13 Menu Items You Should Never Order At A Seafood Restaurant

Whether you are sitting down to eat at your favorite seafood chain (à la one like Red Lobster), visiting your favorite local seafood spot, or treating yourself to a fine-dining experience at a waterside eatery with a flair for fish, do not just scan the menu and pick any old dish you see. There are a few things that many seafood restaurants serve but that you might not actually want to order. Sure, that special may sound amazing, and you might not be able to find that particular seafood on offer at restaurants very often, but some seafood dishes pose a hazard to your health or the environment.

To keep your wallet and your stomach happy (and enjoy the best seafood experience possible while you are at it), take a few recommendations from us. These are some of the top menu items you should never order at a seafood restaurant, based on factors such as health risks, sustainability in regards to fishing and farming, and expert advice we scoured the internet for.

Sure, it may seem ultra fancy and even cool to say you ate shark. After all, you have the chance to chow down on one of the ocean's scariest predators. In many parts of the world, shark is a favorite seafood, prized for its unique flavor, ease of cooking, and sometimes affordability, depending on when and where you buy it. Additionally, while finning (the act of taking sharks' fins — the most valuable piece — and throwing the rest of the animal back into the water) is becoming highly illegal and controversial in most waters, actually catching sharks is not illegal, and demand for shark meat is growing, as it is seen as an alternative to other seafood that is historically overfished.

However, think twice before you order shark from the menu. There are myriad reasons why you should pass on dishes such as shark stroganoff, shark steaks, or even shark fish and chips. To start, sharks are extremely high in mercury. In fact, they have one of the highest mercury contents of any seafood, and the FDA recommends not eating shark at all due to this fact. Then, studies have found that some sharks carry high levels of other toxic materials, including lead and arsenic. In short, steer clear of shark if you can.

People have consumed eels for ages, and the seafood is still pretty popular throughout much of Europe. Unfortunately, there are many reasons why you should not eat eels.

For one, the European eel is a critically endangered species. The American eel likewise is facing endangerment. Additionally, if eel is not properly cooked, it could kill you. Eel blood is toxic — so toxic that even if you consume only a small amount, it could mean the end for you. Eel blood contains a protein that leads to muscle cramping, including the cramping of your most important muscle of all: your heart. 

Furthermore, the FDA reports that various types of eel can pose aquaculture drug hazards, parasite hazards, and environmental chemical hazards. Moray eels can also contain high concentrations of ciguatoxins, which cause ciguatera fish poisoning, a type of food poisoning that results in symptoms such as gastrointestinal distress, weakness, numbness or tingling in the extremities, or hallucinations. Ciguatera can cause long-lasting issues, and those who experience it are advised to avoid alcoholic drinks, shellfish, and nuts for six months after illness, to avoid repeat symptoms. Overall, putting that much trust into the chef may be a risky move, so order at your own discretion.

Sashimi — a dish typically made up of thinly sliced raw seafood — is often available at sushi restaurants, but it stands apart from sushi in a few key ways. Sushi often also includes rice and similar ingredients, whereas sashimi puts the focus entirely on the raw, main attraction. Likewise, sushi, while associated with raw fish, does not always contain raw ingredients; sashimi always does.

Unfortunately, the raw seafood ingredients used in sashimi can lead to a variety of different foodborne illnesses. There is anisakiasis, a type of parasite that you might find in salmon and some other fish species. If it is consumed, the anisakiasis not only causes food poisoning, but the parasite can actually make itself a new home inside your intestines. Raw seafood also may contain listeria bacteria, which poses a particular risk to those with a weakened immune system, the elderly, children, and pregnant people. Salmonella and bacillus cereus are other infections that may lurk in sashimi. For the best chances of avoiding these, skip the sashimi altogether and opt for sushi that contains cooked ingredients or no raw seafood or meat. Alternatively, try to limit your sashimi intake to top tier seafood restaurants that have extensive knowledge on serving raw seafood safely.

You may think that fried calamari is a totally safe, benign seafood option for you to order. It is cooked, after all, so you do not normally run the risk of food poisoning with it. Does it really deserve a spot among seafood you should avoid ordering while dining out?

Yes, and for one key reason — it is just plain not nutritious. While calamari on its own contains a lot of healthful ingredients, including copper, protein, and B and C vitamins, those healthful attributes are often destroyed by the deep-frying process required for fried calamari. Not only does the deep frying take away all the nutritious stuff from this seafood, but it also adds in a lot of less nutritious stuff — namely, fat, sodium, and cholesterol. Comparing raw calamari to deep-fried calamari, the calories can more than quadruple and the fat content can rocket upwards by 20-plus grams. Meanwhile, deep-fried calamari can contain nearly your entire recommended amounts of saturated fat and sodium for the day. If you are not looking at your calories or fat intake, by all means, dive into the delicious appetizer. But if you are, it can be helpful to keep this knowledge in mind.

Raw oysters are a favorite at seafood restaurants, considered a delicacy and often incorporated into celebratory meals. However, before you slurp down your next oyster, consider if the risk is worth this seafood's (often pricey) cost.

Instances of raw shellfish-connected foodborne illness have been on the rise in recent history. In one case in 2022, hundreds of individuals reported falling ill with norovirus after eating raw oysters, all from the same source. Beyond norovirus, oysters also notoriously carry vibrio sickens bacteria, which causes around a hundred deaths each year (and if you are lucky enough to survive a near-fatal case, you may end up with a limb amputation). One reason why cases of these illnesses are up? Warming oceans. The warm waters are more inhabitable for dangerous bacteria (the bacteria can also live longer in polluted waters). When oysters filter this water through their natural processes, it introduces the bacteria into their meat. Then, when you eat a raw oyster, you are eating the bacteria. Yuck.

Another delicacy associated with the high life, caviar is served alongside crackers and toast points, with blinis, or in simple caviar bumps. However, while caviar may seem oh-so-decadent, it can also be oh-so-divisive.

The caviar harvesting process, which typically kills the fish, has historically depleted the beluga sturgeon population to the point that the fish has become endangered. The population is not only reduced by caviar harvesting, but also due to the fishing process that often traps and kills young sturgeon who have not reached reproductive age, which thus do not contain any caviar. Even if producers are not harvesting wild sturgeon for their caviar, farmed sturgeon still undergo a questionable egg extraction process, which is both painstaking and potentially painful for the fish. Likewise, sturgeon farms must purchase other fish for their sturgeon to eat. This takes away cheaper fish from the market; fish that could be used for other purposes. Additionally, sturgeon farming requires excessive water use and can lead to pollution from the fish waste.

You walk into a restaurant, take your seat, and the server comes over to rattle off a list of specials for the day. Among them is a seafood special that sounds pretty tasty — but think twice before you order.

According to chefs, the seafood special can be a bit suspicious, depending on what day of the week it is offered. Enjoying a nice lunch out on a Monday? There is a chance that seafood could be more than a day or two old, as many seafood deliveries are made to restaurants on Thursdays, ahead of the weekend busy period. That means that your Monday seafood special is basically made up of the weekend's leftovers. While that is not always true for every restaurant, it is a risk. When you consider that fresh seafood should only be kept in the fridge for one to two days before cooking, you might want to avoid fish that has been lingering in the restaurant kitchen for four days.

It is not uncommon to find seafood paired with pasta. Maybe you are blending linguine with shrimp, mussels, and scallops in a succulent sauce made with Parmesan for a creamy seafood pasta recipe. Maybe you prefer a red sauce, so you are tossing together a dish of frutti di mare. Whatever the case, seafood pasta is something that multiple chefs told Mashed that they would never order in a restaurant. For some, the contention lies in the heavy way that a pasta dish's ingredients could interfere with the seafood's integrity, overpowering it. For others, it just does not make sense from a gastronomic purity perspective.

However, if you have trouble giving up your seafood pasta, you could take a few tips from MasterChef judge Joe Bastianich. He told Mashed in an exclusive interview that, while he loves a good pomodoro sauce with clam linguini, there are a few things that will make him refuse to touch it: if the sauce is not emulsified, if there is not enough starch, and if the dish is watery. Consider following in Bastianich's footsteps and choosing your seafood pasta carefully — if you decide to order it.

While some can happily chow down on grilled octopus with fervor, others hesitate — and you might want to, too. The main qualm that many have with eating octopus is the creatures' inarguable intelligence. Octopi are keen puzzle solvers and tool-users. They can learn to recognize faces. They can use disguises and they have approximately as many neurons as dogs.

If that is not enough to dissuade you from ordering this menu item, though, maybe just stay away from eating one octopi dish in particular: sannakji. This is a raw seafood dish, but it takes the dangers of raw seafood to an entirely new level. It is not just parasites and food poisoning you need to worry about. Instead, this dish is made up of chopped, nearly-live, still-moving baby octopi. The point is to eat the octopi while it is still wriggling and, as a result, scarfing the tentacles down can prove a choking hazard. About six people die from choking on sannakji each year.

While mussels are a fairly popular seafood dish — at least compared to shark and sannakji — several chefs have said that they avoid mussels when dining out. This is because, while mussels may seem relatively straightforward, they actually require quite a lot of care to keep them safe for consumption. In fact, Anthony Bourdain said that he does not eat mussels in a restaurant unless he personally knows the chef or has seen how the restaurant stores its mussels.

This difficulty with storing can be partially chalked up to the fact that shellfish last for longer or shorter periods of time based on whether or not each individual mussel can completely close its shell. If you miss a mussel that can't close its shell, it could go bad far sooner than its compatriots — leading to food poisoning.

And it is not just an upset stomach that you will get from eating a bad mussel. Mussels can cause something known as paralytic shellfish poisoning. This scary foodborne illness can be fatal and there is no treatment. Instead, those who contract the illness have to rely on supportive care, including respiratory support where needed. The poisoning stems from a naturally occurring biotoxin.

Like shark, swordfish is one of the handful of seafood options that contain some of the highest levels of mercury. In fact, swordfish contains about six times the mercury that you will get in a can of tuna.

Not only is the high mercury content a risk, though. Josh Copeland, owner of Camino Alto in San Francisco, told Mashed that swordfish also contains a high level of parasites and tumors (something that Anthony Bourdain backed up in "Kitchen Confidential"). These parasites, or worms, are supposedly living deep within the swordfish flesh, undetectable until you cut into the fish. They are large, black, and about ¼ inch in diameter. Add on to that that swordfish is also endangered (and that the fishing practices used to catch swordfish are endangering leatherback turtles), and you have plenty of reason to not order swordfish the next time you see it on the menu.

Tilapia is a very popular fish, and the majority of tilapia served in the United States is not wild-caught, but it is instead farmed. Unfortunately, the farming practices used for tilapia can pose a danger to the environment, particularly if the tilapia was farmed in China. Also unfortunately, unless you know specifically where the tilapia you're eating was farmed, chances are good that it is from China. Chinese tilapia farms are assumed to use banned antibiotics and antimicrobials within their aquaculture operations, and it is not uncommon for these farms to flood, and then for tilapia to escape. When they do, they invade nearby habitats, spreading diseases and taking over other species.

Beyond these negative environmental factors, though, there are also a few health factors to consider. While we often associate the presence of omega-3 fatty acids in fish to be a good thing, in tilapia specifically, it can actually be bad. This is because tilapia contains a low amount of omega-3 fatty acids and a high amount of omega-6 fatty acids. This ratio could cause inflammation.

Another fairly common and inexpensive fish, grouper is unfortunately one of the handful of fish to carry the toxins that can lead to ciguatera poisoning. You can't even rest assured that if you cook this fish all the way, that you will destroy those toxins, as they can't be killed with heat. If you do get ciguatera poisoning, the symptoms can last as little as a few days but up to multiple months.

Additionally, while perhaps not as high in mercury content as shark or swordfish, grouper is still considered to have a "high" level of mercury and, as such, pregnant people and children are advised not to eat grouper at all, and the average population is advised to only eat three or fewer servings of grouper per month. Grouper is also not all that sustainable of a seafood option. While there are more than 160 species of grouper, about 20 of those species are at risk of extinction, and more than 20 are near threatened due to overfishing. As grouper disappears from its habitat, those habitats could also suffer in turn, with a disruption in the ecological balance. Getting the grouper populations back up to sustainable levels is not that easy, either. Grouper are known to reproduce very slowly.

Static Media owns and operates The Takeout and Mashed.