Walking into a restaurant on a Monday evening with your appetite primed for something delicious sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan. You glance at the menu, and there it is: the special of the day. Sounds enticing, right? Not so fast. The late Anthony Bourdain, chef extraordinaire and culinary truth-teller, had some strong opinions about Monday specials that might make you think twice before ordering one.
His advice wasn’t just chef snobbery or food elitism. It came from decades of working in professional kitchens, witnessing firsthand what happens behind those swinging doors. Let’s dive into why Bourdain warned us about Monday specials and whether his advice still holds water in 2025.
The Origins of Bourdain’s Monday Rule
In “Kitchen Confidential” and his 1999 New Yorker article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” Bourdain pulled back the curtain on restaurant supply chains and exposed how the timing of seafood deliveries could leave Monday diners unknowingly eating days-old fish. This wasn’t gossip or speculation. Bourdain spent over two decades working in kitchens before writing his groundbreaking book. At the time, he had worked in eateries for more than 20 years, with the last decade spent as a frontline chef.
His warning became one of the most quoted pieces of restaurant advice in modern times. Honestly, it’s the kind of insider knowledge that makes you rethink every dining decision you’ve ever made. The advice spread like wildfire because it made perfect sense once you understood the logistics behind restaurant operations.
Think about it this way: restaurants are businesses trying to minimize waste and maximize profit. Nothing wrong with that, except when your Monday meal becomes the vehicle for clearing out last week’s inventory. According to Bourdain, most chefs place their seafood orders on Thursday for a busy weekend service. Fish typically arrives Friday morning, gets served the same day and Saturday, and is stretched through Sunday.
The Four-Day-Old Fish Problem
By Monday, what’s left is whatever didn’t sell, which can be four or five days old, depending on how it was stored. Let that sink in for a moment. When you’re savoring what you think is fresh seafood on Monday evening, there’s a decent chance it’s been hanging around since Friday morning. Bourdain wrote, “If you like four-day-old fish, be my guest.”
That means your Monday fish entree has been languishing under variable conditions for four days, and its quality ultimately depends on how vigilant the presiding chef was over the weekend. Here’s the thing about busy kitchens: they’re hectic. Bourdain said, explaining that cooks constantly open and close the refrigerator door to access other items, “When a kitchen is in full swing, proper refrigeration is almost nonexistent.”
Fish needs to stay cold and fresh. Period. When it’s sitting around while the weekend rush happens and fridges are being opened constantly, that freshness diminishes rapidly. Fish will typically stay fresh for about two days, so a four-day-old filet is not something you probably want to tangle with. You might not get sick, sure, but you’re definitely not getting the quality you’re paying for.
Monday Specials Are Red Flags
Specials on a Monday, especially seafood dishes like vinaigrettes or frittatas, were often red flags. Why these dishes specifically? Because they’re perfect for disguising seafood that’s seen better days. A heavily dressed salad or a baked egg dish can mask flavors and textures that would be obvious in a simple grilled preparation.
Gordon Ramsay explained that if there are a lot of specials, they really aren’t what they’re claiming to be: “Specials are there to disappear throughout the evening. When they list 10 specials, that’s not special.” It’s not just Bourdain who understood this game. Other celebrity chefs have echoed similar warnings. The problem with restaurant specials is that instead of being something creative or exceptional, they are often dishes made with ingredients that are leftover from previous days and need to be used up or they’ll go bad.
The math is simple: restaurants need to move inventory before it spoils. For the waste you can’t proactively prevent, look for ways to reuse ingredients or prepared foods before they spoil (daily specials or staff meals are good for this). So while your Monday special might sound delicious on the menu, it’s often a creative solution to a very practical problem.
The Weekend Delivery Gap
He wrote that most chefs get a delivery of seafood on Thursdays, but not over the weekend. That means many Monday fish dishes (particularly specials) may be designed simply to get rid of the days-old fish before it goes bad. This pattern wasn’t unique to one or two restaurants. It was industry standard for decades.
Most seafood markets historically closed on Sundays. Like many major fresh fish markets around the world, the Tsujiki Fish Market is closed on Sundays. In the United States, some of the larger coastal seafood markets will have retail and dining options open throughout the weekends, but by and large, Sundays aren’t the prime day to cast around for fresh fish. This meant restaurants had to make their Thursday or Friday delivery last through the entire weekend.
He revealed that chefs order seafood on Thursday night to sell over the weekend, when the restaurant is busiest. The chef’s goal is to complete that entire seafood order by Sunday night, since there are no weekend fish deliveries. What happens when they don’t sell everything? You guessed it: Monday specials.
Bourdain’s One Exception to the Rule
Bourdain wrote, “I never order fish on Monday, unless I’m eating at Le Bernardin – a four-star restaurant where I know they are buying their fish directly from the source.” Even ironclad rules have exceptions. Le Bernardin, the legendary seafood restaurant in New York City, earned Bourdain’s trust.
The restaurant had been serving upscale seafood-based meals to New York’s foodies for more than a decade when Bourdain published his book, and it has continued to thrive since, with its 40th anniversary approaching in 2026. It’s thrived under the culinary direction of chef Eric Ripert, a close friend of Bourdain’s whom he trusted to ensure quality. Friendship aside, Le Bernardin’s reputation for sourcing and quality made it an outlier.
It earned its four-star rating from the New York Times months after opening and has never lost a star, making it the longest-running example of this impressive feat. When a restaurant specializes in seafood at this level, they’re getting daily deliveries and treating fish with the respect it deserves. That’s a completely different ballgame from your average neighborhood spot.
Modern Supply Chains and Daily Deliveries
His argument boiled down to this – there were no seafood deliveries over the weekend at the time, so most chefs ordered fish on Thursday for a Friday delivery, planning to sell it over the busy weekend. Whatever didn’t move on Friday or Saturday would reappear as brunch or specials on Sunday, and by Monday the last of the leftovers were being pushed out before fresh deliveries could be ordered. That was the old model.
As discussed in a reflection on what still holds true from “Kitchen Confidential,” modern supply chains and the rise of daily deliveries in many cities have made Monday fish somewhat safer. Still, when in doubt, skip the seafood until Tuesday. Many restaurants now receive multiple deliveries per week, especially in larger cities with robust food distribution networks.
Bourdain explained in the video that the restaurant landscape had transformed, and food standards had risen dramatically, with diners expecting much higher quality across the board. This change in standards and expectations meant that restaurants could no longer get away with serving four-day-old fish. Competition and social media reviews also raised the stakes. A restaurant serving subpar food gets called out immediately these days.
The Bigger Lesson About Restaurant Culture
Bourdain’s Monday rule was never just about avoiding bad fish. It was about understanding how restaurants actually operate versus how we imagine they operate. Kitchens are practical, sometimes chaotic places where waste management and profitability drive many decisions. That’s not necessarily sinister, but it’s reality.
He even joked to Insider Tech that his advice not to eat fish on Mondays would be on his tombstone, “Regrettably, ‘don’t eat fish on Monday’ is going to be on my headstone.” The advice became so famous that it overshadowed much of his other culinary wisdom. Yet it opened important conversations about transparency in dining.
The restaurant industry today is different from when Bourdain wrote “Kitchen Confidential” in 2000. Supply chains are more sophisticated. Consumers are more educated. Food safety standards are higher. Flash-freezing technology has also improved dramatically. Another reason the “don’t buy seafood on Mondays” rule has largely lost its bite is the rise of flash-freezing technology. Commercial flash-freezing methods chill seafood to sub-zero temperatures almost instantly, locking in its texture, flavor, and nutrients for up to two years without compromising quality.
Still, not every restaurant has embraced these changes equally. Budget constraints, location, and business models all affect how fresh your Monday meal actually is. The core truth remains: specials often serve a dual purpose of moving inventory and showcasing creativity, with the emphasis varying by establishment. So next time you’re tempted by that intriguing Monday special, remember Bourdain’s original warning even if he later softened his stance. Ask questions, use your judgment, and maybe just order something you know the restaurant does well rather than gambling on what might be leftover inventory dressed up with a fancy name. What do you think? Will you reconsider that Monday special next time?
