to make you sick. In chemistry, it's the dose that make the poison. Botox is a wonderful example. Botox = botulina toxin. As in botulism. As in one of the most deadly poisons known, far deadlier than anything a chemist can synthesize. But if you dilute it down, then it is safe for medical purpose.
But apparently that concept hasn't yet ben introduced to microbiology.
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9-22-2009 @9:14AM Yes Iam said... OK, that's it. I am never eating out ever again. I did not know about the "well done" steak trick, BUT it has to explain my experience with City Range & Grill in Greenville, SC. I ate there only twice (stupid me, I gave them a second chance), and ordered a well done porterhouse steak both times. Both times it tasted rancid. It was awful. The first time when I told the waitress, she brushed me off. Second time ( a YEAR later) it happened again and I just decided never to eat there again. And I haven't, and I won't. I also tell everyone of my experience there. They may have saved money serving me rancid cuts of meat, but they lost way more money via future customers, because I always tell people of my experience
there.
p.s. I had waited the year and decided to try them again because I thought maybe it was a "temporary problem" and maybe the staff had changed, and it would be OK. But the second time it happened I figured, no, it's got to be Standard Operating Procedure for them.
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9-23-2009 @8:22PM Anna said... i worked at both dine in & fast food the funny thing is when i worked at mc donalds we threw away everything that was bad, fell on the floor, even if it just had a little freezer burn or if it had been under heat lamps for a certain amount of time but when i worked at the dine in they would rinse off a steak that had fallen on the floor & put it back on the grill, reuse lemons off of tea glasses & put salsa that was left in the bowl on the table back in the squirt bottle & then dump it back in the tub at the end of the night. talk about double dipping!
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9-22-2009 @9:30AM Hannah said... I am never eating out again....
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9-22-2009 @9:20AM shlvallejo said... I worked in a restaurant in college that served a salad bar to your table. We would take their uneaten salad from the mian bowl and put it back into the fresh salad and start all over again. When people asked for decaf coffee and we only had caffienated coffee made ,we would tell them it was decaf. Now I dont trust restaurant servers especially at small estabishments.
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10-02-2009 @11:26AM john said... I USED TO WORK IN A PLACE THAT WOULD TAKE THE LEFTOVER BREAD OFF THE TABLE AND THROW IT IN A BOX ON TOP OF THE PIZZA OVEN,THEN THEY WOULD GRIND IT INTO BREAD CRUMBS TO COOK WITH.
THEY WOULD ALSO POUR LEFTOVER SAUCE FROM THE PLATES BACK INTO THE POTS AND SAVE THE SLICED TOMATOS OFF THE SALADS AND USE THEM ON THE SUB'S.
I ALSO WORKED IN A PLACE THAT WOULD USE ALPO IN THE MEATBALLS FOR THE SUBS.
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9-22-2009 @9:20AM Stig said... It is a disgrace what many resturants do. But to me the worst sin which is committed in most restaurants is that servers, busboys, managers all stick their hands inside the glasses when they clean the tables. I can assure you that they do not go right out and wash hands. Instead they pick up your flatware or food by their dirty hands. So if you want to contract swineflu eat out.
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9-22-2009 @9:23AM anonymous said... I agree with you 100% I work in a restaurant and I have never seen any of this behavior in the kitchen. If something isn't eaten it goes straight in the trash, which goes straight outside into the dumpster. Nothing is reused and 9 times out of 10 if you send something back to the kitchen your original meal gets trashed and an entire new one is made. This sounds like a bunch of low end restaurants that don't mind a crappy rating. A food inspector would never let a restaurant get away with these kind of practices.
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9-22-2009 @9:23AM SDickerson said... This entire "expose" is totally useless without the "NAMES of the retaurants that are involved! What a joke!!!!!
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9-22-2009 @9:24AM Jack said... What's really gross is watching what goes on in fast food restaurants right in front of your eyes, with no plastic gloves on hands in most cases. To avoid gagging on your food when eating, it's best not watch them prepare it.
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9-22-2009 @9:27AM meg said... Ugh. My stomach is churning after reading all these comments-especially the maggots in the steak story and the semen in the Chinese soup! My boyfriend works at Chili's and I used to too and they are VERY clean. No reusing food, no using anything that's been dropped, no expired meat, etc.. No switching out liquor or anything like that. They're all really good restaurants to eat at.
I was relieved that someone from Outback wrote in because I love eating there.
I was very disheartened to read about Cracker Barrel!
Dinergrl-you should not be a waitress at all!!!
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9-22-2009 @9:27AM 1stladyofta said... I worked at a fast food restaurant in college and worked the breakfast shift. One morning a bug flew into the grits. I got the kitchen manager. She took a spoon and dug the bug out, stirred the grits and said ok good to go. I still haven't eaten at that resturant and it has been 20 years.
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9-22-2009 @9:28AM coryguy said... I worked as a chef in a pittsburgh jazz club. While the executive chef was carving a beef roast to be served at a catered Christmas party, I saw him smash a roach with his carving knife then continue carving the beef without cleaning the knife.(I quit that same night)
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9-22-2009 @9:31AM Sue said... I worked at a BBQ restaurant when I was 16. I used to bus tables. The Greek bread was served in open baskets and not wrapped. We had to take the uneaten bread and put it in a bag to be reserved to other customers. One time, there was salad dressing and cigarette ash on the bread so I threw it out. The owner caught me and yelled at me. I told him why, but that didn't seem to matter. Another time at a Mexican restaurant I was served rotten meat. It smelled so bad and yes I order mine medium well. The manager said it didn't smell bad to her, but they did take it back. I ordered something else, not steak. No wonder people are so sick all the time. And you can't even be sure the food you prepare yourself is good. I am sure that where food is packaged, all kinds of gross things happen.
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9-22-2009 @9:32AM Joe said... I was a fast food restaurant manager for many years, then a district manager for a few. Most people are good by nature, but in that industry your common worker is not always well educated. A good manager has a conscience and cares about their customers. The ones that do not will not be successful and it will be clear in the atmosphere of the restaurant. A good manager will ease a person into a food prep position continually exressing and training on the importance of food safety. If you are worried about your health, when you walk into a restaurant and the atmosphere is not clean and friendly, you might as well just turn around and walk out because that is a clear indication it is not well managed and you never know what could be going on in that kitchen. Doesn't matter where it is, uptown, downtown or in the ghetto. There are good and bad places everywhere.
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9-22-2009 @9:51AM Char said... Agreed- have been in the business for 33 years plus- only one restaurant had time issues for food (leaving out too long in the back before serving but then that wasn't too long- just too long to suit my reasoning)- and working at the number one fast food restaurant, if even a ketchup pack or bag or cup falls on the floor, it's tossed away and remade if it was for customer- if customer got wrong order and returns it, it goes in the trash- that's how it is and it's a firing offense to do anything other than that. Condiments left on tables are thrown away. It's a food cost business but that is ridiculous.
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9-22-2009 @1:23PM Jennifer said... I worked in a restaurant that took the uneaten bread from customer tables and put it all in a bag to use the next day for making croutons.
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9-22-2009 @10:13AM rayc said... Ok just wanted to share bout a person that used to work for a Ice cream chain that is no longer that popular .. told me one of his friends sometimes "spit" on the ice cream. Not too long after I find out it's common practice for people to spike or spit in your food especially if they don't like you. So be careful you cheap tipsters and those that give people in restaurants a hard time. I also heard of a woman that used to order Chinese food for delivery. They didn't like her much.. apparently she gave them a hard time. One day she ordered a soup and found what she thought was semen in it (this happened In NYC I believe). Then she took it to a lab and her suspicions were confirmed. She ended up sewing the restaurant. A well known popular coffee chain seems they give burnt coffee lots of times. I once ordered coffee then it tasted so and told them so. They gave me another cup and said how does this one taste? I said slightly better but it was probably cause my taste buds had gotten used to it..Then I found out it was the SAME coffee they had given me as per their own words! Tasted so nasty I decided to use milk and lots of it to kill it's flavor..there were even times I didn't even drink their expensive drinks when I saw there was dirt or whatever looked funny in it - the if you complain you could end up in worse shape the next time around...never mind their coffee is so friggin expensive! (Also they're known to discriminate against blue collar type workers as clients - seems they only want corporate top notch customers and I guess cause of image preservation!) I've experienced and seen dirty tricks from them and their managers- From refusing to serve them (skipping them - next! without even looking at them) to disconnecting the internet When the manager was around and refusing to answering any questions when they were trying to solve the problem as they got on the phone with AT&T very neat indeed! Now how about those places where youngsters pick their noses or scratch their heads then go touch your food ??? EWWWWW Others wear gloves or just a glove to pretend they care but then handle money and do all else with that same glove!! LOL Finally there were some hot dog stands in NYC where I once worked.. They used the water from the water fountains that laid at the base from the buildings in the area they worked, which was full of pollution spit bird poop cigarette butts etc etc.. and washed their utensils and boiled the hot dogs etc. with them!! Late ON I found Out I wasn't the only one that got sick cause of them... LOL NOW you see what you could be in for when you go out to eat!!
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9-22-2009 @9:38AM betty said... I worked at a place in Florida where they use the left over bread off of the tables to make croutons!!! How gross is that! I will never eat croutons in my salad again!
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