Restaurant Workers Share the Secret Staff Meals You’ll Never See on the Menu

One of the best things about working in a restaurant is always being surrounded by food. It’s also one of the worst things, because being surrounded by food doesn’t mean you can eat anything you want whenever you want it. Most restaurants have a select group of menu items the staff can have, maybe for free or maybe at a discounted price. If you’re lucky, your restaurant will provide a complimentary staff meal before the shift.

I hesitantly use the word “lucky” because, although free food is always welcome, a lot of the time it’s not anything close to what the customers would eat. I worked at a celebrity-chef-owned restaurant for a brief stint that was known for its commitment to fresh, organic, local ingredients. Let’s just say the free staff meal was … not that. Another restaurant I worked in provided a meal before every shift that was always made from whatever was left over in the kitchen. I’m pretty sure one of those bowls of soup had a fish head in it once. Eventually, the staff begins to get creative with the menu.

Frankenstein dishes are the restaurant industry’s dirty secret

Creating your own concoctions, taking bits and pieces of the menu to make your own specialized Frankenstein dish, is a way of life in the service industry. When I worked at a restaurant in Texas, at the start of each shift all the servers would take a scoop of ice cream and sandwich it between two freshly baked cookies, wrap it in plastic, and leave it in the walk-in freezer. After our lunch rush, we each had a delicious ice cream sandwich that wasn’t on the dessert menu.

I took a poll of restaurant workers to learn about their personalized dishes, and some of them sound amazing while others sound like something you’d only eat in the most desperate of situations. Then again, if working three doubles in a row isn’t a desperate situation, I don’t know what is. However, all of them are creative, and all of them will satiate the hunger that lives inside someone who is constantly holding food that is for someone else.

Boss sauce, fried onion biscuits, and totchos

One person told me that they like to put prime rib and cheese on the free bread and then make their own panini by way of the waffle maker that is reserved for brunch. It’s eaten with a side of the housemade au jus mixed with honey mustard and creamy horseradish sauce. Most restaurants I have worked in would be able to snag all of those ingredients pretty easily, but prime rib seems like a real prize. This is ingenuity — and it’s not something even remotely close to anything on their menu.

A Cracker Barrel server explained their favorite work snack is some fried onions on a biscuit with honey mustard sauce. If they aren’t in the mood for savory, that same biscuit with pancake icing and strawberries will do just fine. Any restaurant that sells rolls or biscuits is an opportunity to have some type of sandwich.

A server at Denny’s said they like to make something called “Boss Sauce,” which is a mix of housemade ranch, honey mustard, and barbecue sauce. They also make the “Fat Kid Bowl,” which is mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, corn, chicken tenders, shredded cheddar, and brown gravy. I’m not sure how someone could eat a dish like that and then do anything other than take a nap, but restaurant workers are used to powering through a shift no matter how they feel. More than one server told me their favorite dish was “totchos,” which is pretty much just nachos made with tater tots instead of tortilla chips.

Lots of fast-food restaurants are known for their secret menu items, like the Incredible Hulk at Taco Bell (a 5-layer burrito with guacamole instead of cheese) or the Barnyard Burger at Wendy’s (the Asiago Ranch Chicken Club with an added beef patty). With chain restaurants, the secret menu items soon become public information, but when you’re working in a one-of-a-kind restaurant, the menu hacks created by the staff remain private. The next time you look at a restaurant menu, just know that the staff has taken that menu and made it their own with options you’ll never get to try. You know you want some totchos.