What Emeril Lagasse Always Looks For When Visiting A New Restaurant

When a restaurant serves immaculate cuisine, it can be an unforgettable experience. Unfortunately, the same goes for a restaurant that serves subpar fare, and not in a good way. It can be hard to ascertain which you'll encounter before you take the plunge and order something that looks appetizing, but it's always a good start to listen to what industry professionals spell out as tell-tale signs you are in for a treat.

Emeril Lagasse is one such professional, and when he's not dining in his favorite city (New Orleans, of course) to score some exceptional eats, he inspects a place he's unfamiliar with for specific details that signal a restaurant is doing things right. Lagasse told Travel+Leisure that a spotless bathroom is one feature he speculates a quality establishment will showcase. While you aren't going to be eating anything in there (I would hope, at least), if it's polished and sparkling, that's a sign the restaurant prioritizes cleanliness.

If they put that much effort into making the bathrooms inviting, the odds are the kitchen, where all your cuisine is prepared, is likewise sanitized. Clean kitchens produce clean food. But more than that, it shows that the staff pays attention to detail, meaning you aren't likely to run into other restaurant red flags, like menu items served below an acceptable temperature. Still, that's just one thing to look for, and Lagasse pointed to a couple of other signs that a restaurant's food is worth its salt.

Positive first impressions are valuable in various environments, but in the restaurant industry, they are crucial. Seeing a dirty parking lot or paint peeling off the outside of the building makes for a bad first impression, but one sign that tells you that you're about to be served a quality meal, according to Emeril Lagasse, is a stellar bread service. It's more than just something to munch on. When freshly baked bread that smells as heavenly as it tastes arrives at your table, you can rest assured that the staff is taking every opportunity, even with things that seem insignificant to some, to add the wow factor to your dining experience.

By the same token, Lagasse considers a superb soup to be a hint that the rest of the menu will be on par. At some restaurants, soups are somewhat an afterthought meant to use up leftovers or ingredients approaching the end of their lifespan. A soup that's been kicked up a notch and exhibits layers of flavor is a sign that it was made to impress, not just to use up all that old produce that couldn't be rightly served if it wasn't hiding amongst other ingredients. Of course, if you have to read through pages and pages of menu items to find the soup in the first place, that's a red flag that should send you running from the restaurant. It generally indicates the establishment is trying to please everyone instead of focusing on perfecting a few solid dishes crafted with diligence, and as they say, a jack of all trades is a master of none.