As most of you are aware, I like ketchup. But I am sick to death of certain restaurants that I go to that refill the ketchup bottles all the time without ever cleaning them out.

Two restaurants in particular I have a big beef with.

1) Skeeters. A great burger joint. No smoking, but I can deal. The burgers are mesquite grilled, the buns are fresh, the fries good. But they don’t ever seem to rinse the ketchup bottles out. So it goes bad, or sour, or whatever, and it is just off. They use the generic red ketchup squeeze bottles, so you have no idea how old the ketchup is until you taste it. On four seperate occasions, I have had to get another bottle. Ugh.

2) Willies. Another place with good burgers, and yet those same damn squeezable ketchup bottles. I don’t want to be one of those people that has to bring food utensils/items with me wherever I go, but for chrissakes, this is the third time it has happened here. Rancid ketchup.

Now this has happened in a couple of other places, for example, it happened once or twice over the years at Denny’s, but all in all, it is just these two places that seem to have the problem.

There is one good point of all this, though, and that is that I have noticed a visible sign that it’s gonna be a bad ketchup day: Bubbles. If there is any bubbles in your “puddle” of ketchup after you squeeze out the ketchup from your bottle, just throw it away. 10 to 1, it will be bad.