I just remembered Sonic MWs their hot dogs.
Which really wouldn’t be so bad if all they microwaved was the frank. But no, these dumbasses microwave the bun, the frank, the chili, the cheese, all at once. Leaving you with a soggy mess.
Unthawed? 
But not all their meals. I once asked for a “philly cheesesteak”* with no mushrooms and was told no can do, the steak and mushrooms come pre-mixed.
*I think it was called that. I just call it a cheesesteak.
Everything I’ve ever gotten at IHOP has been prepared fresh, and every IHOP I’ve ever been to has had an open kitchen. From what I have seen (from the dining floor), they don’t even have a microwave, granted I have not gone back into the kitchen and poked around, so you never know.
I’ve never gotten good food at Sonic. :rolleyes:
My uncle is a long time cook, worked at Applebees and Sharis. He says that a lot of the foods, sauces, etc, come pre-prepared and are just simply reheated via microwave or stovetop. Very little of the stuff is prepared fresh on site from fresh herbs and spices, according to him. He actually laughs about it. He, perhaps not so jokingly, stated that the only thing he actually feels he “cooks” are the steaks because that requires a tiny bit of skill knowing how long to cook them for. Maybe the eggs too.
I was told the exact same thing at an Olive Garden in about 2002. I asked to have a pasta dish with no mushrooms. She said it was impossible, as the food was packaged and “that’s the way it comes.” The reason for this practice is that there is zero waste and no need to hire skilled cooks, or, in other words, it’s cheaper as long as your waitstaff don’t drive too many customers away with honesty.
Since Macaroni grill was across the street to serve my corporate-italian dining needs, and has an open kitchen that freely allows deletions and substitutions, I haven’t been back to the OG, ever since then.
I don’t think she provided you with a good explanation. Many of the sauces are prepared in advance, early the same morning before the restaurant opens to the public. They were not taken from packages – prep crews cooked pasta to slightly more underdone than al dente and then flash boiled pre-measured portions prior to service. They also prepared sauces, and pre-sliced/measured veggies and meats every morning. Everything was prepared and THEN measured and pre-portioned down to a science, so the kitchen crew could very quickly grab bags, toss them into boiling water/throw meats into skillets/slop it all together with sauce/dump on plate … out the door in 5 minutes. Again, to qualify my statement, this was more than 15 years ago. I just can’t see them changing a system that worked for them, and when I’m dragged to an OG now, the food tastes pretty much the same to me – unexciting with too much focus on garlic and not enough on truly fresh and flavorful (and more subtle) herbs.
I think it would have been more accurate for the waitress to tell you that some of the sauces already come with mushrooms in them. Or she could have told you that the chef takes an already prepared package of veggies with pre-measured veggies in it and dumps it into the sauce base just prior to serving to you, and the “chef” (cook) doesn’t want to fish the mushrooms out by hand. Either explanation would have been the truth and no less damaging to the restaurant’s reputation than what she did say.
I do remember that the big chocolate cake slices they served back them came in premade and frozen. It was a bitch to thaw and cut them. I am pretty sure that desserts were the only thing they ever brought in premade from elsewhere.
I’ve seen them empty microwaved plastic bags of cheddar broccoli soup into bowls at Red Robin, but I don’t care because everything there is delicious.
I once {shifts eyes around shiftily} worked with Sonic on a project.
They were convinced…CONVINCED that the people that ate on Sonic were more intelligent, creative, higher SES etc etc than their competitors. They wanted to use these advantages in certain ways and wanted my help on this. They were especially convinced their customers were much MUCH more artistic than the norm.
I was unable to find any evidence of this and I could tell it hurt my/my company’s standing with them. They never used me/my company again.
Seriously, those guys were deluded. Not as bad as Wendy’s but close.
Back in the day, when I worked at a Chili’s (1989), I was shocked and surprised to find that very little of the food was actually pre-prepared.
They got a vegetable shipment once a week, meat and bread every day, and a truck would show up periodically with the canned goods and other miscellaneous stuff (toothpicks, ketchup, etc…)
The cooks actually got there really early- like 6 am, and spent the next 5 hours doing prep-work. Stuff like pre-frying the french fries, frying up tortillas into chips, taco shells and taco salad shells, cutting up veggies and potatoes for salads and fries (they had those wall-mount choppers), and marinating/prepping meat for the grill or fryer.
Once a week on different days, they’d make the slow-cooked items for the week- they’d smoke ribs, make what seemed to be about 50 gallons of chili, etc…
Then, during the actual service time, they’d slap some pre-fried fries back in the fryer, crisp them up, and combine them with other prepped items to make the food.
The only things that was canned or prepared elsewhere that I can think of were some of the salad dressings and the salsa, and most of them weren’t wholly prepared elsewhere- just the seasonings generally.
For example, their salsa was a mix of about 60% fresh diced tomatoes plus about 40% of a “salsa concentrate” that had the spices and peppers, etc… They’d puree it all up in a big blender and store it for a few days.
I have worked in a bunch of chain restaurants in my hometown, so allow me to answer this question.
Denny’s: The cheese sauce that is served on the cheese fries is microwaved. The soups come condensed in plastic bags; usually we heated them up in pot of water, but when it was a busy night and we didn’t have much time, we microwaved them. Any sort of pasta was microwaved. Occasionally the mixed vegetables were microwaved, but only when it was extremely busy.
Ruby Tuesday’s: Pasta was microwaved. Shrimp was microwaved. Quiche was microwaved. Green beans were microwaved. All of these items were pre-cooked though by the prep cook.
Western Sizzlin: Didn’t even have a microwave.
Burger King: Veggie burgers were microwaved and sometimes we microwaved burgers that had been sitting out and were kind of cold.
Appleby’s: Pretty much the same as Ruby Tuesday’s.
So what do you all have against Chef Mike working at places like Olive Garden and Denny’s?
If I go to places like this and leave feeling reasonably sated and not get queasy later on, they did OK, and I don’t really care what tools they used in the kitchen.
I’ve never worked at IHOP, so can’t speak for them. But everywhere I have cooked breakfast, omelets were cooked in a pan, from scratch. They only went into the microwave to quickly melt the cheese after they were otherwise fully cooked in the pan. Sure, it’s possible to let the cheese melt while the omelet is in the pan, but then you get a scorched omelet because you have to leave it in the pan too long. So pan-cook the omelet until the eggs are cooked through, add the cheese filling, fold the omelet onto a plate, add cheese to the top, and nuke it for 30 seconds.
I wasn’t going to mention this, as fast food isn’t part of the OP’s topic, but others have mentioned Burger King and Sonic, so I’ll go ahead. Everything at McDonald’s is microwaved as part of the cooking process. They just don’t call it a microwave. I can’t remember the term they use–something like prep station or something?
What I mean was when one is ordered, we take it out of the freezer, not the refridgerator, and microwave it.
Yes, but that is “thawed”; unthawed would be placing it in the freezer.
But as it’s being removed from the freezer, it’s still frozen. I think that’s how Yog meant the word — “not yet thawed”. In other words, cooking it directly from the freezer (this is how frozen french fries are cooked - dump them frozen straight into the hot oil) as opposed to pre-thawing the item before cooking (which is what you usually do with meat).
But yeah, one of my fellow cooks drives me nuts when she tells me to “unthaw” something. But then, half the time she uses the wrong names for things when she asks me to hand her something. Like, “Hand me a strainer”, when she means “colander”. A “strainer” is a similar, but different piece of equipment that we also have in the kitchen.
Well, I hate to beat this nitpick to death, but what Yog said was:
Clearly he meant, “We don’t keep patties of them out thawed so that people ordering them can get a freshly heated one.”
It’s not the first time I’ve encountered the erroneous “unthawed.” I mean really, the word should be “frozen.”
There is an enormous section of the food industry that makes and sells what are effectively frozen, pre-made entrée quality restaurant dinners for chain and some non-chain restaurants. It’s a multi-billion dollar business. They typically require a bit more prep than heat and eat, but are quality and portion controlled and vastly simpler to prepare than meals from scratch.
These are not like the grocery store frozen food aisle meals. If prepared properly you would be hard pressed in some cases to tell the difference between scratch cooking and these meals. The main issue is that experienced cooks are not required to put these together so cheaper labor can be hired. It’s higher quality modular food.
Obviously this is not true “fine dining”, but it’s a huge chunk of what you are getting in many (but not all) chain and some non-chain mid-tier restaurants.