Don't let a restaurant's menu layout trick you. Just because food items are listed in a particular order doesn't mean you need to be swayed by the dishes you see, and traditional serving times needn't dictate your ordering decisions. Choosing dishes from the appetizer menu, regardless of the time of day, can be an easy way to save money while sampling a variety of flavors from the menu in your hands. Particularly when dining in groups, ordering a collection of appetizers to share among friends can ensure you taste more recipes without having to shell out the same amount of cash as you might when ordering several different entrées. Plus, smaller serving sizes leave room for additional orders should you feel peckish after the first round of plates is cleared.

Not every establishment is trying to milk you dry when it comes to your wallet. As Chef Barry Dindyal of Fusion Bar & Restaurant in D.C. tells the Washington Post, "I really want to give people something special at a lower price. Not everyone can afford the entree-size portion." 

If you are looking for other menu hacks to offset restaurant costs and give your mouth a flavorful dining adventure, side dishes can also be used to supplement orders and build meals. Because side items are usually priced cheaper than main dishes, a collection of different orders can lead to a meal that is varied, healthy, and affordable. 

Depending on the restaurant in which you find yourself dining, appetizers and first courses can be hearty enough to quell hunger pangs without you needing to open your pocketbook to a fully-priced main dish. Select a few appetizers to begin with, and add to your order if necessary. With your out-to-eat strategy set in place, you may find yourself feeling full and satisfied after ordering a handful of items off of the appetizer menu, and your wallet will be equally contented with your carefully-made dining decisions. 

Since awarding its first stars back in 1926, the Michelin Guide rating system has remained the gold standard in the restaurant world. Earning Michelin stars, in fact, can put a restaurant on the culinary map, catapulting an inventive eatery to unforeseen levels of success. In the process, the talented, ambitious chefs behind those Michelin stars can become bona fide foodie superstars — just ask chef-turned-media mogul Gordon Ramsay how his life changed after his London-based Restaurant Gordon Ramsay amassed three Michelin stars. 

Michelin star ratings have been awarded to establishments throughout the world, with these restaurants typically representing the cutting edge of the culinary arts. As one might expect, earning a Michelin star is no mean feat. Restaurants that attain them must then face the ongoing pressure of hanging onto those stars. 

Meanwhile, Michelin stars continue to lead the way for hardcore foodies who devote themselves to seeking out unique dining experiences in far-flung locates around the globe. For anyone looking for some guidance when it comes to experiencing some of the world's best cuisine, read on to learn about some Michelin-starred restaurants you should eat at at least once.

Chef Heston Blumenthal opened The Fat Duck in 1995 in a former pub in the British village of Bray in Berkshire. Blumenthal quickly established himself as a culinary adventurer, noted the Michelin Guide, landing the restaurant his first Michelin star in 1999. A second star was awarded in 2002, and a third in 2004, making The Fat Duck one of just three U.K. restaurants at the time to boast three Michelin stars. 

Described by The Guardian as "the paradigm-shifting madcap molecular genius of British cooking," Blumenthal has continually pushed the envelope with his culinary work. In 2005, The Fat Duck was named the world's best restaurant by The World's 50 Best Restaurants.

If there's one dish that defines The Fat Duck, it's Heston's Sound of the Sea. Introduced in 2007, this thoroughly unique gastronomic delight places seafood sashimi atop a bed of edible tapioca "sand," accompanied by a conch shell containing a hidden iPod that plays a soundtrack of ocean sounds such as seagulls and waves buffering the shore. Explaining his culinary philosophy to Country & Town House, Blumenthal declared that "eating is a multi-sensory experience."

In 1994, Thomas Keller opened The French Laundry in what was once a stone farmhouse in California's Napa Valley, taking his restaurant's name from the history of the building, which housed a steam laundry in the 1920s. Keller's venture has grown to become one of the world's most respected restaurants, earning three Michelin stars every year since 2007. No less an authority than the late Anthony Bourdain once described The French Laundry as "the best restaurant in the world, period" (via Secret San Francisco).

According to the Michelin Guide, "Classic French techniques are paired with wildly fresh ingredients in a setting that is a perfect storm of restaurant greatness." Anyone fortunate to obtain a reservation at The French Laundry can expect a meal that, per a reviewer for Food Republic, was "among the finest dining experiences of my life."

A 1997 review in The New York Times backed that up, declaring The French Laundry to be "the most exciting place to eat in the United States."

Chicago's Alinea opened in 2005 under the leadership of chef Grant Achatz, propelling the molecular gastronomy trend to bold, avant-garde new directions. Clearly not willing to rest on its laurels, in 2017 Alinea received three stars for its eighth consecutive year. The restaurant was likewise awarded three stars in the 2020 Michelin Guide, the only Chicago eatery to garner three stars that year. 

In 2017, Insider ranked Alinea as the best restaurant in the world, thanks to Achatz and his team's inventive experimentation "with avant-garde dishes that showcase their molecular gastronomy skills."

Alinea's signature dish is arguably one of its oddest: a floating helium-filled dessert, made from dehydrated apples and sugar. The edible balloon is served with a pin, so diners can pop the treat in order to eat it. Alinea executive chef Mike Bagale, who created the dessert, told Eater that this was the dish he's most proud of. "I think it was a step forward in cuisine," said Bagale, admitting that "creating floating food" was an entirely new venture.

When it comes to combining world-class cuisine with sustainability, Spanish restaurant Azurmendi is the ultimate. In fact, Forbes deemed chef Eneko Atxa Azurmendi's namesake establishment to be "the most sustainable restaurant in the world."

Set within a magnificent glass-walled structure in the Basque countryside, the Michelin Guide described the three-starred restaurant as being "worth a special journey" and "one of our most special places." As its website declared, Azurmendi is "the place where our culture, customs, and way of doing things walk together towards the future."

As Forbes noted, diners are ushered through a series of rooms, each with its own culinary characteristics. After enjoying "miniature delights" in a forest-themed room, guests are then taken into the kitchen, where Azurmendi himself creates his signature dish, in which the liquid within a raw egg is sucked out of the shell with a syringe. Steaming truffle broth is then injected within the shell, cooking the yolk. A third room represents the surrounding countryside, with liquid nitrogen used to recreate fog, before ending up in the main dining room.

Situated in Modena, Italy, Osteria Francescana was awarded its third Michelin star in 2012 and was named the best restaurant in the world in 2016 — and again in 2018. According to the Michelin Guide, the restaurant's cuisine is "light and well balanced with a focus on adding innovative touches to traditional recipes without being overly nostalgic."

The brainchild of chef Massimo Bottura, Eater credited Osteria Francescana's fame in culinary circles due to "juxtaposing Italian tradition with French sensibilities and unhinged avant-gardism."

This is certainly evident in what is arguably the restaurant's most famous dish, described in the menu as "an eel swimming up the Po River." In a review of the restaurant for The New Yorker, Jane Kramer described the sous vide eel as being "lacquered with a saba sauce, and served with creamy polenta and a raw wild-apple jelly." 

Known for its casinos and opulent cuisine, the New York Daily News once dubbed China's Macau region as "Asia's Las Vegas." Sitting at the peak of Macau's many world-class restaurants is Robuchon au Dôme, situated within the glass dome that tops the towering Grand Lisboa Hotel. It shouldn't be surprising that the food is as superb as the setting, given that the restaurant was named after Joël Robuchon. Prior to his 2018 death, Robuchon once held 32 Michelin stars in a single year, a feat unmatched by any other chef before or since, according to NBC News. 

Led by the vision of executive Julien Tongourian, noted the Michelin Guide, Robuchon au Dôme offers dishes that "are intricate, beautifully presented and deliver an array of intense flavors" — along with a wine cellar boasting 17,000 selections, the most extensive such collection in Asia (via Grand Lisboa Hotels).  

According to a review in WBP Stars, diners can expect "traditional French haute cuisine of the absolute highest standard" while taking in the breathtaking view of Macau.

When Le Bernardin was first opened in New York City by French siblings Maguy and Gilbert Le Coze in 1986, the restaurant served nothing but fish, prepared simply and "with respect," according to the restaurant's website. After Gilbert's 1994 death, chef Eric Ripert came aboard and took Le Bernardin to a whole other level. In 2005, the restaurant was awarded three Michelin stars and has maintained them ever since.

As The World's 50 Best explained, Le Bernardin offers an array of tasting menus, some based on the degree of cooking applied to the food in question. The dishes infuse elements of global cuisine — particularly from Asia — with traditional French cooking techniques, resulting in such dishes as "kampachi sashimi with Niçoise olives and a Greek-inspired salad" and "seared octopus with tomatillo salsa and red wine-mole sauce."

While seafood remains Ripert's specialty, the Michelin Guide also gave accolades to his vegetarian tasting menu, which includes highly-prized meatless ingredients like morel mushrooms and black truffles.

Located in the Swiss municipality of Crissier, the Restaurant de l'Hôtel de Ville was first opened in 2012 by renowned chef Benoit VIolier. When VIoiler died in 2016, his widow, Brigitte, handed the reins to chef Franck Giovanni. 

Under Giovanni's leadership, noted a review in Fodor's Travel, not only has the restaurant maintained its three Michelin stars, but the new chef has been instrumental in "propelling it to even higher accolades." This, as Fodor's pointed out, has been the result of Giovannini's knack for devising "imaginative combinations of flavors" along with an eye for "stunningly refined presentations."

While Fodor's also pointed to the importance of the local ingredients, the Michelin Guide praised Giovanni for his ability to oversee a team of 25 chefs, a feat of organizational work that's often overlooked in the artistic, high-minded world of haute cuisine.

It would be beyond understatement to describe Shanghai's Ultraviolet as one of the world's most unique restaurants. In fact, the acclaimed establishment has taken dining in some trailblazing new directions by creating a multi-sensory experience in which delectable haute cuisine is only one aspect of the meal. 

"The characteristic of Ultraviolet is to unite multi-sensorial technology with food," chef Paul Pairet declared in a New York Times video. According to Ultraviolet's website, the restaurant tells "a story in 20 courses," with each of those courses served in a completely different environment. This is achieved by an ever-changing soundtrack, with special music accompanying each dish, along with visual accompaniment projected on walls, even the addition of scents and "ambient utensils." 

As the review in the Michelin Guide explained, the experience "will give you quite an adrenaline rush." While it may sound entirely gimmicky, a review in The New York Times insisted that Ultraviolet's "commotion is inextricable from the sense of wonder it stirs." The cost of taking part in the commotion is steep, setting diners back some $400 per person.

The culinary pride of the Peruvian capital of Lima, Central reflects chef Virgilio Martínez's passion for celebrating Peru's biodiversity through cuisine. As the Michelin Guide explains, "Peru is home to 84 of the world's 117 microclimates ranging from the Pacific Ocean to the Andean mountains, the Amazon rainforest, and even deserts." This gives Martinez a lot to work with. 

The result, noted a review in Time, is a 17-course tasting menu that is organized by altitude, with each course representing the bounty of one of the country's unique ecosystems according to their particular elevations. This results in such courses that include scallops, piranha, and goat. The restaurant's three Michelin stars and the fact that Central was declared the sixth-best restaurant in the world in 2019 (via The World's 50 Best Restaurants) is a testament to how successfully Martínez has achieved his goals.

As Martínez explained in a video interview for Vice, "We're working with about 350 ingredients in the menu ... You are trying 350 ingredients in one experience." 

It speaks volumes that chef René Redzepi's Noma has been named the best restaurant in the world no less than four times, according to The World's 50 Best. Those honors weren't achieved by playing it safe either, as the Michelin Guide says that Noma boasts "one of the most advanced" test kitchens on the planet.

A meal at Noma takes diners far outside culinary comfort zones. According to Insider, Redzepi serves up dishes that include unconventional ingredients foraged from the surrounding countryside, including such eyebrow-raising ingredients as ants and edible mold. 

Diners can also expect to enjoy a vastly different experience depending on the time of year they visit Noma. Due to the restaurant's hyperlocal philosophy, only locally available ingredients are used, leading to menus that change with the season. For four months of the year, the focus is on seafood, while another four-month period features vegetables, and the final third of the year leans heavily on wild game.

Situated in France's posh Côte d'Azur, Mirazur is a labor of love for chef Mauro Colagreco, an Argentine expat committed to growing his own vegetables and working to produce zero waste. This, he told the Michelin Guide, "allows us to return to the land what we have borrowed from it." Understandably, this philosophy is deeply embedded within the restaurant's menu, which the Michelin Guide described as a "unique and daily ode to aromatic plants, flowers, vegetables from his garden."

Mirazur became a sensation in 2019 when earned the coveted top spot on the The World's 50 Best restaurants list. As a CNN review explained, Colagreco takes a micro-level view of which ingredients are available. As a result, "the menu changes every single day," creating dishes so unique that even the most dedicated regulars don't expect to have a repeat of previous meals.

Japan is famed for its traditional kaiseki cuisine, a carefully curated dining experience attuned to the seasons. Tokyo's Den, under the leadership of chef Zaiyu Hasegawa, has taken the concept of kaiseki and turned it on its head, earning culinary accolades for the bold, yet playful inventiveness of its menu.

According to The World's 50 Best Restaurants, the Michelin-starred restaurant "offers an elevated, deeply personal take on Japanese home cooking," with Hasegawa basing his dishes on high-quality ingredients. As the Michelin Guide gushed, Den offers "a Tokyo twist on kaiseki cuisine for a new era." This is evident in some of Den's signature dishes, the Dentucky Fried Chicken, described by The World's 50 Best Restaurants as "probably the best chicken wings you will ever taste."

"The taste of home cooking is different for everyone," said Hasegawa on the Den website, "but yet it is all prepared with the same wish, which is to make others happy."

They say there's nothing like a home-cooked meal, but is that always true? There are many foods that people think taste better when you're out to eat. A recent Tasting Table survey found that there are certain foods people always say are always better in restaurants.

The top three were steak, pancakes, and salads. That makes sense — restaurants prepare these foods differently from how you do at home. They use way more fat and salt than the average home cook. But it's more complicated than that. Apparently, the more we think about food, the less appealing it becomes, which means that cooking is a major appetite buster. It's just a fact: Some foods taste better at restaurants. But that doesn't mean you can't try to make your home versions closer to takeout.

Below, we've compiled a list of restaurant foods that always taste better than what you make at home, as well as some reasons why.

Is there anything better than a backyard barbeque or a summer cookout? The friends, the smell of your grill, and hot summer days always draw up sweet nostalgia, but there's something about the food that's never quite precisely what you want it to be. But what makes restaurant burgers taste different from homemade burgers?

The first thing is that restaurants probably use different beef than you, especially if you buy pre-made patties at the supermarket. Chefs pay attention to what a cow ate during its life. For example, meat from cows that ate soy, corn, and other sugary foods is sweeter. So, many restaurants source grass-fed or grass-finished beef.

Next, chefs think about the amount of fat in their burger mixes. Restaurants with great burgers often use meat that is between 20 and 25% fat, leading to a juicier burger. Another critical element of moisture retention is how they cook their burgers. They use meat thermometers to verify they don't serve undercooked meat. Also, by not pressing down on their burgers while they cook on a flat top, chefs can be sure they come out great every time.

Of course, flavor is about more than how restaurants cook their burgers. Seasoning the outside of the patty just before cooking maintains the ideal burger texture without sacrificing flavor. Finally, chefs carefully select toppings like cheeses and buns in different combinations to create unique and delicious burgers.

What makes fast food and restaurant french fries so delicious? While there's no one secret ingredient that makes them irresistible, there are definitely some techniques that do. First up, most restaurants use russet potatoes for their high starch content, which allows them to get fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside.

You may also be wondering how fast food restaurants make their french fries crispy. Restaurants use commercial fryers, which means it is difficult to repeat this process at home (though there are smaller versions you can buy to try).

Restaurants also reuse their oil, which, surprisingly, helps fries get crispier. As oil heats, its fats break down and attach to food better. It's a balancing act, though, because oil that's too old can burn and is decidedly not tasty. Speaking of burning, the temperature at which you cook your fries is super important. Most restaurants do a double-fry at a range of 325 and 400 degrees. That's right — most restaurants fry their spuds twice. And they usually choose oils with high smoke points (e.g., peanut, corn, or canola oil).

Restaurants often dehydrate or freeze their potatoes before frying them to ensure they're crispy. Also, sometimes they batter them or add other ingredients, such as dextrose and food starch. It might not be easy to replicate all these tips at home, but incorporating at least some of them will bring your homemade french fries closer to restaurant style.

Pad Thai is an iconic and incredibly popular Thai street food with heavy Chinese influence, per The Atlantic. While there is undoubtedly much more to Thai cuisine than pad Thai, this stir fry is probably the Thai dish most people have tried making at home. 

Chef Orachun Yodkamlue told Vice that it's crucial to use high heat when making pad Thai (otherwise, the noodles will stick). Yodkamlue first cooks his protein. He then adds a homemade sauce which includes sriracha, fish sauce, tamarind sauce, and sugar. After, he cooks his aromatics (shallots and dried shrimp). Finally, he adds noodles, more sauce, and stock. But he's not finished yet. Before serving, he adds egg and garnishes. Yodkamlue isn't alone in his opinion — Chef Andy Yang told Michelin that the order you incorporate your ingredients into your pad thai is integral to the success of this dish.

So, if you want to make restaurant-quality pad thai at home, consider making your own sauce and follow the correct order when adding your ingredients.

The reason fried rice tastes better at a restaurant than at home is simple: wok hei. What is wok hei? Michelin translates wok hei to "breath of a wok." Simply put, wok hei is the unique flavor and aroma that high heat and a wok impart to a dish. This phenomenon means that you need to use a wok to make fried rice at home taste as good as at a restaurant. Unfortunately, it's challenging to get heat that is high and direct enough at home. Restaurants place their woks directly onto gas ranges.

You must heat your wok before adding oil. Let the dry wok begin to smoke before adding cold fat, per Chef Andrew Zimmern. To keep everything inside your wok as hot as possible, don't overcrowd your pan and always keep everything moving. Fried rice (or any stir fry) isn't a dish you can walk away from and leave to cook on its own. In restaurants, the direct heat causes a Maillard reaction when heat, tossing, and vaporization meet.

Yes, it's a stereotype that kids (and many adults) don't like their vegetables, but why is that? Think about how that broccoli side dish tastes at your favorite steak house versus how it does when you make it at home. There is a reason why vegetables taste better at restaurants than at home.

The first and most obvious reason is that restaurants use more butter and salt than home cooks do. However, there's more to try than just salt and butter. Add fresh herbs and cheese or use different kinds of fats and types of vinegar. When you add your salt also matters. If you add salt a couple of hours before you cook your veggies, they'll soak it up and be nicely seasoned.

The other element of restaurant-style vegetables is different cooking techniques. You can do so much more than just boil or saute your veggies. Try roasting and grilling them. Most importantly, if you blanch your vegetables in salt water before using another cooking method, they'll turn out crispier and better cooked.

Sushi, with its deceptively simple ingredients, seems like it should be easy to make at home. But that simplicity actually explains why sushi tastes better at a restaurant than at home. When your ingredients are simple, they have to be of the utmost quality. If your fish isn't perfect, your sushi isn't going to taste good. Also, sushi chefs are very well trained — some practice for more than a decade before earning their titles.

That said, if you do want to try making sushi at home, there are some key things to keep in mind. Firstly, you shouldn't make homemade sushi too far in advance. That's because refrigerating sushi can affect its taste and quality for the worse, but leaving sushi at room temperature for more than two hours is a health hazard. If you're pressed for time, make your sushi rice ahead of time; it can be placed in the fridge for up to three days.

Handmade tortillas are the secret to delicious homemade tacos, so if you've ever wondered why tacos taste better at a restaurant, now you know. Luckily, whether you are in the mood for corn or flour tortillas, they're incredibly straightforward to make. For corn tortillas, you only need masa harina (aka corn flour), water, and salt. And while tortilla presses are great, they're not absolutely necessary when making fantastic corn tortillas. You can place a ball of prepared masa between two pieces of parchment paper and roll it with a rolling pin.

Flour tortillas require a bit more finesse. The best way to ensure fluffy homemade tortillas is to use high-protein flour, a solid fat, and cook them at a high enough temperature. If you make extra tortillas, you can also make your own tortilla chips. They'll be fresh and warm, which isn't something you can achieve with bagged chips from a grocery store shelf.

Whether you order takeout from your local chain or dine in at your neighborhood trattoria, pizza is almost always better at a restaurant than at home. Pizza ovens are the number one reason why. A pizza oven is a particular type of oven that most home cooks don't have in their kitchens. They resemble enclosed fireplaces and cook the pizza by heat radiating off the walls. These ovens can also get twice as hot as a home oven, with some reaching 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Of course, pizza ovens aren't the only reason restaurant pizza tastes so good. It's important to know that there's a big difference between pasta and pizza sauce, and you shouldn't use them interchangeably. Namely, you don't cook pizza sauce before you put the pie in the oven. Because pizza ovens are so hot, using a precooked sauce could lead to an overcooked sauce in the final product. Pizza sauce can be as simple as you like. You can simply crush tomatoes, or you can add some tomato paste and seasonings.

Have you ever wondered why a restaurant salad is so filling and can be a whole meal, whereas it's a struggle to finish one you make at home? Well, salads taste better from a restaurant for a few reasons. For one, your local restaurant probably uses a lot more dressing than you do, and they might make their own, which makes a massive difference. 

Many chefs also season the salad itself, adding salt and pepper to the leafy greens even before adding the dressing. Speaking of greens, they're more likely to use a mix of different greens and other ingredients. This combination creates a more exciting dish due to the variety of textures and flavors.

Restaurant salads also have a lot more of another thing many homemade salads are missing: fat. If you're eating salad for its nutritional benefit, consider adding whole fats such as avocado, salmon, or nuts.

There's nothing quite like a stack of thick, fluffy pancakes for breakfast (or any time of day, really). And they always taste better at a diner than at home, don't they? Until now, that is. You can learn how to make pancakes that are (almost) as good as your local diner's. First, make sure that your ingredients are cold. This keeps the chemical leavening reactions from occurring before you cook them. Remember, lumps in your batter are a good thing — they mean you haven't overmixed it.

It's also best not to play with your recipe. If you want buckwheat pancakes, find a recipe for buckwheat pancakes rather than swapping out flour in any old recipe. Don't add blueberries or bananas to a recipe that doesn't call for them. Baking is more of a science than an art, and pancakes are a particularly tricky experiment.

Most diners and restaurants cook pancakes on griddles rather than in pans, which allows them to cook up several at once, all on even heat. NYT Cooking has a neat hack for those of you without a griddle. Writer Jerrelle Guy suggests baking your pancakes in a sheet pan to ensure a large batch of fluffy pancakes is ready simultaneously. Of course, be prepared to forgo the round shape.

The reason why steak usually tastes better at a steakhouse than at home isn't actually about the cooking method. It's because the meat you buy at the grocery isn't aged how steakhouse beef usually is. Most grocery store meat is wet-aged, meaning it's vacuum-sealed and refrigerated for 10 days. Most steakhouse beef, on the other hand, is dry-aged. That's where the meat is hung in a temperature-controlled room and allowed to grow mold that removes moisture.

You can actually dry-age beef in your own refrigerator. Make sure you have a fridge thermometer and verify your fridge is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, rinse and dry your cut of beef; then, wrap it in cheesecloth. Put the meat on a wire rack on top of a sheet pan. Then, leave it in the fridge for a week. Make sure to cut off any pieces of fat that developed on the outside as your meat aged. The University of Missouri says that to ensure your meat doesn't go bad, keep your aging environment clean and don't age your beef for too long.

Science Focus says there's a perfect way to make a sandwich, so perhaps it's no surprise that they taste better from a deli than at home. High-quality ingredients, seasoning, and expert construction methods mean that restaurant and deli sandwiches come out better than ones in your own kitchen.

Science Focus suggests creating a "hydrophobic barrier" by spreading butter or mayonnaise on your bread before adding other ingredients. Doing so keeps your bread from getting soggy. Next, everything must be symmetrical on both sides. Then, when you put your sandwich together, it won't fall apart.

But that's just the construction. Good delis and restaurants ensure they use well-seasoned ingredients, including dressing vegetables, before adding them to the sandwich. Interesting flavor combinations are essential too. Fat and acid go well together, so delis often pair vinegar and mayonnaise, for example. Rather than sliced sandwich bread from the grocery aisle, freshly baked bread can also go a long way.

Obviously, there is more than one type of Indian curry. However, most follow the same pattern, process, and technique; it's the ingredients that change. Following distinct cooking patterns is how restaurants keep their food tasting excellent, dish after dish. These methods are also used by Indian home cooks (via Spice It Upp).

First, chefs and cooks temper whole spices, meaning they heat spices in oil so that their flavor becomes infused into the fat. Next, aromatics such as onions and even tomatoes are added and sauteed. These are followed by powdered spices as well as vegetables or proteins central to the dish. The next step is adding the liquid that will provide the base of the curry gravy. Finally, before serving, chefs add garnishes, such as cilantro or roasted garam masala powder.

When attempting to replicate restaurant-style flavor, it's essential to use the ingredients listed in the recipe and in the form called for; if the recipe says a cinnamon stick, don't substitute it with powdered cinnamon. Further, don't be intimidated by the amount of oil in the recipe. A lot of it will be drained off or reused elsewhere.

A good stock is the secret to restaurant-quality phở. In fact, according to Vietnam Tourism, the dish was created in part because of an excess of beef bones due to the French colonizers' high demand for beef. There isn't just one way to make this traditional breakfast dish. However, making bone stock from scratch is a time-intensive process that sets restaurant dishes apart from home ones that use premade broths.

Take Charles Phan's phở bo recipe, for example. While the individual steps aren't particularly complicated, they are abundant and take plenty of time. Phở is a dish that is certainly easier to leave up to your local restaurant, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it at home. One of the great things about this noodle soup is it uses up animal parts that might otherwise go to waste. These parts are often more affordable than other cuts of meat, as well.

You've probably wondered why scrambled eggs taste better from a restaurant than at home. It's only a few simple ingredients, after all. For one, you may have heard that adding milk to your scrambled eggs is an incredible hack. Not so much. It makes them rubbery and bland. Instead, add water (half a teaspoon per egg), which helps create steam while the eggs cook. That way, the proteins don't bind too quickly and are actually fluffier rather than tough and dense.

We get it — you're hungry and just want breakfast on the table. But don't be tempted to crank up the heat so that your eggs cook quickly. That'll just lead to dry, rubbery eggs. Most chefs recommend cooking scrambled eggs between low and medium heat. Some chefs, such as Mark Bitterman, cook scrambled eggs for as long as 30 minutes (per NYT Cooking). This may seem like a dish that should be ready in a jiffy, but your local diner is likely the only place where you'll get perfect scrambled eggs served up in minutes.