Steaks cook really quickly. It’s just a matter of timing if you have a grill where the temperature is known, and you’ve cooked each cut about a hundred times.
Here’s a good question:
How come a place with a large menu like Denny’s will have one guy in the kitchen, and a place with 4 items on the menu like In-N-Out Burgers will have a dozen? And the wait time is the same?
Kevbo - I can guarantee that no one has put that much thought into the pepper shakers. I’m sure it’s just a “ooh, that one needs some filling, in goes some more pepper” mentality.
nyctea scandiaca - Yes, Waiting is like some kind of holy movie for lots of restaurant workers, but no, we don’t do crap like that. No penis game, and we don’t intentionally drop or put body fluids into people’s food. But we do sure as Hell bitch and complain about rude and asshole customers, and we do make a fit when we have late night diners coming in, since it means we end up leaving like 30 minutes later than we could have otherwise.
ralph124c - No, those are never put in the fridge. I don’t think Tabasco has to be, though. I was wrong about ketchup, but Tabasco is even more acidic, lots of salt, and almost no sugar.
Sal Ammoniac - I’m pretty sure we use vegetable shortening, which is a saturated, not trans, fat. Still not all that healthy, but otherwise we’d be changing the oil more often, and it would get a very nasty taste by the end of the night (we have three fryers, each one holds about 50 pounds of oil, I’m guessing. Each night we replace a good chunk of the oil in one of the fryers with a 35 pound container of shortening, and the older oil from that one is rotated into the next fryer, and so on down the line, with the last fryer’s oil getting tossed into a large barrel out back and eventually picked up by some kind of grease recycling company.)
Crafter_Man - That might be true at, say, a Denny’s, or other much lower quality places, but the only things we ever microwave are some desserts, side dishes like rice and veggies, and other little things that top the food, like for instance we had a lobster-topped steak special for a while, and the little servings of lobster were nuked for a few seconds to warm them before being placed on the steak. Other dishes have things like salsa, sauces, and so forth that aren’t used in large enough quantities to justify using a large container in a steam table. But all of our burgers, steaks, chicken, pork, and ribs are cooked on a flat top or open char grill (or deep fried for things like chicken fingers.*)
MrFloppy - I’m going to teach you a trick that will save you the need to cut into a steak to check the doneness. With your left hand open and palm side up, press on that little fleshy pad just to the right of your thumb with your right hand. That is what a rare steak feels like. Now, touch your left thumb to your left index finger and feel that same spot, that’s medium rare. The middle finger is medium, ring finger medium well, and pinky is well done. And no, aside from the prime rib, which as I said is put into a slow roaster in the morning and is ready at around 4:00 PM, we never have food lying around waiting to be used, it’s all cooked to order. (And with the prime rib, by 4:00 it’s rare, and we can then slap it on the grill to raise it up higher. By the time we close at 10 or 11, the prime rib is generally only available as medium or up.)
That creates more Q’s than A’s - I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that a place like Denny’s, being of lower quality, IMO, does use mostly all frozen, ready to heat and serve meals. Less attention and time is paid to each dish.
*A side-note regarding chicken fingers/tenders: Most places seem to use pre-cooked, pre-breaded, frozen chicken fingers and toss them in the fryer. We are one of the few places that actually hand breads raw chicken. The tenders are pre-cut, but we drop them in buttermilk, coat them in seasoned flour, and fry them for a couple minutes to prefection.
If you are married and do not do the cooking , you have eaten floor food. It probably will not hurt you. I was at a party once when all the men were in the front room watching a football game. I went into the kitchen for a beer and a woman was picking a porkchop up that she dropped. Every woman volunteered to give it to their husband because they had done so for years and did not know it.
bouv, as a former server at two chain restaurants, I hope you don’t mind if I interject. 
all this varies by restaurant. I worked at Outback and at Carrabba’s, both of which prided themselves on making as much fresh as they possibly could. meat was never frozen, because it drains so much moisture and flavor out of it, so they just keep it refrigerated and have it delivered often.
anyway, in general, the answer to your question is that 20 minutes is just the time allowed for your food to be cooked and plated. everything is prepped separately and in advance according to predicted demand. where I worked, kitchen staff and prep staff are separate: the prep staff would come in early in the morning and start preparing. they do everything right up to the actual cooking: they chop, they mold, they mix, they layer, they marinate, they bread, everything. when someone orders something, it’s in little refrigerated containers right there in front of the cooks, so all they have to do is grab, cook, and plate. of course, new batches of everything are continually prepped throughout the day. this principle goes for just about everything: sauces, dressings, marinades, bread, soups, everything. things like lasagna are slightly different, of course, since you have to start baking before anyone orders it or it won’t be ready when someone does, but the principle is the same.
there are exceptions to this formula, of course. plenty of places just keep everything frozen: meat, sauces, soups, dressings, and all. then they just thaw whatever they think they’ll need for the day. I imagine the only prepping that gets done is just prepping things to be frozen so the frozen stock doesn’t run out. sometimes they don’t even do that in-store; they just order frozen stuff from some corporate vendor. you can usually taste the difference at these places (… I think Olive Garden is one of them. bleh).
I’ve never understood why people would be bothered by something like that anyway. “Floor food” happens all the time in my house, and it’s not treated like some big secret we have to keep from other diners. I’m pretty fastidious about food safety and kitchen cleanliness, but really, what is the magical, horrendous thing that happens to food once it contacts the floor surface? It’s contacted a not-so-clean surface, but it’s not like you dropped it in the toilet.
(And I’m assuming it’s a steak or chicken breast, for instance, that can be wiped off. I wouldn’t spill risotto on the floor, scoop it all up and serve it.)
I always assume the floor is full of bacteria. If food drops that I can still cook some more like meat, I will consider keeping it. If it is raw food like vegetables for a salad, if it hits the floor it gets tossed.
I think everything is.
Maybe the condition of the floor makes a difference. If it were a gross commercial kitchen floor with all kinds of crap on it, maybe I’d look at that differently than my own relatively clean kitchen floor.
bouv, where do you work?
Let’s just say it’s a certain Texas themed chain steakhouse named after a breed of cattle.
I work in a restaurant too, but in my restaurant the cooks and servers hardly speak with each other. (There is some interaction of course, but there just aren’t any significant buddy type conversations at all)
Part of this is probably the fact that 100% of the cooks speak Spanish, and only a couple of the servers do (including me, but I’m still not really part of their group as I’m not Latin, and not a native speaker).
I get the feeling that at least some of the cooks kind of despise me when I have to take something back to the kitchen because the customer didn’t like it or has very stringent demands. (Just last night I had a customer who was allergic to gluten, and I went back to the kitchen asking about the ingredients in a bunch of our stuff and saying “OK, does that have gluten in it?” - I’d get back a response of “Who?!?”. Joy, endless joy…)
So do the cooks secretly hate the servers? How much do you make, and does that have an effect on it?
Question: why aren’t restaurant kitchens hospital clean? Most of the stuff 9tables, appliances, etc.) are stainless steel-a restaurant i worked in once was steam-cleaned every night-everything was put away, and all the working surfaces, hoods, etc. were scrubbed and rinsed with high pressure steam.
There is almost no animosity between us and the servers. Yeah, we can get upset if they bring something back to us, but usually it’s because they forgot to tell us “no onions” or “no cheese” or what have you. We’re generally good about noticing the modification on the tickets, it’s only when the servers forget to put them on that we get annoyed with them (not to say we are 100% perfect, either. We’re all human and make mistakes. And when we do, they get upset with us, so it’s an equal partnership.)
As far as money goes, the servers make your typical sub minimum-wage and make up the rest in tips. On most nights, this means they make more than your average kitchen staff. However, on slow nights, or some lunch shifts, if there aren’t enough people to doll out the tips, then the kitchen staff makes more. But it’s usually not anything we care about. We’re in the kitchen mainly because we aren’t the type of people who want to deal with the customers, not because we thought we’d make more money back there.
ralph124c - Every night we send all out cutting boards through the dishwasher (very hot water with a cleaning solution,) along with all the pans, containers, and cooking utensils (tongs, spatulas, ladles, etc…) We then wipe down all the surfaces with a sanitizing solution. The floors are swept by us, and then a night cleaning gut mops them up damn good. Since we aren’t typically dealing with a lot of sick, elderly, and immuno-compromised individuals, there’s really no need to be “hospital clean.”
I like to have a beer with my appetizer and usually a glass of wine with dinner. If I order the wine at the time I order the main course it is almost always forgotten about. If I order it when they bring the main course, I am half through with dinner when it arrives. How hard can it possibly be to bring the wine with the dinner? Are my actions so bizarre and unexpected that it freaks out the server?
Also, why are they always asking me “How is everything?”. You might as well come up and ask “Does anything on your plate taste funny?” You should know what is coming out of your kitchen. I am tempted to reply, “Why do you ask? Is something wrong in the kitchen? Are other diners getting sick?” I have had a few bad meals in my time, but I just don’t return to a place. I am not a food critic. It is up to you as the proprietor to put forth your best effort. You will know soon enough if customers are returning or if changes need to be made.
The thing that grosses me out the most is any dishwashing issues. I know, everything has been put through a lot of heat and everything is safe, but it is still gross. I am not a big fan of the glass washing procedure used in bars. A lot of times they don’t even rinse off a lot of the disinfectant/detergent. Yuck. Bartenders hate the job as well. You would think someone would have come up with a good machine that would fit behind a bar and do a more thorough job with the glassware and free up the bartender for more important tasks like bringing me another drink. So why is bad dishwashing so prevalent?
The most important question I have, though, is who in the world still thinks “team service” is a good idea? Evidently some people, because I see it all the time. You know it the minute you walk in a place and you see all these waiters wandering around with plates asking “who does this belong to?” :rolleyes:
I’ll answer your most important one first. Team service is used because it is more efficient. If you had to wait for your personal server to always bring your food, then you’ll get it much later. The servers have more to do than just serve, they have “side work” (as it’s called at out place) to do. This can be refilling the salt and pepper, making sure there is warm bread and butter servings, rolling up silverware, etc… It might be annoying to have one person take your order, another bring the drinks, a third the app, maybe the original server for the main course, and another for dessert, but in the end, what’s the big deal? You get your food faster.
As for asking how things are, the servers often relay the information to us. It’s not that they expect anything to be bad, but they can’t tell if you like everything unless they ask. If you say “well, honestly, my steak is a bit overcooked,” then they might take notice. If several people say that over the course of a night, then the servers will let whoever is working grill know that he’s ODing the steaks.
We do the best we can with the dishwashing. Yes, sometimes a piece of food is left stuck on there, but the dishwasher (the person, that is,) can’t examine every dish that comes out because, as with most things, it comes down to not enough time. I can’t speak for the bar staff, but again, when they have several drinks to make, they can’t waste time making sure the glasses are squeaky clean. The sanitizing solution is pretty good about getting rid of the germs, and it’s not like a bit left on the glass will hurt you. We get state health inspectors and if we do things improperly, then they’ll tell us.
I can’t speak for the drink issues, though. I don’t know the system well enough to know when they put in the drink orders relative to when you order them, but it surprises me that it happens so often. In my experience, the servers are usually pretty good with remembering things (often, they will forget to write on the ticket any special requests for the food, but remember it in the head just fine.)
I’m a server and since bouv didn’t really answer this one, I will.
Basically, when you’re a server you have a lot of little things to remember. I generally wait on 5-6 tables at once, and each one wants this and that (“OK, table 10 needs a side of BBQ sauce, I need 3 waters 2 diet pepsis and an ice tea for table 8, #4 wants to complain because their food is too spicy” etc.) and if you ask me for something, but don’t want me to do it until 15 minutes later or so, by that time it’s very very easy to forget.
I will do my best to remember a request like that, but it’s really so much easier to just bring you the wine as soon as it comes up at the bar, and if you don’t want to drink it until you’re dinner comes, that’s absolutely fine. It’s not going to go bad.
Because that’s your chance to tell me not only if the food isn’t to your liking for some reason (or if there was a mistake on the order, which happens, and can be easily fixed, but you have to tell the server about it) but it’s also your chance to let the server know if you need anything. If I never checked on my tables, and they did need something from me, they would be rightfully pissed. So I try to be non-intrusive, especially with those who clearly have the “I really don’t want to talk to you” vibe, but I still have to check with tables periodically.
No… it’s just that you aren’t the only table they have, and you’re ordering something that the server needs to remember not when they type in everything else, but at some later, unspecified time, when they’ve already got another list of tasks queued up in their head. It’s easier if you just order the wine when you’re about half done with your appetizer, or about ten minutes after you order-- your server will put the order in right then, and the wine will be there when dinner arrives.
They are asking how YOU like the food. Not whether the food is servable in general. You can’t always look at something and know whether it’s hot or cold or has onions or mayonnaise when there wasn’t supposed to be. Your server is just trying to determine whether or not you are satisfied with your meal or if they need to take corrective measures, so in the future, take this question as “Is everything to your liking?”
Uh… just about every restaurant in the world. Again, you are not your server’s only table. They cannot stop what they are doing with another table because your food is ready. Can you imagine if you were in the middle of ordering and your server said “Hold that thought, gotta go run some food”? Or if they didn’t, and just went through a whole menu spiel with some table, answering all their questions and taking their orders in turn while your food sat around getting cold? That would be extremely inefficient and would inevitably lead to you and all that server’s other tables getting pissed off. Thus, servers who are not busy do the food-running for servers who are occupied. The most important thing is that you get what you ordered within a reasonable amount of time, not that they themselves bring it to you. Yes, it’s unprofessional to auction off food, and most restaurants use a seat-numbering system to avoid that, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. Trust me, you’d rather deal with that than cold food or constantly interrupted service.
Yeah, but that never happens. Team service=chinese fire drill, but without the accountability.
I guess you’re going to shitty places, cause it’s not like that where I work. Even when we are packed (every table full and have a 1 hour+ wait,) we can get the entree tickets out in fifteen minutes, usually (granted, that’s fifteen minutes from when they are put in, which is usually a little bit before you get your appetizer.) The servers aren’t running around to different tables asking if this is for you or the table next to you. In general, we try as best as possible to have the main server run the entrees, since she/he will know who it goes to, and the other runners only do the salads and apps.
But trust us, if it wasn’t done that way, it would take a lot longer to get your food, and it would have been sitting in the kitchen for several minutes getting cold before you finally got it.
I worked in foodservice that was a little lower in quality than a chain restaurant, but I did health and safety inspections for most of the foodservice locations on campus. (Campus food: either you wait in a line to order and get your food to go, or you wait in line to get food that’s made in front of you in a cafeteria.) A lot of the ones that were catering to a sit-down type of meal had dishwashing machines for everything but the prep tools. Generally, these would spray scalding hot water and detergent on the dishes, then rinse it with another round of hot water. (Sometimes sanitizer would be part of the rinse.) With the tools and prep surfaces of every foodservice location, they were to be washed, rinsed and then sanitized. (For prep surfaces, this generally means a good scrub down with foodservice grade sanitizer.)
As for why a lot of places aren’t cleaned with high pressure steam, it’s a matter of convenience and sometimes the higher-ups decide that, instead of investing in more expensive equipment, they’ll spend more money in the long run with cleaning detergents and sanitizing liquid concentrates. (This depends on people diluting the substances properly; I can guarantee you that, 90% of the time when it’s mixed wrong, it’s mixed way too strongly.) While I would prefer that work surfaces and such were cleaned with steam (I have chemical sensitivity), I realize that a lot of the people I worked with could not properly handle a high pressure steaming device without seriously burning themselves at least once. This is why there’s a lot of safety training, and why there should be more safety meetings, but a lot of corporations that make the decisions for individual restaurants in a chain don’t think this is going to be a good idea for their bottom line. Besides, a hospital clean kitchen is not easily maintained, and I don’t know too many restaurants that can keep their floors to that level of clean. (Grease is really tough to effectively dissolve off of industrial kitchen floors. Safety shoes are a must.)