"Yum, that tasted great!" NEVER SAY THIS TO A CHEF. They will IMMEDIATELY realize that your tastes are JEJUNE and your palate is UNDISCERNING. Consider employing the following instead:
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"Very funny!" An "elevated" response that suggests deeper engagement with the meal on an emotional level.
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"Aaaaaagh." Chefs are almost uniformly sadists and will pleased by your writhing screams.
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"Thanks, I hated it!" Honest. Powerful. Yet polite. They will be "bowl"ed over by this response.
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"This reminds me of a little restaurant in Antwerp that I visited with my father when I was a child." The chef got his start in that very restaurant, and he remembers your father's order. Repeat it along with him: Duck consommé with herbs au Provence. It was the first time he had ever made a customer scream by putting a fishing spider at the bottom of their soup-bowl, a trick he has continued to employ to this very day. "To this very day," he chuckles, as you slowly skim aside the greens rafting atop the surface AND SEE A BIG SCARY SPIDER AAAAAAAAAGHHG!!!!