12 Foods That Taste Better At Home Than From A Restaurant

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There are many reasons we love to eat out. In some cases it's the ambiance, in others it's simply the convenience factor, plus it's always nice to enjoy a meal without having to put in any effort or the need to clean up once it's over. For the most part, however, what we like best about the dining out experience is a chance to eat foods we either can't make at home or else ones that simply taste better in a restaurant.

There are many types of foods that restaurants always seem to do better than at home – sushi comes to mind, as do simpler dishes such as waffles, pancakes, and even eggs. Steaks, too, are generally better (though much, much pricier) when cooked by professionals. Still, there is something to be said for home cooking, as it can offer nuances and personality you sometimes can't get at a restaurant. There are also certain dishes where a chef-created version is never going to match one made by even a reasonably skilled amateur. Here are our picks for the foods you should never order at a restaurant, and instead of these foods, order something else you can't get as good at home.

Homemade lasagna, too, is better than the restaurant version for several reasons. The first of these is that lasagna is typically made with marinara sauce or bolognese sauce, and, as we previously mentioned, the restaurant-made sauce is never going to be as good as homemade tomato sauce. There's also another issue with lasagna, however, and that has to do with the size of the dish.

Lasagna is typically baked in a large pan to make for a family-sized meal. This is fine if you are at home and even better if you happen to have a large family. When you order a piece of lasagna at a restaurant, however, unless you luck out and get the very first piece that comes out of the pan, there's a chance that your lasagna may have been sitting around for a while. If this is the case, it's likely that the noodles and cheesy topping may have dried out a bit. Speaking of cheese, that's yet a third issue we have with some restaurant lasagnas — oftentimes the cooks tend to go way too heavy on the mozzarella. With a good lasagna, you'll be tasting each layer, but in an overly-cheesed one, the flavors of the ricotta and sauce may get lost in the mix.

In 2016, a group of European researchers was looking into what factors determine whether people prefer homemade foods or prepared ones and they came up with a pretty interesting conclusion. According to a study they performed, reported in Market Watch, it seems that people generally prefer to make healthier foods at home, while they'd rather outsource the ones they perceive as being more indulgent. One food item that was used in the survey was a simple smoothie, with most of the participants giving higher ratings to the ones they made themselves.

According to science, the reason for this preference may be because you feel proud of seeing all of the healthy ingredients that go into your smoothie. Another factor at play may be that smoothies are highly customizable — you can choose dairy, plant-based milk products, or no dairy at all. Banana or no banana? Thick or thin? Green or pink? If you make smoothies in your own blender, you can add in all kinds of superfood boosters without paying an enormous upcharge, as well. The very best part of DIY smoothies, though, is that you can also leave out all the stuff you don't like. (Thanks, but we'll pass on the kale, as we'd prefer to save it for salads.)

Grilled cheese is another once-basic food that turned into a 2010s phenomenon. In fact, restaurants specializing in this meant-to-be-simple sandwich started offering gourmet versions such as Havarti with braised leeks or chèvre with apricot-jalapeño relish. By 2011, we were seeing grilled cheese cookbooks such as Laura Werlin's "Grilled Cheese, Please!" Over a decade has passed since gourmet grilled cheese became a thing, but this fad is proving to be surprisingly long-lasting for reasons that elude us.

Grilled cheese, like cereal, is one of those classic comfort foods where basic really is better. A recent survey found that the majority of grilled cheese sandwich makers preferred a simple slice of American to fancier ones, but there's no need to get a restaurant to cook this for you. After all, the best part of eating a grilled cheese sandwich may well be the nostalgia factor that comes with making something that you probably learned to prepare back when you were still in elementary school. Sure, you can tweak your grilled cheese technique if you wish, or even add your own embellishments like pepperoni, bacon, or even fig jam. But at the end of the day, the perfect grilled cheese sandwich is whatever you want it to be, and that's something you're only going to get if you make it yourself.

We know we've taken issue with a lot of trendy comfort foods getting too big for their britches — to the point where they're no longer quite so comforting. Tuna salad, however, has the opposite problem. It seems as if sandwich shops and diners (the only two places likely to have it on the menu) see tuna fish as an option, the kind of thing that's only likely to sell to people on strict diets or observing religious restrictions. This means that most restaurant tuna salad tends to be bland and boring, and the only way to redeem them is to turn them into a tuna melt with a generous amount of cheese.

Homemade tuna salad, however, can actually be pretty exciting stuff. Tuna comes in all kinds of flavors these days, plus you can doctor up your tuna salad with all manner of add-ins like pickles, onions, jalapeños, lemon juice, vinegar, or even a sprinkling of fish sauce for an extra hit of umami. You can also add in a handful of uncooked oats as a budget stretcher that doubles as a fiber boost (this trick works with ground beef, as well). For a vegan, tasty mayonnaise replacement, you might even like to try using mashed avocado. Sure, tuna and guac sound like an odd mashup, but it's one that actually works surprisingly well.

Pies are big business these days, with many pie bakeries shipping products nationwide. While these pies tend to be pretty pricey, with some running upwards of $50 (not even including shipping and handling), people still seem to be buying them in such numbers that many bakeries warn of selling out well in advance of pie-heavy holidays like Thanksgiving. Okay, we get it, pies are pretty fiddly to make, so it may well be tempting to outsource the work if you can afford to do so. The problem, though, is that even the very best bakery pies just don't seem to live up to the homemade kind.

There are a few reasons for this, though we think the main one is that in order for pie crust to come out perfectly flaky and full of flavor, you need what's sometimes described as a "light hand." Oftentimes at large-scale bakeries, this magic touch is somehow lost when you're turning out pie after pie to stock the bakery shelves. Bakery pies, too, are meant to please the masses, which means that the fillings may be too sweet, too bland, or just not quite as tasty as they could be. When you make your own pies, you can tweak them to your own taste by dialing back on the sugar, adding a squeeze of lemon juice, using shortening or butter or a mix of the two in the crust, or even sprinkling some cinnamon or nutmeg into the dough.

Roast chicken from a restaurant is generally not worth bothering with, and this goes for turkey, as well. The reason is, these birds are generally roasted whole, but in most cases, unless you're ordering a family-sized meal, you're only getting served a portion. The question you may be asking yourself is which part did you get? Did you get the first cut or the one that's been sitting in the kitchen for a while? Not that we're suggesting it's a health hazard, since restaurants are generally pretty careful about that sort of thing, but still, your roast bird might have had time to dry out a bit under a heat lamp, so it may not be as fresh as it could be.

Both roast birds, however, are pretty darn easy to prepare at home. Even better, they often tend to be quite budget-friendly, as well. There are also numerous different recipes for roast chicken and turkey. With the former, you can go with a tried-and-true classic as endorsed by Julia Child, or you can spice things up with something like this coconut milk and lemongrass Indonesian roast chicken. With the latter, you have options galore ranging from a turkey wet-brined in maple syrup and soy sauce to a Portuguese-style roast marinated in paprika and beer.