The Classic Chocolate Dessert You Should Probably Avoid Ordering When Dining Out

Whether you're at an expensive restaurant or a simple diner, it's a universal urge to order something special off of the dessert menu at the end of the evening. After all, a savory dinner should always be closed out in a sweet way. However, if you're debating on just what dessert item you should order, you may want to consider an option besides the chocolate cake, especially if it's a molten lava cake. As delicious as a gooey slice of cake can be, restaurant chocolate cake quality can be wildly inconsistent, especially if you're not already extremely familiar with that particular restaurant's food.

Often, the quality of the chocolate itself can be poor, and the melty fudge in molten cake might be especially sugary and filled with artificial flavoring. And this info comes from a number of professional chefs in the industry. The problem with molten lava cake in particular is that it uses a decent amount of sugar already, and excessive sugar is a great way for unscrupulous cooks to disguise poor quality chocolate. On top of that, the cake may not even be made in-house. Sometimes it's best to avoid ordering dessert at restaurants because you may be paying extra money for a cake or pastry that would be better (and fresher) purchased directly from the bakery supplier.

Reheated, outsourced desserts are more common than you'd expect. It doesn't help that restaurants don't often make much money on desserts, which can lead to cut corners and thinly cut slices of cake, so to speak. It's fairly straightforward to buy entire cakes from an outside kitchen; if these are molten cakes which needs to be served warm, individual slices can be cut off, reheated, and served with a sharp surcharge attached. You'd be better off buying a slice directly from a bakery after leaving the restaurant, and it'll be cheaper.

How can you tell when it's premade, reheated chocolate cake? There are signs you can look for, both before and after the dessert arrives to your table. If the dessert consistently arrives very quickly, that could mean it was simply pulled out of the freezer and thawed for a few minutes. Also, check the size of the restaurant's menu: An enormous menu filled with too many choices can sometimes be a sign of poor quality or frozen food, because it's difficult to manage that large a selection of fresh goods. As for the taste and texture of the chocolate cake itself, check if it's too moist or too dry, which can be signs that it was improperly reheated or stored. When in doubt, you can always ask your server if the dish is made freshly in-house or outsourced from another location.