16 Fine-Dining Dishes You Should Leave To The Professionals, According To Chefs

If you consider yourself a relatively talented home cook, then you may enjoy replicating various dishes at home, that you often order while dining at restaurants. The internet is filled with copycat recipes for your favorite foods, everything from Papa Johns garlic sauce to Panera broccoli cheddar soup. However, while it may be relatively easy to pull together an imitation of a condiment or basic soup recipe, some restaurant foods might not be as simple to replicate — particularly when it comes to fine dining.

Fine-dining chefs use an array of specialty techniques honed during culinary school and over long careers; specialty equipment costing thousands of dollars; and difficult-to-source-and-then-work-with ingredients that aren't always accessible to the average grocery shopper. As such, we spoke to chefs who say, there are some fine-dining dishes that you should simply leave to the professionals. These are the chefs' top picks for the recipes to skip at home.

Lemon pasta may seem relatively simple. For example, if you look at Sophia Loren's lemon spaghetti recipe, it's just pasta, lemon, heavy cream, and Parmesan, plus a few standard pantry items. However, truly authentic lemon pasta, like that served at the coastal Italian restaurant at Donatella Boutique Hotel in Miami, requires extra care and a pretty lengthy process, according to executive chef Alessandro Morrone.

Chef Morrone calls this dish "a story of patience." It's on the restaurant's menu as Amalfi Limone, described as fettuccine with Meyer lemon, lemon oil, caviar, and crème fraîche.

"The lemon must be preserved properly, and that takes time — two months, in fact," said Morrone. "It's not just about throwing things together; it's a process, a commitment to the craft. At home, many people don't have the time or the right ingredients. That's why dishes like this are best left to chefs, who have the time to respect the tradition and process."

Lobster and risotto are both, separately, staples on fine-dining menus. Ambitious home cooks may take on either, again, separately, and find that, on their own, they're doable, if challenging at first. However, pair them together and the challenge becomes that much greater. It's an undertaking that executive chef David Caceres at Casa Gianna, an Italian restaurant in Miami, says may be better left to those who know what they're doing.

The restaurant serves its lobster risotto with shaved fennel, sea beans, and Grana Padano, a specific type of cheese originating from Italy's Po River Valley and aged up to 20 months. Chef Caceres said, "This dish demands patience and technique. The key is a rich, homemade lobster stock; constant attention while cooking the risotto to achieve the perfect creamy consistency; and knowing exactly when to add the lobster so it remains tender, not overcooked." So, not only would you need to make a perfectly cooked risotto and a perfectly cooked lobster for this meal, but you're also going to need to make homemade lobster stock — adding an even further level of complexity to this fine-dining dish.

Making homemade ice cream is easy enough, particularly with the rise of no-churn ice cream recipes that negate the need for purchasing any specialty appliances. However, to make truly fine-dining-worthy gelato, you're going to need a lot more than just an ice cream mixer that you picked up at Walmart.

At a'Riva, an Italian restaurant in Miami Beach, executive chef Michele Esposito makes a pistachio gelato that offers a delicate contrast in textures. There's the silky-smooth gelato, a crunchy caramelized pistachio topping, and a white chocolate-pistachio sauce from Italy. While the technique required to replicate this gelato at home is difficult, chef Esposito further notes that getting your hands on the right ingredients and equipment is likewise not exactly easy.

"I take a meticulous approach to crafting pistachio gelato — which isn't something you can just whip up at home with a standard ice cream maker. Unlike store-bought or home-churned versions, true artisanal gelato requires specialized equipment, high-quality ingredients, and precise technique to get that silky, ultra-smooth texture and deep, nutty flavor," he said. Specifically, chef Esposito uses a Carpigiani LB 100 B, a professional gelato machine, as well as Sicilian pistachios that offer a unique flavor.

The tomahawk steak is dramatic, over-the-top, larger than life, pricey, and decadent. In other words, it belongs on a fine-dining menu. If you frequently cook steak at home, to great success, you may think that you can easily take on this steak cut as well. After all, steak is steak, right? Well, not exactly. 

There are plenty of steak cuts that are varying degrees of easy and difficult to cook at home, according to experts. And the tomahawk steak, which is technically a bone-in ribeye? It's one of your more difficult options.

According to chef Mike Tsarnas of Gabriella's Italian Steakhouse in New Jersey, "While it's possible to make at home with the right techniques, [a tomahawk steak] can be quite challenging due to the thickness of the steak, the bone-in cut, and being able to achieve the perfect sear. Achieving the perfect sear and right temperature requires precision and high-end equipment."

Learning how to make sushi is a fun undertaking for home chefs looking to stretch their culinary muscles (or for a cute date-night idea), but don't expect the same results you'd get at a high-end sushi restaurant right away, or at all. As Nikki Zheng, founder and chef of Sushi Akira, which specializes in limited-seating omakase experiences in New York City, notes, "Placing a thin slice of fish atop rice may look simple, but creating high-end sushi, especially nigiri, is an intricate art that requires years of dedication and mastery."

Zheng further explains that sushi chefs undertake extensive training covering everything from specialized knife techniques to how to properly prepare sushi rice, which, again, is far more difficult than it looks, if you want to achieve the right flavor and texture. Sourcing the best ingredients for sushi can also be challenging for home cooks, with Sushi Akira prioritizing the freshest, highest-grade fish, beyond what you might just be able to pick up at the market, as an average shopper.

"When it comes to preparation, precision is everything. This includes knowing exactly how much pressure to apply when forming nigiri and serving each piece at the ideal temperature to achieve perfect harmony between fish and rice," Zheng added. "Each bite may last only an instant, but it represents countless careful decisions and finely honed techniques."

It looks a little like a cross between a croissant and a seashell. Sfogliatelle is an Italian pastry that features layer upon layer of pasta machine-rolled, ultra-thin dough. Inside this filled pastry, you'll find semolina and ricotta. The pastry is difficult to make, time-consuming, and admittedly impressive — but maybe just pick some up from your favorite pastry chef the next time you have a craving for these traditional treats.

Matthew Cutolo, third-generation Italian chef at Gargiulo's Restaurant in Coney Island, New York, describes the process: "Crafting sfogliatelle starts with an incredibly thin dough that is rolled, stretched, and laminated with lard to achieve that distinct, flaky texture. It is then filled with a mixture of semolina, ricotta, sugar, and candied citrus. It is a long, delicate process that requires plenty of attention to detail." According to Cutolo, this pastry is more or less a labor of love, due to the patience and expertise required to make it — and if you make it at home, you may be disappointed when your pastries don't live up to their full potential.

Ponzu is just a sauce, and one might think replicating restaurant sauces at home should be pretty easy. However, as anyone who's ever tried to blindly recreate a fast food dipping sauce from scratch can tell you, sauces may be simple but they're not always simply made.

While, yes, you can purchase ponzu, a citrusy take on soy sauce, at the store, chef William Eick from acclaimed Japanese restaurant Matsu, in Oceanside, California, makes an elevated, clarified raspberry version for his menu. The ponzu, he says, is a perfect example of how, even though a recipe's ingredients might be accessible, the technique required can still make for a serious challenge for home cooks.

He explains of the clarified raspberry ponzu that the restaurant serves with raw fish: "The clarification must be maintained at very precise temperatures for an extended period. If it's too cold, it won't split; too hot, and the solids re-emulsify and the sugars burn. The correct temperature window is roughly 10 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds easier than it is to manage. Instead of trying to replicate a dish from your favorite fine-dining ... restaurant exactly, it's often better to take inspiration from it. Who knows — you might even adjust it to create something that suits your personal palate even more."

Fermented foods may be delicious and they may seem relatively straightforward to make — what is sauerkraut but cabbage that sits in its own juices for a few weeks — but chef William Eick also points to these menu items as something that can pose a challenge for home cooks, due to the time-intensive process. Two fermented items that Eick features on the Matsu menu include cashew miso and sea snail garum. (If you're not familiar with garum, it's a seafood-based, fermented sauce that originated and was highly popular in Ancient Rome.)

Jesper Jonsson, a Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts chef instructor, likewise mentions fermented foods, including fermented breads, kimchi, and yogurt, as challenging for home cooks, as well as potentially even dangerous, due to precise temperature, cleanliness, and timing needs. "If the process is done improperly," he said, "there are potential food safety concerns. It's a bit of a high-risk area for home cooks."

Steak tartare is another dish that, while a delightful menu option in a fine-dining setting, can pose potential health risks to home cooks due to the dish's raw ingredients, including raw, minced steak, and raw egg.

According to the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts' Colleen Garcia, director of curriculum and content development, the dish requires a "surgical approach to food safety and equipment cleanliness." She said that professional chefs carefully source the beef for steak tartare from the most reputable sources, and then chefs will sanitize and sometimes freeze their knives and cutting boards before beginning preparation.

"Precision cuts are essential for quality, and under no circumstances should things like ground or pre-diced meats be used, since there is a much higher risk of bacterial contamination," she added. "Since nothing in the dish is cooked, preventing cross contamination is paramount and should best be left to the professionals."

The French cookie with an almost cult-like following, macarons (careful you don't get macarons mixed up with macaroons) are a favorite for myriad reasons. They're colorful, cute, and tasty! They're also gluten-free! However, if you've ever tried to make macarons at home or even just watched more accomplished home bakers make them on shows like "The Great British Bake Off," then you know that crafting a perfect macaron is much easier said than done. There's a number of things that can go wrong. The shiny, smooth shell on the wafer cookies' exteriors could come out, well, not all that shiny or smooth. The cookies could spread out flat and thin rather than remaining plump and perfectly circular. The list goes on.

It's all why chef Jesper Jonsson includes macarons among the items he'd tell diners to enjoy at their favorite bakeries, rather than at home. "Macarons are notoriously difficult to master, especially because of the temperamental meringue and the delicate folding process," he said.

No, it's not just broth. It's far more difficult to make consommé than it is to make a standard chicken stock, which simply requires you to toss a few ingredients in a large pot, cover them with water, and walk away for a few hours. Consommé takes broth, or stock, to an entirely new level. It boasts a beautifully clear appearance (no cloudiness here) and a rich, intense flavor made possible by the "raft" technique.

It's this raft technique that can make consommé a difficult undertaking for home cooks. As Kirk Bachmann, Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts Boulder campus provost and president, and host of Escoffier's The Ultimate Dish podcast, said, the raft technique helps to clarify the consommé's impurities, and in order to prevent breaking the raft, very careful temperature control is required.

What exactly is "the raft?" At its simplest, it's a mix of egg whites and other ingredients, like raw meat, that solidifies and floats to the top of the liquid during the cooking process, clarifying the consommé. However, if you break the raft, even with just one wrong move, the magic is likewise broken.

Beef Wellington is another dish often found on fine-dining menus that Kirk Bachmann advises home cooks leave in the hands of professionally trained chefs. He noted that beef Wellington "requires precise timing to cook the beef perfectly while keeping the pastry crisp, and demands advanced knife skills for preparing duxelles and wrapping the meat seamlessly."

Chef Paul Denamiel, chef and owner of French restaurant Le Rivage in New York City, seconds this notion. While, he said, beef Wellington is his wife's favorite food and one she's constantly asking him to make at home, it's one that even he prefers not to make from the comfort of his own abode. He cites the dish's complication, as well as the substantial amount of time required to make it: "Between the multiple layers, precise techniques, and the sheer amount of counter space required, it's a dish best left to the professionals."

When Mashed ran a survey asking readers about the difficult dishes that they wish that they could make at home, nearly 25% of respondents said that they wished they knew how to effectively pull off croissants. However, while it seems like it'd be quite impressive to bake a batch of croissants on some lazy weekend morning, Ann Ziata, chef at the Institute of Culinary Education's New York City campus, says don't even bother — she doesn't!

"As much as I love baking, I will always outsource bagels and croissants to the pros who are in the business of making hundreds of them every day," she said. "Both take hours to prepare, plus it is a challenge to perfectly execute their precise textures and shapes. For less than $5 apiece, it's not even up for debate." So, the next time you crave croissants and wonder if you have the culinary chops to achieve them, maybe reconsider, take a page out of Ziata's book, and head on down to your local bakery.

You probably know pâté — but do you know pâté en croûte? When you take a pâté and bake it inside a savory pastry, that is technically pâté en croûte (the name literally means "pâté in a crust"). That said, when you look at most versions of this dish in fine-dining establishments, you'll see something more complex than a pâté in a bun. Beyond pâté, the filling could also contain layers of vegetables, nuts, and dried fruits, and, after cooking, the pastry could be injected with liquid aspic, which cools and turns into a jelly-like substance that holds all of the ingredients in place when the pâté en croûte is cut open.

According to Kirk Bachmann, pâté en croûte is a particularly "time-intensive dish that calls for precise layering of meat, gelée, and pastry, and requires specialized molds as well as a solid knowledge of charcuterie techniques." In other words, for some novice cooks, they'd have a better time heading to the dish's native France for a taste, rather than going through the trouble of making the gourmet specialty at home.

Nearly as complex, croquembouche, Kirk Bachmann says, is a tricky one. Home bakers must assemble profiteroles into a teetering tower using potentially dangerous hot caramel. If you're familiar with French desserts, you probably know what a croquembouche is by that description alone, even if you're not sure on the exact name. In short, it's a pyramid of cream puffs drizzled in caramel.

It's not just scalding-hot sugar and gravity that you're working against when you make a croquembouche, though. If you're making it from scratch, you have to make a pâte à choux, and then you have to make a pastry cream. Following that, you have to make the caramel. All of those on their own are difficult, but try doing them all at once. If you're looking for a challenging way to spend an afternoon in the kitchen, give this French pastry a go. If you're just wanting to delight your guests with a tower of delicious cream puffs, find a French patisserie and place an order.

While it's not exactly considered haute cuisine, you'll find french fries on a variety of fine-dining menus. After all, even the food snobs among us can't deny that there's something delicious about a perfectly cooked french fry that pairs well with an equally well-cooked steak. That said, getting that perfect fry at home? It's no endeavor for the faint of heart.

As chef Ann Ziata said, "Making the perfect french fry takes a lot of time, effort, and oil. A side of fries may not seem like an ambitious undertaking, but most restaurants use an industrial french fry cutter, brine the potatoes in water for a couple hours, par-cook the potatoes, and then finally fry them in a gallon of oil in a commercial deep fryer at exactly 375 [degrees] Fahrenheit."

It's a lot of work to turn the simple spud into a golden, crispy fry of beauty. Perhaps, while at home, you might settle for a bag of frozen fries and your air fryer, and rely on the professionals for that ideal french fry.