Servers shared their experiences with us after Redditor qrvjhb asked the online community:
"Waiters and waitresses of Reddit, which dish gets the most complaints at your restaurant?"
"When I was living in Atlanta, the worst menu item was the shrimp and grits, a common and pretty straightforward Southern dish. Ours added crawfish tails and a weird Parmesan sauce. It sounded good but it just wasn’t."
"Whenever people ordered it I would try to talk them out of it haha. Then they would send it back! And they would always say, “You were right.” I know!!!"
dinosaursarealwaysright
In this case, the waiter is always right!
"They had it on the menu for years..."
"Shrimp ceviche tacos."
"They had it on the menu for years. People ordering it didn't know what ceviche was so they would always complain that the shrimp was cold. What's even worse is that the recipe for the ceviche mix sucked. So even the people who liked ceviche would send it back. Any edits suggested to menu items would fall on deaf ears."
PhreedomPfighter
I pray that the restaurant never had to heat up the ceviche.
"One major thing I learned..."
"Ex waiter/diner employee. One major thing I learned is there is no EXACT standard on styles of eggs. Once a day someone would send eggs back."
"Most commonly, sunny side up eggs would get complaints for being under cooked, over hard eggs would get complaints about being over cooked, and about half the time we sent eggs out poached, people complained about the yolk being runny."
MeanConnection7818
There are few things as delicious as a perfectly poached egg. Sacrilege!
"I work at a bar..."
"I work at a bar, with wings and ribs, burgers and all that type of jazz. Our bar just came up with now serving sushi…so you can only imagine how many times that crap gets sent back."
Lovesmetacos125
That's on the customer for ordering sushi that sounds like a sports bar.
"When I worked in a restaurant it was always steaks. I get it but I always internally sighed when people ordered steak because there was a 50/50 chance the line wouldn’t cook it right and it would get sent back."
pdunson57
Did you work at Olive Garden, by any chance? This sounds familiar.
"Homemade bread..."
"We had a "bread and butter" for $13. Homemade bread, local honey, homemade jam, homemade butter. People would flip their shit when they saw it though. Tough sell."
CaptainRedPants
For thirteen dollars I'd demand the whole loaf!
"Tamales."
"I worked in a very inauthentic Mexican restaurant in a predominantly older white neighborhood. Often times we would get complaints that the tamales were tough, stringy, and difficult to eat only to find out that our guests were not removing the corn husks before eating."
"This was such an issue that we ended up removing the corn husks before serving altogether before the tamales were just sent straight to the shadow realm and dropped from the menu due to the lack of popularity."
SanDiegoIamnot
That fact has to be specified. Just like one has to specify if a dish is very spicy hot, even though half of Mexican food is hot.
"Old people and their soup..."
"Old people and their soup needing to be cooked over the fires of Mount Doom. Literally took a soup back to the kitchen, watched the cook boil it, and it still wasn’t hot enough."
BriefPomegranate845
This description is hilarious and yes... when I worked in a restaurant I dealt with this problem.
"If they sit too long..."
"Certain tacos. If they sit too long, they can get soggy. Plus, sometimes the braised beef and the carnitas can be fatty and watery, it depends on who makes it."
Stevie-Avail
Oh, man, the fat is the best part. These people are haters!
"Every bar or pub..."
"Every bar or pub I worked at always complained about the nachos. Either too few toppings or they forgot to add the extra meat."
killkrazy
You'd think nachos would be super easy to fix, no?
"For those that don't know..."
"Judging by how often I've been asked whether I really want to order it and whether I know what it is, I assume that in most french restaurants, it is Steak Tartare."
"For those that don't know: it is raw beef with raw egg yolk and some other stuff, and it is damn delicious. I really love it and I order it regularly when in France. But quite often when you order it in a more touristy place, the waiters really make sure that you know what you'll order."
RoRo759
You can take my tartare from my cold, dead hands. Those savages!
After reading these, it's safe to say that most people don't know what the hell they're ordering before they sit down. You'd think they'd do some research...
Have some observations of your own? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below!
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