How many of you at some point in your catering careers have changed the oil in a fryer, spent a good amount of time cleaning it only to refill it and leave the valve open, thus ruining your entire morning/night for a couple hours? I've done it once, and the trauma has saved me from ever doing again ( Im almost obsessive compulsive by now) and I've yet to meet someone who hasn't done it. What are some of your most fucked up oil situations. I've got a fetish for hearing them.

Being a glutton for punishment, I took a job at a restaurant recently purchased by owner’s who are new to the industry. They caught it just in time because the previous owner had about ran it into the ground.

I’m being paid well but keep having differences of opinion in matters and it’s awkward trying to communicate industry best practices. I felt in the beginning no chef in their right mind would do this.

Anyone else have similar experiences? Were you able to ride it out ? What helped?

I wanna hear your pet peeves as a grill cook

Mine is the staring. 👁👁

Just creepy and annoying. I promise you won't starve to death.

They will loudly place their plates on table for me to hear when my back is turned dumping fries or cleaning off my grill for a second >_>

Edit : any one in kitchen can list pet peeves

I’ve been working at this deli (fast casual restaurant) for about a year now. It’s mostly just making sandwiches, though i learned all of the stations. Needless to say I’m getting bored, I’ve learned everything that I can here. It’s also worth mentioning that the location isn’t that busy so hours keep getting cut. I want to go somewhere where I can learn more and get more experience.

I know I won’t be able to get a real nice position considering I only have a year of experience just was hoping to get some advice kinda stuck right now.

Hey guys, a friend of mine is doing a breakfast that requires 60 eggs benedict, and a handful (maybe 5) of vegan creme brulee.

Their plan is to arrive at their home early in the AM with the equipment and as much prep as possible. There will be another caterer there at the same time (unaffiliated) doing other breakfast stuff.

All the cooking will be done in their (client's) kitchen.

I've been asking them what they plan to charge and my friend decided on $850 for everything, the client feels like this is too expensive but it equates to $14.16 a plate, not even including the vegan op.

So my question for you guys is what would you consider a fair price for a smaller scale catering team (2-3 people) to make 60 eggs benny, 5 vegan creme brulees, bring all their own equipment to someone's condo kitchen, while another team will also be there working on breakfast?

So I work Sautee, and my job requires me to baste proteins in a pan a lot, like lamb, fish, and scallops. I'm provided with normal silverware sharing spoons that do the job fine but I think I'm wanting some asorted colored spoons to aid in cross contamination that also have decently long handles cause hot oil and butter go brr.

I'm mainly curious of how other basting cooks prefer their setup for service and if theres a unique find to itch what I have been searching for. My fellow Sautees help me!

Closed day at work, doing some paperwork and maintenance and I look out the side door of my restaurant and notice water pouring across the parking lot. I go out to investigate and someone from another office in the building is using my hose to wash their car.
I go out and tell her that’s my water. She immediately cops an attitude and says, “It belongs to the whole building and even if it doesn’t, I’m not using enough to even matter so you can’t stop me.”
Lady please, you came on to my property to grab my hose and turn on my water, you’re going to stop now or I get the police involved. If she’d bothered to ask I might have said yes in exchange for something but she didn’t have the common courtesy to do that. And I wouldn’t have threatened to get the law involved if she hadn’t copped an attitude with me. Fucking people.

Cockroachs have become a little bit of a problem recently. We spray them we get a few that get away and come out sitting biz hours. Thing is though I feel like maybe ecolabs just sucks and we should change companies here in California anyone else feel that way?

When the weather gets hot I wear a bandana to keep the sweat out of my face. Within seconds of putting the thing on the karate kid jokes start. Come up with something new so I get a laugh instead of being called Mr. Miyagi again.

I'm seriously considering making a career change after being in restaurant kitchens and the food service industry my entire career. I am 28, and only have a culinary arts diploma, no other post secondary. For those that pivoted what direction did you decide to go, and how did you make that choice? I'm struggling on figuring out what I'd like to do. Obviously I'd like a better work life balance, and to make more money, but other than that I'm unsure as this is the only thing I've ever done

So like most chefs, ive got too much stuff. Ive added and removed things from my knife roll as time goes on but im now at a point where i need more of my things than usual, any recommendations for a bag/carry case/ roll etc. that can fit at least 5 knives, my spatulas, whisks, brushes, tweezers, tongs and whatever else? thought this might be a good place to ask.

Hi! if this isn’t right for this sub I understand. I’m a long time lurker and thought who better to ask then a bunch of industry professionals. 🙂 I’m having a wedding reception party and we are doing our own food. We will rent chaffing dishes for hot food but I am a little stuck on the cold sides (coleslaw, potato salad, pasta salad) We have a fridge nearby our line so planning to have half pan / bowl size and refill. MIL wanted to put glass bowls on ice. I saw a video where someone filled a disposable aluminum half pan with ice and put the other half pan on top, but then the issue is I don’t have a lid. My husband said we could just rent more chaffing dishes and put ice in the bottom, but when I ran this by the rental guy he said he wasn’t sure that would work. Any advice?

I have a co worker who has recently started doing shifts in the BOH on line as well as serving on other days. She always has fake nails on and never wears gloves when handling the food. I’m wondering what the nicest way to bring this up is. She is quite a bit older than me and has owned her own restaurant before so I feel a bit out of line when telling her about this but I feel lots necessary.

Or am I tripping? Off and on line rat here who used to be "passionate" until I learned I don't have the mental stamina, drive, or talent to do this for the rest of my life.

One thing I observed in my ~15 years of indentured servitude is that peers and superiors alike had a tendency to bogard things they knew. Not just for proprietary reasons, but almost as a way to keep you where your at, or even because passing this knowledge on would make them less valuable.

I guess I can't really cite any specific examples, but it's definitely a vibe I felt many times over the years. I've always tried to be transparent about my knowledge and experience, and never claimed to be more than I was during the hiring process.

I’ve never worked at an applebees or one of these places that microwaves food. I’m curious. What are we doing here?

Are proteins microwaved such as fish or meat? or is it cooked on site? How are the products delivered? When I worked at friendlys remember the mash potatoes coming in bagged then the grill cook would just heat on stove top, is that the same or…?

I prefer input on current day practices, within the last few years. Is everything sou vide and warmed up? whats the procedure of cooking a steak entree. Thanks in advanced

My husband and I operate a small family business together, with two employees and 24 seats. We are located in the city center in our city, which makes our location great. We are able to meet our financial obligations such as rent, bills, suppliers, loans, and paying our employees on time. However our success seems to be limited on paper. We live in a small city that has few tourists, after paying everything we struggle to turn a profit outside of the holiday season. I know this is expected in the first year of restaurant business but I feel like we are missing something somewhere. I think that our main challenge lies in our limited seating capacity which leads us to regularly decline reservations due to being fully booked on weekends and constantly selling out. This is always not the best thing because people start giving up on coming. We do take aways which is great when there is no seating available.

To address this issue, we created reservation windows and limited dining time to 1.5 hours for 2-4 people, allowing us to accommodate more guests. However, this has resulted in guests eating or drinking less, impacting our overall revenue. I have considered hiring a General Manager to alleviate some of my workload and provide me with more time to spend with my kid. Unfortunately, I can't afford taking this step yet, leaving me feeling overwhelmed and stuck in a difficult situation. Not to mention I cook everything and work in the front during the service as well.

I'm thinking of seeking an angel investor to expand to a larger location and hire more staff, but I'm scared about taking on more than we can handle and having to be responsible of someone else's money. With the current lack of profitability and the demanding nature of our work, I am uncertain about the future of our business. I love my little restaurant, I love making people happy with my food but I'm not sure if this is worth it anymore.. I'm open to any suggestions and help!

Mid 2021 I quit my soul crushing gas station job and applied to be a barista at a local hotel restaurant that was "under new management"(some sort of rent to own thing I think). The new owner was a guy from the vacation rental company the next county over, and his medical lab assistant daughter.

Neither one of them had any prior experience in food service, and he was very technologically illiterate. He often needed her to go with her to meetings so she could translate the tech speak for him. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

I was originally hired to be a full time barista. The "coffee shop" was supposed to be a place where people staying at the hotel could buy breakfast, but they also didn't do enough business in the morning to hire a proper cook. So what did I do? I made canned biscuits, heated up premade sausage gravy, and made breakfast burritos from grocery store skillet mixes. And left them in a three compartment crock pot set to "keep warm".

The only regulars we had were a few teachers who stopped in on their way to school for coffee. The owners called it a coffee shop, but it was really a little gift shop with a coffee bar and access to an extra room full of restaurant tables. It had zero coffee shop energy.

Eventually my hours got cut, and then I was offered the opportunity to learn the other side of the restaurant, either as a server or as a bartender. Well, the bar manager quit to go back to school and no replacement was ever hired, so the bartender(who I nicknamed Boston Big Shot because he kept talking about the bar he worked at in Boston) started acting like he was in charge. He never taught me a damn thing, and when a new(male) server was hired, that guy shouldered his way behind the bar and forced me out. There were rumors that this bartender was also ordering alcohol on company dime that weren't used, just so he could set up a bar of his own from his hotel room(owner owned the Econolodge at the other end of town so Bartender got a discount on the long term rental).

I eventually just became the one who did all the odd jobs, like rolling silverware and making more tea.

Eventually, when the owner realized that we were getting no business for breakfast anymore(partially due to change of season, partially because they never could get any of the stuff only I used back in), I was laid off without warning. Filed for unemployment and won. A week later they had a new job up looking for someone who could be a barista and a server.

Less than three months later, there was a post on the local Facebook page about the people who owned the land taking the whole thing back. It was awesome. The original owners specified that it would take a few weeks to restock because a lot of stuff that was supposed to still be there was not, and the old man's daughter responded in a horribly nasty way. That fight was so much fun to watch before the page moderators took it down lol. The current owners have been running it since and are doing great, I have no idea what happened to the people I worked for.

And they've been with us over a year. We do catering multiple times a month.

For years I've had a goal of getting to work in fine dining, and I finally achieved that goal. Before I left the previous job the kitchen manager told me I'm going to hate it and will be horrible at it. I told him I don't care, if I fail I fail but I can say I did it. Well, it was the worst year I've ever had. I dreaded going in every day and having 200+ tickets to work on by myself. I had servers come behind my station just to yell at me, manager loved to call me out in front of everyone, chef gave me a ton of extra work to do after service resulting in me staying an extra few hours after my station was cleaned and side work done. I saw a dishwasher OD from coke, and a cook died in the prep area from an overdose of fentanyl laced cocaine. I became incredibly depressed and angry and engaged in self-destructive behaviors like random sex, cigarettes, tons of weed and drinking alcohol like water. I was even tempted to try cocaine but backed out last minute, which was a good decision because that was the batch that killed the cook. The final straw was when management made someone with covid come in, they just gave them a mask and a shot of tequila and said get to work. One by one people got sick, including me, but were still told to come in or they would be fired. After that I was done and put in my 2 weeks. I took a couple months off to heal from the extreme burnout and got another cook job at a small bar and tapas place. I went in ready for another hard, tedious job with angry people and tons of yelling, but instead was met with genuine positivity, familiarity and an overall casual vibe. Don''t have to wear the chef coat and pants I've become accustomed to, just a T-shirt with the company logo and whatever pants I want. There's no "yes chef", just "heard". Nobody yelling in my face to go faster or how bad I am, just surprise how fast I learn and my attention to the smallest details. There I'm treated like a human being and not a disposable piece of garbage, and it's a huge change that I love. And for more money, too. Yes I couldn't make it in fine dining, but I can say I did it before I turned 30.

In the restaurant I work at i'm responsible for the haccp. There is the pizza oven, next to it the marble for rolling the dough and above that there is a cooler (not sure what you call it in english, but we call it "saladière"), where the ingredients are kept. The problem is that because of the pizza oven the temperature rises to about 10 degrees celcius on average, which is way over the 7 degrees limit.

How do other kitchens deal with this? Any other pizza place i've seen the ingredients are next to or opposite the oven, so how does everyone keep their temp below the limit?

Okay I get that they get busier than we do in the kitchen at times, especially when it’s tables that stay for hours and keep getting drinks. But holy shit.

I’m used to finding silverware in the garbage that uneaten food gets tossed to, it happens sometimes. You’re busy, not looking in the bin after you toss shit. I’ve worked FOH before. But this week? THREE DAYS IN A ROW. Stabbed by forks that pierced the garbage bag. Said something the second day, because once? Understandable. Twice? Maybe double check (I also pulled an ENTIRE DINING ROOM PLATE out of the trash that night, just happened to catch it). Three days in a row, though?

This time it actually cut into me and drew blood. I might wash the dishes (in addition to running the kitchen when I work with This Certain Guy I work with four days a week), but that doesn’t mean I want some stranger’s nasty used fork cutting into my ankle.

Just needed to rant. No one seems apologetic at all, might ask them take my trash out a few times this week, because “my ankle just hurts so bad…”

I’ve served Ludacris, Anthony Bourdain, the mavs, the stars, Chanels whole corporate team and ceo, and dr Phil😂 there’s probably a few I can’t recall/ didn’t know about but that’s all I got I was too busy to go see them but heard from the foh lol. Curious to hear y’all’s answers

Went on lunch and my sous chef did this to my drink. It’s cool, I poured a half cup of salt in his water the other day lol