Consiglio: In general, the larger the menu a restaurant has, the worse the quality of food will be.

I’ve worked in a lot of different kinds of kitchens, and this can be said for most restaurants.

*I think an exception to this can be brunch/diners/breakfast, and that’s only because they have eggs as the base of most meals and generally the meal are actually various combinations of things they cook with frequently.*

Why?
1. Cooks have less practice making those items. Ordering a semi-obscure dish from some chain restaurants that usual makes pastas and chicken? Odds are the cook hasn’t made it in weeks.
2. With a large menu, you need a lot more different kinds of ingredients. Those ingredients cost money, so to save money, they are probably not buying quality items.
3. Because some dishes just aren’t as popular, those ingredients aren’t getting cycled through nearly as much, and may be sitting there unused way past their best quality until you, the unaware customer, orders the tacos at a burger joint.

An anecdote: went to a restaurant with a huge menu that specializes in breakfast with my boyfriend, I got eggs Benedict (yum) and he got fettuccine Alfredo (terrible).

Anecdote 2: the best tamales I’ve ever had, that’s at a place that ONLY serves tamales. This woman has made them probably thousands of times, knows exactly how they should be and receives feedback on them daily.

Edit: reminder I used most and in general. I’m certain that there are great restaurants out there that can master a lot. Just saying from a kitchen perspective that most restaurants will fail at this!

Edit 2: I agree with many folks commenting about cuisines such as Chinese or Mexican that use similar ingredients in different combos, I think I should say that I think if there’s a large variation of ingredients among the dishes that has strong potential for restaurant that doesn’t actually know how to use them.

Edit 3: stop lumping all Asian cuisines together in this as an exception. Yes, American Chinese has tons of options and I’m sure it’s delicious. Is it always as high quality or even semi-similar to authentic Chinese? Nah.