Ten Years of Culinary Excellence
Ten Years of Culinary Excellence
A guest tells your server, "I can't have gluten." Another says, "I'm allergic to peanuts." A third says, "Dairy doesn't agree with me." All three sound like the same kind of request — avoid an…
A cook checks a batch of chicken thighs with the kitchen's bimetallic thermometer. 165°F. Safe. Onto the plate they go. What nobody mentions is that the same thermometer got knocked off the prep table that…
You’re about to spend the next several weeks learning hundreds of rules: temperatures, timings, storage orders, cleaning sequences. Before any of that, you probably have a question you WANT answered but are afraid to ask:…
A piece of broken glass in a salad, sanitizer sprayed near uncovered food, and norovirus carried into the kitchen by a sick employee are three very different problems. But all three are contamination hazards. ServSafe…
The soup was made at 8:30 that morning. By 11, it's in the soup well on the line, hot and ready for lunch. Then service starts. Nobody's really watching the soup anymore. It's hot. It's…
The truck backs up to the door at the worst possible time. It’s the middle of a lunch rush, you’re two prep cooks short, and the driver needs a signature now. Everyone in the kitchen…
The strawberries arrived frozen. The cases were intact. They came from an approved supplier, passed receiving, and went into storage. Three days later, the vendor contacts you. Those strawberries have been recalled. Nothing was necessarily…
Prep is where cooks get themselves into trouble because almost everything you're doing feels normal. Boring, even. You're just getting ready for service. Chopping onions. Setting chicken on the worktable while you trim it. Giving…
If you've never worked in a restaurant kitchen, one of the things that might surprise you is how much food gets cooked ahead of time. It's a lot. New cooks are frequently shocked to discover…
75 Pounds of Scrambled Eggs I walked into my first large-scale breakfast service at 4 a.m. The kitchen was quiet — just one other cook and the a.m. sous going over the prep sheets for…