Items You Should Never Order in a Restaurant

The dining choices today can often seem overwhelming. In the United States, as of 2023, there are around 749,000 restaurants, with a large portion of these consisting of chain restaurants. With such a high number of establishments, knowing which places are of higher quality can be challenging. It can be even more challenging trying to determine which dishes to choose and which items you should never order in a restaurant.

Whether an item is created to generate more money or it's a calorie bomb, laden with unnecessary calories, fat, sugar, and more, there are certain things you want to always avoid. Even more so when it's an item linked to deadly foodborne illnesses, like E.coli, Salmonella, or Listeria. It's never worth the potentially dangerous experience.

To help narrow down your choices of what to order when you dine out, 24/7 Tempo has put together a list of items you should never order in a restaurant. If you walk into a restaurant and notice any of these warning signs, you should probably walk out before you're even seated. (Perhaps like you should if you see any of these foods we wish would be banned.)

On the face of it, this seems like a cost-effective option but there are some significant drawbacks to eating in this way. Firstly, you will eat too much! No matter how good your self-control is, the temptation to over-indulge will be overwhelming and you will probably end up feeling uncomfortable and a little ill by the time you leave. Secondly, the restaurant has to make make money somehow so they will be compromising on quality to make up for the large quantities that they are providing.

While we're on the subject of filling up on appetizers, watch out for the soup. A small cup of a broth-based soup like chicken noodle or minestrone can be a great way to start your meal, but watch out for the thick and/or creamy soups like New England clam chowder and split pea: those hearty soups can get filling, fast. At high-end restaurants like steakhouses, the portion will most likely be larger than you think. Few things in life are more disappointing than not being able to enjoy a $60 ribeye because you filled up on the split pea soup and bread first.

Sugary drinks are okay as a treat but free refills encourage you to drink far too much of them. After three or four cups of soda, you will probably feel full but these are empty calories and they will not last. Once the sugar rush subsides, you will be feeling tired and hungry. It's best to fill up on food and drink a glass of water!

In the same vein, smoothies and milkshakes are also essentially desserts and not the ideal beverage to wash down spaghetti bolognese with. They also tend to be really filling, taking up valuable stomach space.

Eating ground beef that has not been thoroughly cooked is risky and should be avoided. The outside of the meat joint can get contaminated and when the meat is minced up, this ends up on the inside. This is why a rare steak is fine but a 'pink' burger is not. If it arrives pink in the middle, send it back and ask for another one. It is not worth the risk of getting an E.coli infection.

Few foods have been associated with more bouts of foodborne illness than sprouts (alfalfa and bean sprouts, for example). This is for a few reasons: One, they're usually grown in warm and humid environments, ideal bacteria breeding ground. Two, their shape makes them difficult to properly wash. And three, they're served raw. It's probably best to leave them off your salad.

That bowl of shared free pretzels or peanuts sitting on the bar might look mighty tempting after a couple of pints of beer, but it should be fairly obvious by now that you don't want to be eating from a communal bowl of food that others have been sticking their hands into. Thankfully, post-Covid, most bars have abandoned this practice and sell bags of chips instead.

Similarly, that lemon on the rim or your Diet Coke or pineapple wedge garnishing your pina colada is most likely not super-clean, either. They're usually sliced up by a bartender who may or may not have washed their hands, on a cutting board that may or may not be clean, and they've been sitting out on the bar for a while, too.

If you want to squeeze the lemon or lime into your drink that's fine, but just to be safe you probably shouldn't drop the whole thing into it. And once you're seated, if there's some superfluous kale on your plate, you should probably leave that be, too.

Wagyu is the pinnacle of beef, rightfully regarded as the highest quality of steak you can buy (it's also usually shockingly expensive). You might be able to down a traditional 12-ounce steak with no problem, but Wagyu has one major, obvious difference from regular beef, which is evident just by looking at it: it has a lot more marbling, or intramuscular fat.

For this reason, it's incredibly rich and filling. Wagyu is usually priced by ounce for a good reason. If you're ordering a Wagyu steak, you most likely aren't going to want to order more than four ounces per person; after that, the law of diminishing returns begins to take effect quickly.

When in a Japanese restaurant or a steakhouse that also serves great sushi, then order the sushi. If you're in a so-so Chinese restaurant that also offers some sushi for no apparent reason and nobody else in there is eating it, don't order the sushi. Should you be in a French bistro, order the mussels. If you're in a sticky-floored bar, don't order the mussels.

Dining in a seaside lobster shack or clam bar, go ahead and order the bounty of the sea. If you're in a diner hundreds of miles from the ocean, there is no telling how long that lobster has been in the freezer. In short, Before you order anything that might put your intestinal well-being at risk, read the room.

A grilled cheese is one of the easiest foods to cook at home. It also tends to get a little soggy if left on the plate for too long before being eaten. For those two reasons, you really shouldn't order a grilled cheese at a restaurant. Just make one for yourself instead; it'll taste better.

If you're browsing a menu and you encounter something that's truly head-scratching (burgers are usually involved), you probably shouldn't order it. Gimmicky foods are usually just added to menus for attention and are usually overpriced amalgams of foods that don't complement each other very well.