The menu at a restaurant is sometimes created by a chef, but more often than not it’s set by an owner, a manager, or some corporate dude who has no idea how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
Or he pretends not to, anyway, so someone else will make it for him.
If you want it straight from the chef’s mouth, here are 14 of them ready to dish on what customer orders make them groan.
14. Stop being so picky, it’s Subway.
Not a chef but I worked at subway, whenever people wanted guacamole, we always spread it on one side of the bread before adding the rest of the veggies but the way the counter was designed the avocado was the last ingredient so people would always add all their veggies and then want avocado on top.
This was a nightmare to spread across the uneven veggie surface and would generally just stick in clumps 🙁 some vegetarian customers also wanted us to change our gloves to serve them but every time we change gloves we have to wash our hands which makes the gloves near impossible to wear – this would grind our whole production line to a halt while all staff members struggled to change their gloves.
I mean I’m vegetarian too so I kinda understand but like if you’re so strict about it you want fresh gloves then you shouldn’t work at subway because the “contaminated” gloves from before still went in all the veggie boxes 🤷🏼♀️
13. Tempering chocolate is so frustrating.
Pastry chef here. I HATE making marshmallows (just the worst texture for touching, tasting, preparing and cleaning) and tempering chocolate (fickle, frustrating & expensive).
I’ll happily flambé you a bananas foster if it means I don’t have to make marshmallows or filled chocolates.
12. I don’t even want to attempt it.
The secret ingredient to our poached eggs is rage, hatred, and contempt.
11. Breadsticks are life, though.
When I was working as a waiter, we had one customer who we called “The Spaghetti Lady”.
She came in 1-2 times per week for lunch. She always ordered spaghetti with sauce on the side. Salad with Pepperoncini and ranch on the side, Coke/no ice, breadsticks/no butter. She camped for 1.5 hours, then stiffed the tip.
Lunch was always a nothing shift, so tying up one 4 top for all of lunch killed the whole shift.
Most of it was side work, but the breadsticks were a huge pain. Chain restaurants aren’t really built for special orders, they break the rhythm like a car slamming on the brakes on a highway.
10. Also the smell, I would imagine.
The worse food to clean up is cheese.
Melted cheese is f**king awful to clean because it sticks to everything clogs up the sink and forms endless clumps of cheese.
9. It’s just no fun.
Making crepes .. and boning quail for pate’ .. things young chefs do in training .. mind numbing .. yeah, about those crepes, so many of you mention the finished product (filled, etc) or using a crepe maker ..
I’m talking about making them in a pan, in large amounts , like a big catered event where you have hours pouring and flipping .. beyond boring ..
8. You’ve gotta stack it all just right.
Waitress here, every cook/chef I’ve ever worked with always complained/crabbed about club sandwiches ..
7. Hope you have a strong wrist.
Hollandaise.
As much as I love eating it, it is such a hassle making it. Like 20 mins whisking.
6. And time is always at a premium.
Not a dish but a drink
Pouring a bottle of Raboso wine is so f**king difficult, it bubbles like crazy and those bubbles take minutes to disappear, often you will just leave the bottle filled with bubbles, do something else to kill time, and then you can start pouring again
5. Why are people?
Not necessarily a dish, but for people who lie about allergens.
Had one woman who was allergic to onions so didn’t want any onion gravy, went out to speak to her as it was a pretty unique allergy to have. Told her that the nut roast she ordered also contained onions.
“Oh it’s fine, I just dont really like onions, can I have the gravy without onions in”
So not only completely lying about an allergy, but also wasting my time during a busy service.
4. My nose just wrinkled on its own.
Worked in a country store in high school that did a little deli thing. Was pretty low key but I HATED the olive loaf. It leaves a coating of greasy slime on the slicer that is near impossible to clean.
3. That does not sound appetizing.
Kinda different but worked in a salad bar that also sold self freshly made sandwiches.
There was this one glucose-, lactose free vegan sandwich without sticky substance and lots of vegetables on it that ALWAYS fell out of the bread. Always. It ruined the kitchen when it was busy and we always nearly slipped on some tomatoes and s**t
And no, the stuff didn‘t just fall out on one specific place, every time we had to bring one to our customers something fell out before we could wrap them up at the end for „maximum freshness“
2. Mayonnaise forever.
Not a chef but a butcher, and i can’t even begin to express how much i loathe crap like ham salad and chicken salad.
I love when new customers come in for the first time, but my heart always sinks when they say “i heard this place has great ham salad!” Sorry but if you like ham salad it’s all gonna be great, because what you actually like is an obscene amount of mayonnaise and sweet relish.
1. You can have too much of a good thing.
I used to work at an ice cream shop in high school, and it was a pretty good gig, except for making milk shakes. To put this into perspective, the gimmick of the shop was that we made our ice cream with liquid nitrogen completely from scratch. Completely custom flavors, custom mixins. At my best, I could make a good sized bit of ice cream in 45 seconds, start to finish.
Add the time to pour in extra milk, blend it up, etc. the shakes took around 2 minutes because the blenders were awful. They took so long to blend the shakes that it would hold up the whole line during peak hours. We were right outside the movie theater at a mall, so we could have 30 people in line at peak, and we had only two blenders.
One night wasn’t even that busy, but I was exhausted and at the end of my rope. A whole group of kids, maybe 8, come in after a school dance (they were all dressed up nice). They stared at the menu for a long time (too long) then walked up and said they all wanted shakes. 8 kids, each of them asking for a shake that would take 2 minutes each to make from scratch, not accounting for all the washing of the blender bowls.
I flat out lied and told them our shake machine was broken because I did not have the strength of will to spend a good 20 minutes making shakes. They all left and I was spared.
One order that I had a lot of fun doing was the guy who came in and asked for every flavor and every mix in in one giant ice cream cup. We had 45 flavors and 25 mixins. We told him that for every extra mixin it would cost 50 cents more — he agreed and paid about $12 dollars for this absolutely sickening behemoth that he shared with his friends. I tasted a bit that was left over in the bowl and somehow the massive flavor overload turned the ice cream spicy. It was the most bizarre collision of flavors I’ve ever tasted.
Some of these are surprising, don’t you think?
If you work in a restaurant kitchen, what do you hate preparing? Dish in the comments!
