/ck/ - Food & Cooking

What are those tell-tale signs you're in for a bad experience?

"Everything is good here." This is a very big one because that really means absolutely nothing is good here. If a server who's obviously not new can't name what the patrons enjoy, just order appetizers to be polite and then excuse yourself.

Jack-of-all-trades menus. In addition to the aforementioned issue of servers being unable to identify quality items, restaurants that have vast menus tend not to be good at anything they prepare. A good restaurant will have a much smaller menu with dishes they'll prepare adequately.

For Chinese joints, pictures of food on the wall. This almost always spells trouble.

Places with ≤100 reviews AND/OR a Yelp score ≤3.5. I've been to absolutely awful places with great reviews but only a handful of ratings which means not enough people have tried it. A place needs at least 100 reviews to be worth your time, and the Yelp score needs to be preferably higher than 3.5 stars.

Irish pubs that don't serve curry chips.

Italian joints with kitschy menus.