One of my favorite local restaurants never has any daily specials. I wish they would. Although they have great food, they have a relatively small menu, and I find myself going somewhere else occasionally because I get a little bored with their menu.

I used to think that daily specials were primarily so that chefs could take advantage of some unusual or less often available fresh items or could use their creativity to come up with something other than what is on the standard menu.
As a result, I have often been drawn to look at the daily specials when I go to a new restaurant or one I go to infrequently.

Then I read an article that says many restaurants use daily specials just to get rid of leftovers or use up food that would expire. Uh-oh. So are daily specials really special or just a gimmick? Probably some of both and I guess you have to know the restaurant to distinguish.

It's going to totally depend on the restaurant.

I know one local place goes nuts when they have a certain type of fish coming in, usually sending out e-mails a day in advance saying they will have it the next day (not a fish I like, so I don't pay much attention)

If a restaurant has shrimp on the menu, and if they have calamari on the menu, if they were to offer a shrimp and calamari special over pasta, I'm not going to think they are just tryng to use up old food, as it's regular menu food. It's just a different way of trying something.

I've also seen more than a few chefs hitting a farmers market in the morning (Union Square, New York for example) and had the chance to chat with them sometimes as to what they were planning on what they were buying, and in many cases it was for the the daily specials.

One of my local restauraunts has practically the same special all the time - I think its just stuff he wants to put on the regular menu but can't reliably get. He does have some seasonal stuff too though

Some of the best eating places in the world only have daily specials. Chef goes out to the market and buys what's good that day. The market decides the menu. He writes it up in chalk on the blackboard. Some places don't even write it up .... you just put yourself in their hands .......

Many if not most of the mid-range restaurants in these parts print a menu every day to every week, and they will often reflect whatever is "special."

Just read an article on Yahoo! in the last few days "10 things your waiter/waitress won't tell you.." Or something like that.

One was that items on special are ofter made with ingredients nearing the end of their shelf life. SO, I agree with the OP-likely the same article. I will be a bit more careful.

One steakhouse we frequent seems to rotate specials. I think that's probably a bit safer.

Yes, exactly the same article

Seafood specials on Monday?

Read Tony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential.". While farm to table restaurants are the exception, I do believe that specials (ESP. On Sunday Brunch or Monday dinner) may be a means for the restaurant to clear out thier inventory.

I used to frequent a restaurant that made no excuses, and on Sunday night had a special "clean out the fridge" dinner. The kitchen crew cooked what was in the fridge and there was no guarantee about what you'd get - if they had three portions of something they'd serve them, and the next table would get something else.

Bit of everything - when I was a restaurant manager the specials consisted of

a) seasonal items that were only good for a short time / limited availability (say English asparagus with poached local duck eggs) that it made no sense to add to the regular menu
b) items that we had more than normal of - we would never use 'bad' food, but if we ended up with an excess of chicken that would go bad in a few days' time, then we would add a chicken special as part of stock management. We also did this when a supplier mis-delivered (they normally would tell us to keep extra delivered items, so we could well have an extra box of chicken to get through, or a box of calamari that we didn't normally serve).
c) Ideas we wanted to try out either for regular menu items, for catering etc.
d) Me playing in the kitchen - I love cooking, so once in a while (usually if we had a slow day) I would create a dish or two that would feature as specials.
e) Kitchen malfunctions - either of staff or equipment! For example, if one of the fryers was broken then we would have 'specials' that sounded delicious that only required the oven or a pan (e.g. roasted chicken served with mashed potato and braised leeks, rather than beer battered fish & chips) or if we had a shortage of staff, we'd play to our strengths (some people could cook meat far better than they could cook fish, for example, or push a less labour intensive dish, like a cassarole, that required very little chef hands on time to reduce pressure on staff).
f) Special occasion dishes - these were probably the worst option you could pick, honestly! We would cash in on a particular thing, say, St. Patrick's Day, and serve a Guiness pie, or champ, or potato soup - these items were generally lower cost to us, but with a profitable mark up (as we could only guess at how well they would sell, and because of a limited duration, they couldn't be prime ingredients). Still perfectly nice food, but in value for money terms, not your best option.

I think the specials also let the restaurant serve food of a bit different style than the rest of the menu.

One of my favourite French eateries ever, Michelin starred "Le Moissonnier" in Cologne, Germany, for example used to do a more "comfort food" oriented lunch while evenings were more creative. And I found it a perfect balance, not really that adventurous at noon.

i recently spent a week of feeding in Lyon, and a week in Sicily. the specials came off the boat, or directly from the market. "we have 5 courses of sweetbreads". the "tuna just came off the boat" "we got skate at the market" "no ... today, none at market"are typical comments. vegetables are very limited in italy in winter. there are none fresh.

the comments of posters on this forum indicate that most specialize in steak houses, pizza parlors, fast food and chain restaurants. many top end restaurants in the dc area have "what is fresh today". they are searching for the best routh chris steakhouse.

I wouldn't necessarily mind that (I mean it's not like it's rotten food), as long as it was priced appropriately. Was there at least some "discount" or better value out of it for the customer? You help them clear out inventory, they help you out with some price improvement. Everyone's a winner.

Yeah - you got a multi-course set priced dinner, at a pretty significant discount over what their normal prices would have been. And, as you say, it wasn't like the food was rotten (or even on the cusp) I think they liked the idea of starting out each week fresh without having to worry about using up stuff from the previous week.