Maybe this belongs in IMHO, feel free to move it.
I pondered this the other day as I stood waiting for my food at Taco Bell. Why do so many fast food restaurants have the view of their kitchen in plain view? I do not want to see the dirty floor with old french fries laying around or even watch food being prepared. I don’t want to know what goes on back there.
It optimizes communication between the person taking your order and the people making it.
A decent place will not have a dirty floor and it is nice to see the prep area is clean.
Also I am moving this to In My Humble Opinion from Factual Questions
ETA: A note, many places have the prep area and maybe grills and fryers in view but still have a back kitchen out of view. At Wendy’s in the 80s the Chili stove, potato oven, chicken breading station and the sinks were all out of view. I know most McDonalds have a lot of the kitchen out of the view.
Also, you’re standing in line waiting for your order, not sitting down (semi-)comfortably. Being able to see the progress of your order probably keeps most people calmer, since they know why any delay might happen.
It promotes the idea that everything is above board and no shenanigans are happening back in the kitchen.
I absolutely prefer to see the kitchen my food is being prepared in. Not just how clean the floors and counters are and if food is being stored safely, but whether employees are wearing hairnets and gloves, and indeed if they are working in conditions that endure their own safety.
FYI, Pizza Hut just announced a new prototype restaurant in Plano Texas with an open kitchen. They’re modeling it after fast food restaurants. (And when I grew up, Pizza Hut mostly or entirely were sit-down restaurants.)
So no Chef’s table for the OP at the local Michelin Star restaurant?
No, I absolutely do want to see if the kitchen area is filthy, because then I will know not to eat there.
The layout at Chipotle allows customers to see the food being cooked and even watch the full preparation as you move down the line selecting ingredients. Several years ago a person who used a wheelchair sued the company because the counter was too high for him to see the whole operation. He argued that the Chipotle experience included that view. He won, as I recall, although I haven’t seen any differences in their counter height.
Many full service restaurants use an open kitchen layout and even put it in their advertising. The Brown Derby near me has the flame pit behind glass right next to the hostess station. You can see the chef choking on savory smoke all you want .
I can think of a few longstanding (40+ years) pizza places that featured windowed pizza prep counters where other parts of the kitchen were out of view. They went to some trouble to set up that way.
The oyster roasting guy had his own firey smokey workstation grill at Felix’s in NOLA.
Did “if you have time to lean, you have time to clean” originate in a fast food kitchen?
We ate a ton of oysters one day in NOLA, watching the shuckers at work. There was one guy who was just incredible. He’d been there twenty some years. We repeatedly tipped him for the show he provided.
There was also one guy who was cringeworthy. Turns out it was his third day. I kept whispering to my gf, “bet he quits shucking before we quit eating”.
I may be spewing urban legend, but I’ve read White Castle was somewhat of a pioneer in the “let’s make make sure the customer knows this a hygienic place” philosophy.
I cannot find anything to quote specifically about the visible to the customer kitchen thing. But the glossy white enamel and stainless steel decor were specifically meant to instill the cleanliness of the place.
Something to do with “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair still being in peoples minds at the time of their founding.
For whatever reason, this reminded me of a friend’s kid who is employed in “ghost kitchens.” Until then, I had not realized that the fast food you ordered for delivery might be prepared at a completely different premises.
Yes; in some places a fast food chain might only exist in ghost kitchen form. Or might operate out of another restaurant’s kitchen.
Steak n Shake was founded in 1934. According to my father who was a teenager at the time, ordering a hamburger in a diner was just asking for trouble. To demonstrate the cleanliness of his stores the founder of Steak n Shake brought the kitchen out front and made the restaurant decor black and white, which would make it harder to hide dirt and grease. He also came up with the motto “In sight it must be right.”
White Castle did approximately the same thing with its decor (but without the motto) when it was founded in 1921, which may be where Steak n Shake got the idea. Krystal, the southern knock off of White Castle, definitely took the idea for its restaurants.
And Ray Kroc came up with the snappy “QSCV” (Quality Service Cleanliness and Value) for McDonalds, so it obviously took a long time and a lot of different efforts to convince hamburger lovers that their food was actually safe to eat.
I found this McDonalds commercial from 1975. It’s clear they were STILL reassuring customers they were clean.
He also wheeled carts of the steaks that were going to be ground up around the dining area so you could see they were really steaks.
It’s so they don’t spit in your food if you’re a cop. Here is a documentary segment on this issue: