You sit down at a nice restaurant, the menu lands in front of you, and suddenly the pressure is on. There is so much on offer, beautifully described with poetic language and culinary buzzwords, that every single dish sounds like a masterpiece. The truth, though, is that professional chefs – people who live and breathe kitchens every day – quietly shake their heads at a surprising number of what are considered “classic” restaurant orders.
Knowing what insiders skip can save you money, disappointment, and honestly, a few bad meals. So let’s dive in and find out which dishes are seriously overrated, and why the people who know food best tend to walk right past them.
1. Anything with “Truffle” in the Name
Here’s the thing about truffle dishes on restaurant menus: they are almost never what they claim to be. Most truffle oils are not made with actual truffles at all. Instead, they are made with synthetic ingredients, namely 2,4-dithiapentane, which merely mimics the flavor of real truffles. You are essentially paying a luxury price for a chemical approximation.
Pastry chef Saura Kline of Local Jones in Denver advises never ordering anything with the word “truffle” in it, because unless you’re at a high-class fine-dining restaurant, this almost always means truffle oil, which is very rarely made with actual truffles. The gap between what’s implied and what’s on your plate is staggering.
Truffle oil tends to be used aggressively, and it will immediately increase the price of any dish, regardless of its actual quality. So the next time “truffle fries” catch your eye on the menu, think twice. You may be paying for little more than a chemical perfume drizzled over basic potatoes.
2. Restaurant Risotto
Risotto sounds like the kind of dish that screams culinary skill and effort. Honestly, it can be. The problem is that most restaurants are not making it properly, and seasoned chefs know it. Brian Motyka, executive chef of Longman and Eagle in Chicago, says that the number one main dish he never orders is any sort of risotto, because most of the time risottos are pre-cooked, heated up, finished with cream, and then over-cooked beyond the al dente texture you are looking for.
The art of a truly great risotto demands constant attention and cooking the rice completely to order. Risotto is best when the rice is cooked to order, finished with butter and parmesan, and has a luscious, meltingly rich consistency. Only if you find a restaurant cooking their rice to order should you actually go ahead and order it. Most places simply cannot afford the time during a busy service rush.
Think of it like this: risotto is like making a proper cup of espresso. Rushed or pre-extracted, it is just warm brown water. The real deal takes patience that most restaurant kitchens cannot deliver during peak hours. This is one dish that genuinely tends to disappoint outside of specialist Italian restaurants.
3. The Soup of the Day
The soup of the day sounds reassuring, seasonal, and freshly made. Chef Michael DeLone of Nunzio in Collingswood, New Jersey, puts it bluntly: ordering the “Soup of the Day” is code in the hospitality industry for the kitchen trying to get rid of its walk-in inventory from the weekend before vendor deliveries come in. That is a polite way of saying you might be eating last week’s leftovers in a bowl.
Chef Jon Davis, head chef at City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi, refuses to order soup du jour for exactly this reason, questioning whether it was truly made that day, how long it has sat in the steam well, and whether the prep cook cooled it down properly. These are not minor concerns – they are real kitchen realities.
Gordon Ramsay also never orders the soup of the day at a restaurant, citing the same freshness concerns, and he recommends asking what the soup du jour was the previous day to gauge how truly “daily” it really is. A simple question that could spare you a lot of disappointment.
4. The House Salad
A house salad feels like a safe, simple, healthy choice. Chefs, however, tend to see it very differently. Chef Suhum Jang, co-owner and managing partner of Hortus NYC, avoids ordering house salads entirely, having seen restaurants repurpose leftover scraps from other dishes as salad ingredients, with base greens that are not always fresh and heavy dressings used to mask the lack of quality. That undressed plate of greens is hiding more than you realize.
Salads often carry a surprisingly high price tag. As one chef puts it, when a restaurant charges you fourteen to sixteen dollars for pre-cut tasteless carrots and pre-cooked chicken, it borders on the ridiculous. You are paying restaurant markup on ingredients that cost them almost nothing to assemble.
It’s worth remembering that salad is something nearly anyone can make brilliantly at home in five minutes. When you are splurging on a dinner out, a lifeless bowl of iceberg and two cherry tomatoes is a genuinely poor way to spend part of that budget. Iceberg lettuce salads are a particular culprit – known for crunch rather than flavor, they simply lack the depth that any food-focused person craves.
5. The Plant-Based Burger
The plant-based burger had its moment. It really did. A few years back, ordering one felt almost revolutionary. Today, insiders are far more skeptical, and the market data backs them up. Sales of refrigerated plant-based burgers, which were driving significant growth in the category a few years ago, continued their steep decline, dropping roughly a quarter year over year. Consumers tasted them repeatedly and repeatedly walked away unconvinced.
In 2024, plant-based meat and seafood dollar sales decreased seven percent, while unit sales decreased eleven percent, though the rate of decline was slower than in 2023. That is two consecutive years of meaningful shrinkage in a category that was once considered unstoppable.
A December 2024 survey by Morning Consult found that among consumers who had tried plant-based meat but not eaten it in the past year, price was a top reason for stepping back, but beyond price, taste simply not meeting expectations remains among the leading drivers of consumers leaving the category altogether. Restaurant versions tend to suffer from the same problems, often arriving overpriced and under-seasoned on your plate.
6. Avocado Toast
Avocado toast had one of the most remarkable runs in modern food culture, going from health-café curiosity to restaurant staple to cultural punchline in under a decade, with even chefs now questioning its staying power. What was once genuinely fresh and interesting has become the food equivalent of a motivational poster – everywhere, and ultimately saying nothing.
Chefs and diners alike are turning away from elaborate avocado toast creations topped with everything from edible flowers to gold leaf, recognizing them as overpriced gimmicks rather than genuine culinary experiences, with growing appreciation for simpler and more authentic breakfast options instead. It feels like paying for the Instagram photo more than the food itself.
The average price of avocado toast in major US cities has increased by roughly three quarters since 2019, with some luxury variations costing up to twenty-two dollars per serving. That is a lot of money for bread with green spread on top. I think the entire trend became a vehicle for restaurants to charge fine-dining prices for brunch-level effort, and most culinary insiders saw through it long ago.
7. The Restaurant Chicken Breast
Chicken breast is everywhere on menus. It is familiar, it is safe, and it is almost always a disappointment. Ryan Ososky, executive chef of The Church Key in West Hollywood, will order almost anything when dining out, but never chicken because it tends to be overcooked at most restaurants. That dry, flavorless slab sitting under a sauce is one of the most common letdowns in casual dining.
According to Food Network chefs, the reasons to avoid ordering chicken in restaurants include overinflated price and a fundamental lack of originality. You are paying a premium for the most basic protein on the menu, which receives the least creative attention in most kitchens. Chicken breast is a staple, but its lean nature often results in a dry, flavorless piece of meat if not cooked with real precision.
Think of chicken breast at a restaurant like ordering vanilla ice cream at a high-end gelato bar. Technically fine. Completely misses the point. When chefs eat out, they gravitate toward more complex poultry dishes like duck or quail. That is the insider move – order what the kitchen actually has to work for.
8. Raw Oysters at the Wrong Restaurant
Raw oysters carry a real mystique. They feel luxurious, coastal, and sophisticated. The problem is that when they go wrong, they can go seriously wrong. When oysters are served raw, there is a risk of contracting a Vibrio infection, and the most serious type, Vibrio vulnificus, can result in limb amputations and even death. That is not the evening anyone plans for when making a reservation.
Cordon Bleu-trained chef Mark Nichols, who owns the high-end catering service JC’s Catering, will not go near raw oysters if they were harvested more than a hundred miles from the restaurant serving them. Distance from the water is everything with shellfish. Freshness is not just about taste here – it is about safety.
Many people who have worked in the restaurant business don’t order oysters when dining out unless it is the restaurant’s specialty, with experienced oyster shuckers and chefs on Reddit noting that oyster expertise is not to be underestimated. Ordering oysters at a landlocked steakhouse is a gamble that culinary insiders simply never take.
9. The Long Tasting Menu
A sixteen-course tasting menu with wine pairings sounds like the ultimate dining experience. For a long time, it was considered the pinnacle of culinary ambition. Today, even within fine dining circles, the enthusiasm has cooled considerably. The multi-course, three-hour tasting menu was once the ultimate expression of fine dining ambition, designed as a culinary journey with certain diners happily clearing an entire evening for the experience, but that appetite has cooled considerably.
Tasting menus traditionally require three-hour commitments, but modern diners want chef-driven experiences in one-hour windows, with abbreviated formats catering to customers with time-conscious schedules or simply a preference for more efficient dining. There is something quietly exhausting about still eating at midnight when you have work at seven the next morning.
According to the US Consumer Price Index, food away from home rose around six percent from January 2024 to September 2025, driven by rising labor, rent, and ingredient costs – putting the lengthy, expensive tasting menu under particular pressure. When a single meal costs as much as a weekend trip, most diners now ask if all those courses were really necessary. More often than not, the answer is no.
10. Seafood on a Monday Night
This one catches people off guard, but it is perhaps the most practical piece of insider advice on this entire list. If you see fish on the menu early in the week, it might be best to avoid it, because on Reddit, many chefs and servers recommend not ordering seafood early in the week at all, as it is usually left over from the weekend. Most fish markets simply do not deliver on Sundays.
Eric Duchene, executive chef of the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn, warns diners to avoid fish specials with bacon, since bacon is commonly used to cover up the smell of old fish. He also notes that raw fish should not be ordered on Sunday nights, as restaurants don’t receive deliveries on Sunday. That is a genuine kitchen secret most diners never hear.
Chef Tony Inn, Executive Chef of Kin Gin, advises always choosing a restaurant that specializes in seafood, because venues that sell a lot of a particular item tend to have higher turnover, meaning ingredients are fresher and quality is consistently better. The golden rule of ordering seafood out: go where fish is the whole point, not an afterthought on a vast general menu. When the restaurant stakes its reputation on what swims, you are in far safer hands.
