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10 Dirty Restaurant Tricks

Eateries cut corners and assume you won't notice

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

Posted Sep 23, 2009 12:09 PM CDT
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(Newser) – Restaurants are known to cut a few corners for the sake of their bottom lines. Slashfood sheds some light on dirty little industry secrets, including:

  • Using cabbage instead of seaweed: An ex-maître d’ at an upscale Chinese joint says the chef assumed his celebrity clientele wouldn’t know the difference. He was right.
  • Topping off beer pitchers with seltzer: “The drunker the guys got, the more seltzer they got,” says one sports bar insider.

  • Refilling pricey bottled water from the tap: “Where I worked we served Voss,” says one waitress, “because it has the easiest screw top to re-seal.”
  • Serving rotten meat: Steakhouses routinely hold bad meat until someone orders it well done.
  • Serving caffeinated coffee as decaf: One Philadelphia waiter reports returning to the kitchen with a cup of caffeinated coffee after a customer complained. “The head waiter took the cup from my hand, handed it right back to me, and said, ‘There—now it’s decaf.”
For more, check the source.

Would you know the difference between fried seaweed and fried cabbage?
Would you know the difference between fried seaweed and fried cabbage?   (Shutterstock)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 14 comments
ReggieDoobar
Sep 24, 2009 12:45 PM CDT
I is waiter in yore cuntry but I donte spit in yore foods. I give it to my frend Mohammed and he doz that, ok good?
yummines
Sep 24, 2009 12:10 PM CDT
this makes me glad im not allergic to anything serious like gluten or not diabetic now i dont feel like eating in restaurants anymore... (rotten meat!?!?!?)
meliska
Sep 24, 2009 10:10 AM CDT
I have worked in several different restaurants and never done any of these things, or seen them done. I have worked at small locally owned places, and at two different Pizza Huts - if ever a customer received something other than what they ordered, they were compensated, or their food was re-made correctly, with extra care. I'm sure it happens, but I don't believe that it's as pervasive as people make it out to be.

 
food • cost cutting • restaurant • restaurant industry

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