Please do share. I think we as consumers should have some insight into this.
A few things that come to mind..
The bread basket. I remember working in an Italian restaurant and the owners would take the uneaten bread off the tables, stick it in the microwave and recycle them to the next customers. Voilà! "Freshly baked bread" God knows how many times that bread was coughed or sneezed on.
Some kitchens are really dirty, which means they attract pests. Don't be fooled by the opulent dinning room! Some owners spend more time and money cleaning the dining room than the kitchen. Even the cleanest kitchens I've worked in have had problems with pests, (bugs, rats, mice) For most restaurants, especially the ones downtown in older buildings, fighting pests is a never ending battle. Don't be surprised if you see a mouse scurrying around next time you eat out.
Not everyone has good hygiene either. I have seen servers and chefs come back from the bathroom or a cigarette break, not wash their hands, and go back to handling food. I have seen food fall on the floor and end up on peoples plates. I have seen cooks use the same rag to wipe their heads, cutting boards and dirty counter tops. I have seen cooks smoke cigarettes, weed and even snort cocaine in the kitchen!
Don't order steak welldone. That $40 striplion steak you want well done, could be an expired piece of meat or a crappy cut of meat that should be in the garbage. I remember one cook on a busy night got a steak sent back to him because it was still a little pink in the middle. That made him angry so he took a dirty rag, wrapped it around the steak to dry all the juice out of it, so it cooked faster.
Be careful of seafood. I wouldn't touch it with a stick if it was on a buffet. If the fish is starting to go bad, cooks have little tricks to cover up the taste and smell, like lots of salt.
Mislabeling. So many restaurants make bogus claims on their menus which is illegal but nearly impossible to police. They use words like "fresh", "local" or "hand-made" " dishes. Those locally organic grown vegetables may have come from Chinatown or the nearest Food Basics, usually grown in some foreign country. Expensive fishes like snapper could be a cheaper fish like tilapia. When you have sauce and spices on the fish you can't taste the difference. Freshly squeezed orange juice is Tropicana with pulp. And don't order the Kobe beef burgers or sliders, you might as well just throw your money out the window. It's a scam. Send the burger for testing. you wont find any traces of Kobe beef in the burger!!
Don't send your food back more than once! Kitchens are full of cooks and chefs with big ego's who think they are 3-star Michelin chefs. You send your plate back two or three times you may end up with some bodily fluids mixed into your chicken carbonara.
It's a tough industry to work in. Long hours, lousy pay, high stress working conditions, cooks with big ego's. I know a few chefs that make Gordan Ramsey look like Mother Teresa. I have worked with some amazing chefs and cooks, but i have also worked with a lot of sketchy people who shouldn't be anywhere near a kitchen. Drug and alcohol abuse is rampant in the industry. Rarely does a restaurant do a background check. It's one of the few industries where ex-cons, drug addicts, and people with mental health issues can find stable work. Restaurants in a city like Toronto are desperate for workers. You got two arms and two legs you're hired!
I can't name the restaurants i worked in. They change staff and management on a regular basis in the restaurant business.
