It's a fact of life: certain foods travel much better than others. It's never fun to realize that the meal you ordered for delivery simply didn't hold up in transit and is beyond repair, so we've gathered 11 foods that you should think twice before ordering to go.
There are plenty of foods that hold up pretty well even a couple days later, ones that can be stuck in the microwave or tossed in a hot pan and brought back to some semblance of their initial form. Spaghetti and meatballs, for example, holds up just fine, and curry tastes even better after a day or two of letting the flavors co-mingle. Meat shouldn't really be microwaved, but if you nuke some leftover chicken for a little while it'll be okay. But for certain foods, it's just not going to happen.
Here's a rule of thumb: If it's crispy, crunchy, cheesy, or breakfast-y, it's not going to hold up. Even if it's rushed from the kitchen directly to your house, by the time it gets there it's not going to be nearly as tasty as it once was. This is because food exposed to the conditions of transit -- steaming inside its container, cooling, congealing --simply do not make for good eats, as Alton would say. It'll still be edible, sure, but far from ideal.
So read on to learn about 11 foods that you really shouldn't order to go, and why. If you're going to eat these, eat them in a restaurant. And if you've got leftovers, feed them to the dog.
-Dan Myers, The Daily Meal
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