Post restaurants' red flags ITT

>it has mango salsa chicken
>it has tortilla salad

True, but only applies for oriental cuisine. The best sushi I ever had was in some shithole place in a shithole district of Berlin.

You just described Cheesecake Factory

Red flags:
>wrap sandwiches
>chicken Caesar salad
>buffet/salad bar
>no beer or wine available
>bottles of ketchup on tables
>fill your own soda at the fountain
>choice of soup or salad with entree obviously canned soup or salad with bottled dressing
>the words "famous", "authentic" or "classic"
>hostess asking if you prefer a booth or a table
>kid's menu
>US Foods or SYSCO truck unloading outside
>TV screens

-has a kid's menu
-soda fountain in plain view
-doesn't serve alcohol
-no tablecloths
-has paper napkins, not cloth

All the shitty Chinese places are the reason I love this state

>Someone at the door trying to lure people in
>Waitress is fat
>They have a kids menu
>They play shitty music
>There's IKEA art on the wall

>glassware is either a mason jar or from IKEA

>white customers

If you want to talk customer red flags:
>men wearing baseball/trucker caps
>obese people
>children running around
>old people well represented
>parking lot full of F-150's
>groups of teenagers

>ash tray on table

>doesn't serve alcohol

Floral Walls/furniture

Anything other than normal cutlery and plating

>If meat or sides are obviously microwaved.

That sounds horrifying.

I hate it when people make lazy literature references like that.
It kills me, it really does.

I know that feel. user. Hell is other people.

I've been to a Mexican place in San Antonio that fit that exact description. Awesome food, but I always hesitated going there because I hate the stickiness.

and yet Veeky Forums has no sticky

Or it's a time-traveling restaurant that came from 1960s America.

>Your post also added zero to discussion
Ohh wah.

That sounds like every Waffle House I've ever been to.

>servers or cooks sporting visible tattoos

I refuse to eat food touched by such filth.

Japanese restaurants (in Japan) still have them. It's real comfy.

Also if you go to a bar & grill out in the countryside here in the states you can still find places with indoor smoking.

>Waffle Haus

>sticky

I think "greasy" is a more apt description

If you're describing chain restaurants as a red flag, I got bad news for you son...

>they don't have a visible open plan kitchen area

For the most part being a chain restaurant is a red flag. Seriously. Try to come up with a list of chains that don't suck. It'll be a pretty short list.

Are you familiar with syrup, krautbro? Or do they just put sausage grease on waffles in doishland?

Red Robin. Simple burgers with a lot of topping choices and endless potato wedges. Kinda hard to fuck that up.

Some major urban areas still had ash trays and unrestricted smoking as late as the early 1990s in the U.S.

Nigger child you could smoke in bars and restaurants in Kentucky as late as 2012 or so. America isn't "California + NYC". When I lived in Cincinnati we used to bar hop in Covington because could smoke. I think they finally changed it.

>vegetables are obviously out of a can

The only place I couldn't finish what I ordered and demanded my money back had shitty "general tao" chicken with carrots in the shape of lightning bolts, and disgusting juice that clearly came out of a can. God, Chinese places are awful in Washington

>America isn't "California + NYC"
About one eighth of it is, though, by population. Start talking economy and culture and it'll be a bigger fraction.
>endless potato wedges
That and bottomless beverages both sound like red flags to me. And they have a kid's menu. So it's not a place I'd ever chance. If I want a $7 burger I'll just go to Shake Shack.

>Shake shack

I don't have that. But if I were to compare it to five guys you'd pay $10 at Reb Robin including fries and drink. If you add fries and drink at places that doesn't do combos like that you'd pay about $12, $13-14 if you want Cajun. Even If I tip the customary 20% that comes out to less and I get table service instead of standing around like a bafoon in the lobby as they cook it to order.

Cali is like 50% of American culture unfortunately. New York isn't as influential as it used to be. Back in the 70s they made most of the nation's big TV shows but now it's just a financial center.

Ain't nothin sweet bout the peach.

>New York isn't as influential as it used to be.
There's still a lot of TV shot here. And as far as restaurants go what NYC chefs are doing is on the radar of pretty much every serious chef in the rest of the country. The city has definitely lost its edge for arts and culture over the last 15 years, but it's become more of a dining out heavyweight than ever.

>I always hesitated going there because I hate the stickiness.
A sticky table, to me, is telling about a place, as telling as a dirty bathroom uses the cheapest fixtures, tile, etc.
It lets me know they abhor cleaning and don't consider it a priority, and that there is no bottom line, no line in the sand as to what must be done to control costs.

What prevents a sticky table? A stack of washrags such that clean ones can be used all day. Someone can be arsed to soak and rinse out washrags until the water runs clear. Someone who minds making a pile of dirty washrags to do a single load of laundry daily. Seriously, that's it. It's far worse than the restaurant that thinks they can use a single mop with no rinsing whatsover through a greasy kitchen, or a pee-dripped men's bathroom floor, and then into the dining room of a restaurant. Spread the grease, make it slippery, make sure that beer sloshed on bar floors is spread all around. Customers also love to walk in the door and guess what the smell is, bathroom? old beer? hrm, fish? hrm, garbage?

A sticky table is telling.

>>servers or cooks sporting visible tattoos
>I refuse to eat food touched by such filth.
I see tattoos, and I think, oh hey that guy doesn't care about odds, risks, infectious disease. His priorities are not common sense hygiene. He takes risks and waits and sees. Life isn't precious. Yea, I want him cooking for me, not. Maybe he doesn't wash his hands either.

OP here, didn't mean chain restaurants as they aren't really a thing in Europe. There are maybe a few bigger chains here and there, but they can't compete in any way with normal restaurants, neither price- or, obviously, quality-wise.

Somehow even fast food chains can't compete on the lower price spectrum, you can get a delicious kebab-tortilla the size of your forearm, made from fresh ingredients for equivalent of 4$, while I have to spend at least two times more at McDonalds to really be full. Especially Italians really hate chain restaurants I think, I saw maybe one McDonalds while I was in Rome, and it was a filthy shithole where food costed as much as in any normal restaurant.

Places like that are lowkey boom or bust. You're either gonna have some 10/10 food or be exposed to a salmonella factory

I hate to break it to you friends, but most restaurant staff are heavy-smoking, hard-partying, degenerate substance abusers regardless of how many visible tattoos they have. Might wanna eat at home from now on, you pussies.

That's far more conservative than I see it. When I see someone with tattoos all I think is someone thought they were edgy at some point in their late teens or early 20's.

>I see tattoos, and I think, oh hey that guy doesn't care about odds, risks, infectious disease

I have no tats myself, but that seems like an odd conlucusion to make in your mind. Sure, you could get a disease from a tat, but I'd bet that you yourself take far bigger risks every day of your life without realizing or caring. Besides which, just because someone has tats doesn't mean they are into risky behavior. I know a few people who are into tats and body bods, and they are all super spergs who insist on personally inspecting the autoclave, etc, at a tattoo/piercing shop.

What I find ironic is that in my experience literally everyone who spergs out about "muh food safety" fails on the most fundamental level: they don't even bother to wash their own hands before eating. It really makes you think.

>indoor smoking
>Japanese restaurants (in Japan) still have them. It's real comfy.
Comfy? Are you foreign? Low self-esteem? Chip on your shoulder defensive? Smoking is equivalent to bad choices in life ever since the 1960s. When big tobacco lied to people about addiction and health effects, fine, you were duped and then you got addicted. Are you over 60? If not, your excuse is that you have low self-esteem, not that it's comfy. It's why you started and it is why you defiantly still smoke despite seeing old people suffering for breath and enjoying their metastasizing cancers blowing that shit into other people's air around them, clinging to their clothes, their hair. Everyone can see that insecure teenager every time they look at you smoking. That's not comfy. It's enabling and sad that in some places in the world, business requires a clientele that would do that to the spartan interior of someone's business.

>endless fries
not that guy, but every single server at a Red Robin that I've been to, in multiple states, simply disappears from the point of dropping off your burgers with 4 fries on the plate, even if you look down at your size of fries and request more at that very point, they rush off and then they never arrive. When you ask for your refill, oh yea, be right back. Then the check comes. Overseasoned too.

So, honestly to compare the sit down restaurant Red Robin in analogy to counter service Five Guys, or Shake Shack even, they don't at all measure the same because you are dependent on a fair portion getting refilled, and it is completely out of your hands. Generosity aside, you can't fault Five Guys on the giant overstuffed bag of fries, and the bags of peanuts should you be gnawingly hungry upon arrival or still have hunger. But, what Shake Shack is doing, crinkle fries no less, is a sensible portion. You are simply getting premium burgers, lots of alternative choices for each course, and all done well. Deciding between the two choices depends on your fries mood (FG) or your entree mood, which is hands down Shake Shack. The burger is better. Desserts are better. Drinks are better. Nothing beats that stuffed portobello oozing cheese under the crispy crust on top of a burger, or the chopped cherry peppers.

>Disliking diners
ew

This is an Indian place near me. I had been wanting to try Indian food but that place changed hands one too many times for me to want to even try.

C O V I N G T O N

>Blah blah blah I am the health police and arbiter of everyone's choices and decisions in life
I'm not even a smoker, you're just a gigantic faggot

Somebody get this guy a knifegun

Do you ever cross the street or drive an automobile? These are two of the greatest risks possible, you psychopath

Probably a young fag who doesn't remember the smoking section at Denny's

>Shake shack
>implying they have a small, seasonal menu
>implying the counter staff knows about the preparation
>implying they don't have children's items
If you're just going to ignore your own red flags then why bother?

>new york isn't as influential as it used to be
Except fashion, and cuisine, and advertising, and journalism, and architecture, and fine art.

>the waitress cleans off your table right before you sit down, and it's still very sticky
>wrong type of spoon with the soup
>menu has stock photos of the food
>menu has any type of pictures with the food
>the POS system is running Windows 3.1
>chinese restaurant, white waiter
>1960s-style diner has a black waiter
>playboy magazine artwork in the bathrooms (in most cases i wouldn't complain, but if it's in a family restroom, that's a problem)
>italian restaurant has more than one mona lisa in the entire restaurant
>cloth booths

I've never encountered those problems before. Wait staff was always pretty good. If I got the service you did it'd be a $0 tip. Or sometimes I leave a dime or a nickel as an extra insult.

>Probably a young fag who doesn't remember the smoking section at Denny's

I'm not the guy you're replying to, but I do remember the smoking section at Denny's. And I didn't see anything "comfy" about that whole experience:
-tables, chairs, etc, everything is sticky with fucking syrup
-oh, and it's not even real syrup, it's some kind of artificial stuff that tastes bad compared to the maple syrup my parents bought
-sit around for ages bored out of my mind while my uncle flirts with the brain-dead waitresses
-I hated eggs as a kid, and 99% of the Denny's menu involves eggs.

Nothing comfy about Denny's.

it isn't simple, rustic, and hearty.

>Tattoo places have no health standards
Do you also avoid going to the dentist because he used his instruments on someone else? Or to the doctor for the same reason?
I mean, I don't like tats, but your reasoning is retarded.

s-style diner has a black waiter
kek

>Nothing comfy about Denny's.
I agree with you, and feel the same way about Waffle House, Cracker Barrel and the like. But obviously plenty of folks are nostalgic for poor people food from their grandparents' generation.

>owner's mom/mother in law is the cook
>she has a vague slave-ish look to her, like she doesn't want to be there but she's afraid to say something

Because a place that the majority of people don't go to is obviously a good place to go
But no, I get it
>muh autistic racism "progressive-ness"

I know where my own hands have been.

>red and white checkered tablecloth with the fuzz on the bottom of it being weighed down by either a vase made out of an old can of beans or a ridiculously heavy candle

Anybody dumb enough to work in the culinary industry is a scummy person with little value in their life. This doesn't just apply to people with tattoos.

He said American culture.

This is why you should still be allowed to smoke in pubs and such. To stop pricks like this from becoming self-righteous dickheads.

>methods of preparing the dishes,
If they knew how all the dishes were cooked they'd be the cook not the waiter you faggot.

The Famous Dave''s down the road from me is literal god tier. I'm 100% convinced they cloned Bobby Flay and 10 of the best Texas pitmasters in the world and force them to work there.

>I can afford to eat there

>fresh ingredients don't need spices
>the meat is good by itself, it doesn't need sauce

> >menu is not small
> >menu is not seasonal
I've only seen small menus in more expensive places, and it's not necessarily an indicator of quality.

I've only rarely seen some menus with a couple of seasonal items.

There are a lot of authentic mom and pop shops for things like Vietnamese or Mexican food, the food is good, and that's just how they do their menus because those are the kinds of restaurants they grew up with.

If these are your red flags, how much do you spend when you go out to eat (just on yourself)? $80?

>I'm 100% convinced they cloned Bobby Flay and 10 of the best Texas pitmasters
Is this because it happens to be the best place near you, or because your travels eating BBQ across Texas (and maybe other places like the Carolinas, Kansas City and Memphis) have led you to that conclusion? What you consider god -tier is relative to your experience. If most of your experience is with mediocre food something kinda good can seen amazing. This is the case in a lot of places.

What's an ash tray?

that person is also making a reference its a joke you god damn degenerate read a book

>menu is not small
this is the main one for me. went into a chinese restaurant with 100+ options and got immediately overwhelmed

This user just like hearing people argue over the price of their meal

>they only have an all day menu

I fucking hate this state

Ha.

it's a regional chain, but torchies tacos is the shit.

is this post supposed to be sartrire?

Yuh. What's good fellow austinbro?

Nice tumblr-tier reaction gif fag.

You got a literal spit-take from me. Good game.

I just lost The Game

>"japanese" restaurant
>non-japanese owner
>menu is full of shit like kung pao chicken, pad thai, crab rangoon, etc.

I fucking love pizza ranch but they have a lot of those things

one of the few places that complies with my allergies though /bias

The service will be better if there are white customers, because usually only whites tip