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Food That Doesn't Belong in a Restaurant

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The word "foodie" is horrible, and anyone who uses it is probably terrible and unlovable. They're like food hipsters, a person who has the audacity to somehow be smug about food. It's food, you silly twat. We could all sustain ourselves on a futuristic protein and vitamin paste if we needed to so don't talk down to me about artisanal cheeses because they're just regular cheeses someone charged you extra money for because you're dumb enough to pay it. That said, I'm willing to take a stand on some food issues and suggest that there are times and places for certain foods, and some foods do not belong in a restaurant. Not ever.

When you go out to eat you're doing it for any number of reasons: convenience, to experience something new, you haven't gone shopping yet, whatever. But regardless of the reason, you don't actually want what you'd make at home, because if you could make it at home, of course you'd make it at home. That isn't to say you can't make burgers at home, but have you ever made a restaurant-quality burger at home? Most of us don't. There's usually a little more effort in restaurant food; there's something that elevates it above home-cooked fare, and that's the attraction. And then some lazy shit goes and puts grilled cheese on their menu.

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A Ridiculous Number of Menu Items

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There used to be a sandwich shop down the street from where I live that sold about six kinds of sandwiches. My mind was boggled the one and only time I entered this establishment, and it doesn't boggle easily because I take pills. Subway has like 30 sandwiches at any given time. This place had six. I felt like maybe the owner had been in an accident where something hilarious hit him on the head, like an anvil or Sinbad's career, and he just had this inspiration to open a restaurant that sold six sandwiches and no one in his life had the heart to tell him he was a complete moron. The moral of this story is to not sell six things at your restaurant, because that's literally dumber than reality TV. If A&E's primetime lineup was back-to-back Jeopardy! against a sandwich shop with six sandwiches, both would end in the negative dollars. But A&E's loss would be less dramatic. A sandwich shop with six sandwiches is even dumber than that metaphor.

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Happy Birthday Songs

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Every restaurant on Earth that is OK with you wearing sandals is willing to make a mockery of a customer on his birthday. You don't need proof that it's anyone's birthday, which means it's kind of a fun prank to play on a friend when you want to humiliate them, but when you're on the receiving end it's like going out for dinner and instead having someone kneeling on your groin and shoving awkward into your mouth while a crowd watches and silently judges you, probably convinced that you don't make much money and have the sexual prowess of John Goodman rendered impotent by alcohol and Cheetos.

Being forced to be the center of the attention, in public, against your will is the stuff nightmares are made of. Literally. That's literally the fearsome aspect behind the archetypal "naked in front of a crowd" nightmare we've all heard of. So right off the bat this is kind of a shitty situation. But hey, it's all in good fun, and it's for a celebration, right? A celebration of you, isn't that nice? No. It's not nice.

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No Substitutions

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Short of including "by the way, your mom's ass tastes like cherries" somewhere in the fine print, there are few more offensive phrases you'll find on a menu than "no substitutions." A cause for debate, whether it means you can't swap chicken for shrimp or you can't have a dish made without onions or with extra curry, one thing this phrase definitely means is that the restaurant you're at has put all the fucks it had to give in a big, burlap sack and sent them to live in the country with some relatives. Now they just want you to sit, drain a gravy boat of chowder into your food hole, pay, and get the hell out.

Any decent restaurant should allow you to make requests above and beyond the menu. Most restaurants do, in fact. But not all. Some ballsy restaurant owners always seem to pop up here and there to test the waters of human tolerance with their "no substitutions," insinuating that you ordering food is somehow an inconvenience to them and you better take what you can get with a smile and a 15 percent mandatory tip. So when you want to order the shrimp alfredo but without any garlic because your garlic allergy may causes your eyes to bulge out Total Recall style, you should be allowed to. But this helpful restaurant refuses to alter their menu in any way.

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I just wanted mozzarella, you son of a bitch!

Likely this is a result of premade food being heated and served to customers, which is in and of itself a whole different brand of bullshit, but whatever the reason for it, by putting this on a menu a restaurant owner is basically saying yes, he's providing a service, yes your business is the lifeblood of that business and the source of his livelihood, but no, you don't know your ass from grape jelly and you'll eat whatever the hell they give you because shut up, this restaurant is built on an ancient Indian burial ground and fueled entirely by hate and fossil fuels and clearly nothing good can ever happen here.