Have you ever wanted to bake a carrot cake , but you don't have any carrots on hand? One person replied to a carrot cake recipe writing that she'd given kale a try instead. Do you want to guess the results? I'll tell you: it did not taste good. Recipe substitutions are understandable. Sometimes you're halfway through the dish, and you realize that eggs or olive oil aren't in your house. You went to the store, and the ingredients just slipped your mind. And now, you're covered in flour and the o…

When you go out to eat at the same place over and over again, it's often because you love everything about the restaurant. Maybe it's a pizza parlor with red booths and perfectly crispy pizza. Or perhaps you enjoy a quiet fancy restaurant where the appetizers are delectable and the conversations last for hours. However, some people enjoy going to the same restaurant on repeat for another reason—they've “taught” the staff members exactly how they like their food to be prepared . Whether these cu…

Who said complying with the rules can't be a little fun? One employee told their story of their coworker's malicious compliance when their bosses started demanding they label every little thing. Food service workers have a lot to juggle. This person, u/Dra5iel, shared that they and their coworker both worked at a restaurant chain. Along with prepping food, cooking it, plating it for customers, and cleaning up, back of house staffers have enough on their plates already (pun intended!). When the…

These people had a sneaking suspicion they weren't going to like their new job . So they quit ASAP---many of them quit right after their first shift. There are a lot of clues that can tell you if a company is a good place to work or not. For example, if you go through the interview process and the steps are clear and the company is communicative, that's a good sign. But imagine you show up to an interview , and there are dozens of other people there. Hmm, that's the first sign. Then, you and al…

This boss had no idea what he was doing, and the hordes of hungry customers don't care about poor management, they just want food. There are lots of industries where people are low-paid and treated poorly. Food service is perhaps the hardest of these. Unlike retail, your customers are guaranteed to be hungry. That means they're going to be less patient and eager to tell you about any mistakes you're making. They really don't care about the employees or anything else, because all they want is th…

These lawyers found a clever workaround to a bagel issue. U/Ars-Torok shared an excellent malicious compliance story about the time they worked as a chef. Chefs start their work days while most of us are still in bed. This dude started his workday at 4AM , and only had to work until about 10AM. You never really get used to working nights, but that shift sounds so ideal. Even if you have to wake up at 3AM, you'd finish work and still have the entire day to do whatever you want! Plus, I'm sure yo…

I never knew that checking the bathrooms before you eat at a restaurant was a “thing” until today. That's because these chefs, waiters, diners, and one health inspector, all gave their opinions on the sketchiest things to look out for while eating at restaurants.

If you mistake salt for sugar in your recipe, it's no big deal. But if a chef does it while making a five gallon soup recipe, there's going to be some problems! Help yourself to a serving of these funny stories from chefs who were humbled by their own kitchen mishaps. We're all human, we all make mistakes every now and again. There are just some jobs where this is more acceptable than others. For example, if you're a FailBlog writer, it's okay if you make a mistake or three. Now, if you're an o…

Who actually orders food like this? In a prompt to r/AskReddit, u/Graceful_Swan_Ronson asked waitstaff about the most ridiculous things their customers have ever wanted to eat. The resulting answers are hilarious and strange — and some are even a little bit wholesome. I have a few friends who order weirdly at restaurants, and dining with them is a delight. Sometimes I'll order a burger and fries, while my friend orders a slice of ham, a fruit smoothie, and a bowl of tater tots. It's like food r…

Restaurants see no shortage of demands for customization and demanding customers, with the latter uttering the former with surprising frequency. Dealing with these demands from the demanding is no picnic, but learning to handle them can be. Not in the literal sense in that you're going to sit down in a nice grassy spot with a blanket, basket, some nice cheeses, a bottle of prosecco, some ripe fruit, and your favorite pal—more so in the sense that like a picnic is a pleasing and relaxing experie…

Not to yuck these peoples' yums, but why would they choose these food combos? The ones included below are truly odd — and chefs and waiters were the ones telling on their customers. The r/KitchenConfidential community answered the question, “What are the grossest substitutions you’ve been asked to make?” Interestingly, the OP suggested that they were unhappy with a customer substituting mustard instead of apple butter on a sandwich with sourdough bread, cheese, and bacon. Tons of commenters sco…

Some mistakes are more costly than others, as these chefs know all too well. Professionals from the back of house shared their priciest kitchen mistakes , and some of them are surprisingly costly. I can actually add my own story here — I'm glad it's finally come in handy after years of being one of my most embarrassing moments ever. I was working a shift at a fast food restaurant and customers were being so mean to me. It was the Sunday morning bingo crowd, and they were nasty and impatient to…

Recipes are great for some, but some chefs prefer to freestyle their meals. I'm fully on team recipe, mainly because when I try to cook without one, my dish turns out just awful . I trust the random cooks of the internet when I make my meals — mostly because I actually had a physical cookbook, and everything I made with it turned out wrong. This cookbook had me making soggy and inedible french toast, and another time, it steered me into making the most watery pancakes I've ever witnessed. They…

It's often said that you should never break two rules at the same time, lest you run the risk of being caught for the more serious rule after calling attention to yourself through the less serious. You can probably find that phrased uttered in a similar fashion throughout the ages of this site. When we mention this, we're usually talking about driving with a broken headlight on your way to rob a casino with your ten closest friends. You could be pulled over on the way and have the entire heist…

When a restaurant owner keeps their place in atrocious conditions and assume their staff will keep their mouths shut about it, how can they possibly think it's okay to pull one over on any of their employees ? That's just poor planning on their part. Why would they think for one second they won't get reported? Well, that's exactly what went down with this particular restaurant. The chef had just been hired and was working hard to whip the place into shape. And it need a lot of work. There were…

Taunting a chef to make your food as hot as humanly possible is always going to end the same way… and at the end of the day, you literally asked for it. Sure, you might have underestimated just how spicy it could be, but the limits of your imagination are not the chef's responsibility. But that's part of the draw for people who desire diabolically hot dishes. Mopping your brow constantly with a napkin while trying to smother the flames bursting from inside your mouth is some people's idea of a…