A while back, Redditor u/ShylocksBloodyBond asked chefs online, “What is that one dish on the menu you absolutely hate making?” Chefs on Reddit and the BuzzFeed Community shared the menu items that they secretly can’t stand cooking up — and yikes, some of them might actually be your faves. Here’s what they revealed:
Note: Some responses were pulled from this Reddit thread.
1. “Pie. Yes, it’s good, but it takes HOURS to make. And no customizing it. BRUH, IT’S ALREADY PREPARED FOR YOU!!! YOU DON’T HAVE TO ASK FOR ‘extra sugar, eggs, and icing.’ 🤬🤬🤬🤬😡😡”
—Anonymous
2. “I was a cook in a bar briefly at one point. The thing I hate most of all is burger sliders. Same amount of food and same exact taste as a normal burger, but four times the work.”
—u/J0E_SpRaY
3. “I absolutely hated making tart shells for the various tarts. At my previous job, we had, like, a tart press where I’d cut squares of dough, put them in the press to make the tart shells so they’d get the right shape, harden, and then be baked. Literally the worst things ever. I had to take out each and every tart shell with my bare fingers (rubber-gloved) and burn my fingertips off for hours.”
—Anonymous, 25, Washington, DC
4. “As a professional chef for more than 20 years, only one thing really bothers me. Please don’t equate dislikes with allergies or intolerance to a food. I can’t count how many times someone claims an allergy to something just because they don’t like it. You don’t like something that’s fine; I won’t put it in your dish. If someone tells me an allergy is involved, it’s a different story.”
“Allergies involve me going through multiple steps to ensure that the item isn’t in your meal. Even after that, I always have a pit in my stomach until I know 100% you are okay.”
—the_great_bambino
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5. “Meat and cheese trays. They are wildly time-consuming: $100 bucks a tray, $30 in food, and at least an hour in labor. Every year, at one store, a company orders at least 100 trays. It’s like a $20,000 order, and they want it delivered over the course of two weeks. So, for two weeks, two to three employees just sit back and make meat and cheese trays for eight hours a day.”
“Two employees worked 10 out of the 14 days back there, rolling trays. Really got to know each other. Got married. Had a kid. All over the meatiness and cheesiness.”
—u/Scrub_Randall
6. “The taco pizza at the pizza place I worked at. It had, like, 17 toppings, and half of them had to be added after it was baked, so you ended up cutting and panning a total mess. Two metric tons of lettuce would come flying off with every cut. Thirty minutes later, you had to bus the table, and that was an ordeal right there. The table was covered in uncooked toppings. It didn’t help that I hated taco pizzas to begin with, so it didn’t look the least bit appetizing.”
—u/Yellowpickle23
7. “Chicken fingers. As an upscale steakhouse, we were always supposed to hand-make them from cut-up airline breasts, and for years, we had used frozen ones, but we stopped buying them. I see maybe one order a week, if that, so it’s just not practical to keep the extra cutting board, flour, batter, eggwash, etc., on hand at all times. But they always seem to pop up in the middle of a rush when I’m already making three other special orders.”
—u/Taramonia
8. “The veggie burgers at the place I work were a nightmare for ages. The specified cooking time was completely inaccurate. So, you’d have to keep cooking it in small extra intervals to avoid messing it up, as the amount of time it’d take to reach temperature varied WILDLY. When you’re on your own, you can’t afford for one component to take up so much of your attention.”
“After much trial and error, we worked out that we could cook in it in five minutes with no hassle by using a totally different piece of equipment.”
—u/Peppers515
9. “People ordering filet steak cooked well-done. They will always send it back because it’s like a ‘rubber boot’ or ‘too tough.’ Well DUH, what do you expect? Filet is not the right cut to be served well-done in the first place. Takes a good 30–45 minutes to butcher the steak without burning the outside; order a thinner cut if you would like well-done. It’s my job, so I still fulfill the requests as that’s what I am paid to do, but I die inside when I see that on the ticket.”
—u/CabbageCat5000
10. “I worked as a chef when I was younger. The only thing I truly hated making was consommé; some jerk would ALWAYS think they were being helpful by giving it a stir. I’m genuinely thankful to be out of that game now.”
—u/Hurricane808080
11. “Our German Apple pancake. First, you sauté Granny Smiths in clarified butter. Then, add three ladles of our German batter into the sauté pan. Throw it in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and add clarified butter and cinnamon sugar. Flip delicate pancake with a spatula and a dash of learning curve. Return it to the oven and cook for five more minutes. Flip the pancake onto a plate and ensure it reaches the table in under a minute, as it deflates rapidly.”
“Bonus points for when it’s ordered 10 minutes before we close.”
—u/SWAMPDONKIESrUS
12. “Customized cakes. I worked at a baker for a while, and it’s a lot of work to make a cake and decorate it with customizations. And then people think it should cost $20 and no more.”
—buttdumpling
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13. “[Ravioli, meatballs, and anything else repetitive.] Obviously, you prep beforehand in large batches, and some hands/chefs like doing it, but I could never enjoy it. It’s just mind-numbing. I remember filling thousands of profiteroles when I was young.”
—dannyh42f90bcf3
14. “Boiled eggs. We would need to use a separate pot to boil your single egg for 8–13 minutes on a burner that we could also be using to cook multiple orders within that span of time. We can’t simply drop the egg into our poaching pot, as poaching and boiling require different temperatures. Kitchens are small, and our burners are limited.”
—everythingandnothing
“Former chef here. Some of the simplest dishes are the most annoying. I always hated working breakfast rushes; people are very particular about eggs, and it’s very easy to accidentally break a yolk.”
—u/lennoxmatt_819
15. “Fried cheese curds were the absolute worst. Find the big chunks, toss them in flour, toss them in batter…then ONE BY ONE, swim each damn piece into the fryer. Annoying AF.”
—u/hrspryqn
16. “I hated cooking bacon. It’s not that it’s difficult — it’s just such a popular food item that it was all I would end up cooking. First thing in the morning, even before mise en place, start cooking bacon. Try and get three batches done before the buffet opens to give ourselves some cushion. Once service started, it was nothing but bacon, bacon, bacon. Lay out dozens of pieces of bacon on several sheet pans. Stick in the oven and bake for 18 minutes. Send out to the buffet. Immediately start another batch because the bacon would be emptied out in minutes. Repeat ad nauseam for four hours.”
“Literally, one person would just handle bacon while the rest would be able to replenish all the other food items. Go home covered in bacon grease. Take a shower, and the bacon smell gets aerosolized. It’s been almost three years since I worked there, and I still can’t stand the sight, smell, or taste of bacon.”
—u/randamuspdx
17. “Crêpes. I used to help run brunch, and crêpes to order ARE tedious to make. When you host breakfast, it’s often a request, and it’s just standing in front of a stove, pouring and flipping for almost 45 minutes to make sure everyone has enough — but they are delicious.”
—catatonik
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18. “Catering. I worked for a hotel company that hosted and catered huge parties. I had to do things like make 1,200 — yes, 1,200 — crêpes. Three per person for 400 people. Or, 36 pies. One of the touristy treats was a Rice Krispies treat cut in the shape of the mountains and dipped in chocolate, but you had to hand-cut each treat with a knife. The ones that weren’t so bad were the orders for, like, 120 muffins, though large-batch cobbler was an absolute breeze. I learned quickly that consumer large-batch was NOT for me!”
—rads4135
19. “[Nutella, peanut butter, and anything with allergies.] Oh man. I used to make milkshakes at a late-night bakery, and any time someone ordered a Nutella or peanut butter shake, I would die inside. It would splash everywhere, and it was ALWAYS during rushes.”
—akylam
20. “Roast beef. People occasionally specified how done they wanted their roast beef at Arby’s. Those roasts take hours to cook; you aren’t getting them custom. The only thing we could do was microwave it for well-done orders until it was dry.”
—potat0man
21. “Soufflés. We make the crème pâte in advance, but when it’s ordered, the process is: warm crème pâte over a double boiler, and while that is warming, you need to hand-whip a fresh meringue. Once the crème is warm, you have about three minutes to fold in the whites and then fill your molds to make sure you don’t touch the edges (as it makes them rise crooked). Into the oven for three minutes, open the oven, and rotate for two minutes. In those five minutes, you have to plate the rest of the table’s desserts, which all have 8–10 components. Soufflé comes out to a waiting waiter and has to go to the table immediately or deflates.”
“While it’s not the most difficult thing in the world, when you’re busy and have 4–6 on order, and each one needs to pass a three-finger test (height above the rim of the mold or it gets sent back, and you need to restart), it can get quite hard and demoralizing when they don’t work.”
—u/LaviRavi
22. “Wood-fired pizza. To be fair, there is nothing wrong or difficult about making this dish. The product was delicious when done right. The problem was that the place I worked for had a fully equipped kitchen, but chose to put the pizza oven on the outdoor patio. The place was poorly run, and we never had the amount of business to justify having someone outside operating the pizza oven at all times. On Friday and Saturday nights, when we got busy, if more than one or two pizzas were going at once, it became unmanageable.”
“Imagine trying to cook a full line on a busy night — and you are understaffed — and someone needs to run outside to the patio every three minutes or so in order to not burn the pizzas…”
—u/mrmoyles
23. “I’m a pastry chef. I HATE making marshmallows (the worst texture for touching, tasting, preparing, and cleaning) and tempering chocolate (fickle, frustrating, and expensive). I’ll happily flambé you a goddamn bananas Foster if it means I don’t have to make marshmallows or filled chocolates.”
—u/sezah
24. “Hollandaise sauce. As much as I love eating it, it’s such a hassle making it. Like, 20 minutes of whisking.”
—u/Curious-Anybody-7632
25. “Sautéing shrimp pretty much blows. They release a lot of water, which explodes when it hits the hot oil, so you get a lot of burns. Sometimes oil hits you in the face. It sucks, but whatever. You cook the shrimp and get on with it.”
—u/PoorPauly
26. “I was a chef at a nursing home, and anything pureed for people who are on that dietary restriction was gross to me. I literally had to take whatever meal I made, throw it in a blender, and put it in a bowl. I always felt so bad.”
—u/Bloodragedragon
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27. “Calamari. If you worked in a restaurant, cleaning and prepping food to cook, you would know. They come with all kinds of crap in them, and they smell terrible when spoiled raw. Never again.”
—u/Sleepdprived
28. “Off-menu orders. I worked at a restaurant that had a few local ‘celebrities’ and business owners who would order off-menu. It always felt like it was for show. A power move designed to let others know how important they thought they were. I heard that they stopped letting them order off-menu with the new manager. In a busy steakhouse restaurant on a Friday night, they would order things like an omelet. It wasn’t impossible to do, but rather inconvenient.”
—u/wickedlyclever
Reza Estakhrian / Getty Images
29. “Customizing the soups. I used to work at a Michelin star restaurant. WE ALREADY HAVE THE SOUPS PREPARED BEFORE YOU WALK IN. I can’t just take out the shrimp taste of a paella soup that I prepped before you walked in here.”
—u/vigilantepro
Cavan Images / Getty Images / Cavan Images RF
30. “Baker here. Cinnamon buns are the majority of our business, but so time-intensive. And while the finished product comes out SO good, it takes three days to make, between dough, proofing, and baking. By the time the customer gets them (warm), I swear they owe me much more than $5 a bun. Exhausting.”
—u/nomoredrama165
31. “I hand-make pierogi for my food truck. … Making one or two batches is annoying, but making enough for a commercial operation completely sucks. The dough I use doesn’t have water in it, just egg and sour cream, so the gluten doesn’t form into very strong bonds. That means that I can’t use a pasta roller to make sheets of dough to cut into dumpling skins. I have to hand-roll everything with a rolling pin, and my work surface isn’t big enough to roll out an entire batch.”
—u/wzl46
And finally:32. “I work at a restaurant, and the most absolutely annoying thing that I wish we didn’t have on our menu was lettuce wrap burgers. Don’t get me wrong, I love that we have options for those with gluten allergies or celiac or glucose problems, anything else along those lines. But it is so freaking annoying when a huge group comes in and orders 13 lettuce wrap burgers just because they don’t want all the calories.”
“It’s company policy that when someone orders a burger with a lettuce wrap, we have to ask them if it is for an allergy — 95% of the time it’s not, and it just gets so time-consuming!”
—hedgehogren
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Oof. Did any of these surprise you? And fellow chefs, which dishes do you hate making? Let us know in the comments below, or if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can use the form below.
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