The Popular Italian Dish That Restaurants May Keep Frozen

Restaurants from P. F. Chang's to TGI Fridays make their own branded lines of premade frozen dinners in supermarket freezer aisles. When the pandemic shuttered sit-down dining, many restaurants even invented crafty elevated frozen dinners for foodies to take home and enjoy. Both are solid options for convenience-minded gourmands — but on the flip side, when diners sit down to eat in restaurants, chances are they won't be thrilled to discover they're digging into a (gasp!) frozen meal. Alas, this bleak and unappetizing reality may be the case with one popular Italian dish in particular: none other than comforting, beloved chicken parm.

Plenty of chefs are in agreement that chicken parmesan is something they would never order from a restaurant because it's most likely frozen and may, at best, taste like sauced chicken nuggets. Homemade chicken parmesan is all about the crispy chicken cutlet cloaked in a crispy, flavorful crust, draped with tomato sauce, and topped with gooey melted cheese. Even if it's plated atop a pile of spaghetti or zhuzhed up with a few fresh basil leaves, there's no replacing or mistaking the real deal with a frozen substitute. Depending on where you're eating, the worst mistake when ordering at a restaurant could be asking for the chicken parm.

One concerned foodie took to Reddit to ask current and former restaurant employees whether they had any experience willfully serving frozen food to customers. As one ostensible industry worker responded, "Some food is actually fine frozen. Peas for example are picked frozen at their peak ripeness ... Sauces, if made initially from quality ingredients, are fine frozen ... What's not okay is frozen entrees. Different components of an entree require different cooking methods. Simply freezing a whole entree and reheating in a microwave or even just an oven will never be good." Succinctly put, and we agree.

As a general rule, restaurants that only serve a few dishes are going to be really good at making those select few items. If you're dining at a longstanding, family-owned Italian American restaurant where all the tables are full on weekend evenings, then it's probably a safe bet that the chicken parmesan isn't coming from the freezer. Foodies can feel good about digging into a plate of the classic at a joint like the eponymous Parm, which has locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn. We think plenty of chain restaurants serve a great plate of chicken parm, as well. However, if you're at a diner or fast-casual restaurant with an eight-page menu, the frozen status of the establishment's chicken parmesan might be tougher to gauge.