Diners are being reminded of the dangers of undercooked food.

CHICAGO — Eggs sunny-side-up are still on the menu. But restaurants nationwide are keeping a closer eye on egg suppliers and reminding diners of the dangers of undercooked food after a massive recall tied to a salmonella outbreak.

"If someone asks for eggs overeasy, what do you do, put a skull and crossbones on their table?" said Louis Tricoli, who owns three Wisconsin restaurants with his family, including one where nearly two dozen people were sickened in late June after likely eating the now-recalled eggs. "Undercooked beef, undercooked pork, chicken, eggs, anything you ask to be undercooked, it's at your own risk."

And so, instead of taking eggs off the menu, many restaurateurs are relying on long-standing menu warnings about the dangers of eating undercooked food. And waitstaffs are fielding questions from concerned guests worried what they're being served might not be safe.

At Atlanta's West Egg Cafe, business was brisk last weekend when customers chowed through nearly 2,900 eggs over the course of three days. Still, some diners made sure to ask whether the eggs were safe, said Chef Patric Bell. The restaurant's eggs weren't affected by the recall, and he said so far no one was changing their breakfast orders.

"If I couldn't get eggs that were safe, I wouldn't serve them at all," he said.

Two Iowa farms, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, recalled about 550 million eggs last week after learning salmonella might have sickened as many as 1,300 people.

But outside of such outbreaks, salmonella is always occasionally present in the roughly 80 billion eggs sold in their shell in the U.S. each year. The harmful bacteria typically contaminate one out of every 10,000 to 20,000 eggs.

That risk is always there for people who like eggs that aren't cooked until the yolks are solid, said Benjamin Chapman, an assistant professor specializing in food safety at North Carolina State University.

Restaurants can sometimes be breeding grounds for outbreaks if they crack many eggs into a single container when preparing them, which could allow one bad egg to contaminate a whole batch.

The recall isn't enough to scare off Charles Mettler, who ordered an eggs Benedict on Tuesday when he stopped by Drake Diner's in Des Moines, Iowa.

"I'm probably more worried about the Hollandaise sauce as far as cholesterol." Mettler said.

A spokesman for the National Restaurant Association said he hadn't heard of any restaurants dropping eggs from the menu entirely, or switching to pasteurized eggs, which are unshelled eggs heated to kill bacteria. They can also generally only be scrambled or used as an ingredient.

But about a dozen major restaurant chains and many individual restaurants said they're monitoring the outbreak that has sickened about 1,300 people so far.

The number of illnesses, which can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems, is expected to increase.