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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Special Order
What are going to do tonight, Ricochetti?
Same thing we do every night, ChefSly, go to a restaurant and order something not on the menu.
Well, if you’re going to do that, let me share with you some of my years of experience in restaurants.
In a restaurant kitchen, there is a great deal of prep work that is done throughout the day in order to have a successful lunch or dinner. Vegetables are chopped, shrimp is cleaned and portioned, pastas are cooked and portioned, along with a myriad of other tasks. That work is done to accomplish three major things. First is to create a reasonable service time, the second is to ensure the consistency of the final product, and the third is to use the space that is available most efficiently as possible. This also relates to cooking skill and movement.
To create a reasonable service time, some things have to be cooked ahead. As an example, most soups could not be made in the time between ordering and service. Roast meats are also on the list of items that take too long to cook. Pastas are on the edge — some restaurants cook to order, some don’t. Bottom line, if something would take more than 15 minutes to cook, it has to be precooked to some extent. The common exception is well done steak. “I need this 20 ounce bone-in rib-eye well done on the fly please” gets a laugh.
This also applies to components of dishes as well. The four cheese sauce for our Mac and Cheese, the topping for the Oyster Rockefeller, and the corn salsa for the Shrimp Kisses all are done ahead of time. If the dish is something like that, we likely can’t make changes to order. We might be able to leave a prepped component out of a dish, but I don’t have time to make a batch of mashed potatoes without dairy.
Ensuring a consistent product does two things: the guest gets the same meal every time, and the restaurant knows how much money it’s spending per dish. With regard to special orders, I may not have the separate ingredients on the line. For example, our fried calamari has vegetables fried with it: artichokes, banana peppers, jalapenos, and carrot slices. When I get an order for calamari without jalapenos, I have to dig in the bag of veggies and pull them out before I can make them, and I have to cook that one order separately.
Which leads us to efficiency. When I’m on the line during a rush, I need to have everything prepped and portioned and ready to go. As it gets busier, every second on the line matters. This is especially true for the fry station, where the difference between perfect and burnt is a couple seconds. Instead of cooking the food in the order that the tickets are printed, I’ll collect like tickets and cook those items together. In the best of cases, I’ll end up in the zone, where I’m not really thinking about what I’m doing; I’m just cooking. Leaving the line for any reason and working to understand the ticket kick me out of the zone. I have to leave the line to replenish the station as I run out of ingredients, since I don’t have the space on the line to hold everything that’s required during the rush.
I also have to leave the line for allergies. An allergy requires clean tools: cutting board, knife, spatula, etc. It also requires fresh ingredients to avoid cross contamination. It could also require fresh oil in the fryer (which is unlikely). This takes time to assemble, which lengthens service time, for you and for the rest of the orders. If you only don’t want an ingredient in the dish, just ask us. There’s no reason to call it an allergy.
So what’s the takeaway? Think about your allergy before you decide on a restaurant. Please read the menu, and if the menu isn’t clear, ask the server. They should be trained to know the menu, as well as what is possible to sub out or omit. If you’re generally pleasant, when the server goes to ask the chef about a special request, that pleasantness will translate through the chef to the cooks. A special order will likely cause your food to take longer to come out, and so be understanding with your server. Also realize that during the lunch or dinner rush, it’s possible that the delay will cost your server another table. We want to provide great service and food, and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Published in Humor
That probably explains the breakfast I ordered this morning. I ordered what was on the menu, but it was almost as if it wasn’t.
I’ll just say that if I couldn’t eat dairy for whatever reason, I wouldn’t order mashed potatoes.
For both of my daughters’ weddings, the restaurants wanted to know about any allergies a couple of days before the reception. It was really interesting. And then they took the guest list with their allergy notes and put some cute little tags on the drinking glasses for the serious allergies such as shellfish.
The timing is so difficult. I admire the chefs very much. And it is a huge responsibility. Miss something important like an allergy and someone could get sick or even die.
I never have gotten the hang of making everything come out at the same time.
Thanks, @mramy.
Of course, this assumes that the waitstaff really speaks English and that those devising the menu also write English well. I was at a Mexican restaurant Thursday night and the dish listed the ingredients of the dish, including that it came with onions, tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro. It did not say these things were mixed together. It did not call this pico de gallo. I asked the waitress if I could get the dish without cilantro, thinking based on the wording of the menu, that it was sprinkled on top, as they do in some restaurants.
(This brings up a separate issue. Why would a restaurant be so generous with an ingredient that has a chemical in it that a large percentage of people can taste and despise? And what’s wrong with all you mutants who can’t taste that horrid chemical?)
The waitress said it was no problem to leave out the cilantro. I was surprised when my dish came and I saw no onions, peppers, or tomatoes, and there was rice included. The rice was not on the menu. While I do not like the taste of cilantro (detergent in my food), I am allergic to rice. I would not have gotten a dish with rice. Luckily, the rice was in a separate bowl. When I looked at the dish funny, she said, “We gave the rice in place of the pico de gallo.” I didn’t complain. I just moved the rice out of the way and ate what little there was of my meal.
If she had said, “The cilantro is integrated into pico de gallo,” I would have said, “Fine, don’t worry about it.” If she had said I wouldn’t get the onions and tomatoes either, again I would have put up with picking out the cilantro. But she said it was no problem. I would call that a problem and explain what else was being sacrificed. So, I had a meal of beans, meat, and corn tortillas. If she had said how the leaving off cilantro would be done, I would have ordered something else or put up with the cilantro.
Helpful, ChefSly…Thanks! I have to say that having my sandwich, salad or entree cut/chopped a bit in the kitchen (when I’ve requested the assist) adds to my pleasure in dining a lot. It really helps…I make sure my tip reflects my appreciation, too. :-)
I have never been a chef, but I have always wished this was posted on the wall of every restaurant.
The wait staff couldn’t care less why you don’t want onions or cheese or lettuce or red pepper or anything. They don’t care! So just say, “No onions on that.” They’ll mark it (hopefully) and you won’t get it. Don’t be a liar and say, “I can’t have onions because I’m allergic.” It’s possible two of the three things you ordered had onions in the mix, and you really just didn’t want raw onions in your salad. So stop. I hate raw onions too, and I just say, “no onions on that.” The end.
I’m not talking about people who have actual allergies, of course.
Most of the wait staff are usually ignorant about some things. Asked a waitress who brought me packets of margarine if they had “real” butter, and she insisted that was butter. I had to explain to her that butter comes out of a cow, margarine is made from various types of oils and chemicals. When I ask what type of oil does the cook use, they don’t know and will ask the cook. Almost invariably they come back with “it’s a vegetable oil.” Then I have to send them back to find out which vegetable, being that soy is a vegetable. As soon as I find out they cook with soy, I just order a house salad, with no croutons, no cheese, and no dressing.
As a server, I noticed an inverse relationship between the difficulty of the order and the size of my tip. The customers that ordered something that was actually on the menu, needed help at reasonable intervals, and didn’t seem to want the restaurant transform itself into some weird fantasy tended to tip quite well.
However, those who wanted me to specially make a new salad dressing just for them, needed something retrieved literally every time I checked on them, and didn’t know or care that anybody else in the restaurant might ever need my help tended to tip the smallest amount conceivable, if anything at all.
In short, if I had four tables and spent 75% of my time on just one of those tables, the table I worked hardest for would be the one that I might actually lose money on (I had to tip out the bartender for a percentage of liquor sales regardless of what I was tipped).
You learn a ton about people in such jobs, and some are downright wonderful. Others, not so much.
I forgot to mention this. Tip well.
Aw geez, I hope you didn’t just get the Anti-Tip people stirred up. With luck, they’re already in bed. Shhhhh….
Yeah, you’d like having me at one of your tables. Literally, the only penalty you can occur is if my glass is empty for a length of time, and that almost never happens to me, because I drink iced tea, and never alcohol. I always tip 20% – minimum.
The chef then grabs a head of lettuce, jams it into a bowl, punches it a couple times, and hands it to the waiter.
Thanks ChefSly. I really enjoy these sort of posts when some writes about their job and/or about a topic they know a lot about.
Sometimes I wonder if the proliferation of “diet restrictions” is caused by or just a more noticeable symptom of the huge increase in Americans “eating out”. I would guess 20 or 30 years ago the average American “ate out” less than a couple times a month, now it maybe approaching a couple times a week and for some people once a day.
They don’t have to do that, I’m not sensitive to veggies. I love the Pizza Hut’s salad bar and the personal pan veggie pizza. They only use Mozzarella cheese (non fermented cheese) and have olive oil and vinegar for the salad. No soy in the pizza crust.
What is going on with the Pizza Hut? They seem to have almost no customers lately.
I don’t know. I moved away, and now the closest one is where I used to live… which is probably a good thing. It was less than a mile – walking distance – from my apartment. Now it’s 25 miles from my home.
The one near my apartment was always busy, so maybe it’s regional slowdowns.
Might be but it’s summer! Anyway, it seems to be so slow I’ve started leaving about 25-30% tips.
My percentage varies wildly depending on even amounts. For example, if the bill $3.95, I’ll leave $5. But of it’s $4.05, I’m likely to leave $6.
Kay! I’m curious about this. I wonder if soy is different than peanut. My severely peanut allergic daughter can eat things that are prepared in peanut oil. Her doctor told us that the way peanut oil is refined for commercial sale takes ALL of the protein out and protein is the agent the immune system reacts to in an allergy. He did caution that peanut oils that are from unknown sources might be made by less rigorous processes but things like potato chips in peanut oil should be ok. And they have been. She gets an immediate welt if she touches peanut, but nothing if she eats a chip. Does soybean oil contain soy protein?
So it’s been a long while since you’ve eaten out, right?
I know he ate out for lunch on Friday, and the bill came closer to $20 each.
I was looking for numbers percentage wise. Or for a beer. Just trying to make the point.
That’s a decent example. The actual bill was more like $15 each, and we each pulled out a $20 bill. But rather than go 20% and ask for 6 singles back so we can split them, the tip ends up more like a third, and she kept it.
Thanks, @mramy, for this interesting behind-the-scenes look at food preparation. While I have a general awareness that chefs are at work long before the restaurant opens getting things ready, when I go out to dine, I don’t tend to think of all the work that goes on to make sure everything comes together correctly and in a timely fashion. I also try not to be a difficult diner: no onions or blue cheese in the salad and keep my beverage filled and I’m a happy diner – and if I forget to ask about the onions or blue cheese, no biggie because I can always push them to the side. [And unless the service is terrible (and sometimes even if it is), I try to leave 20%.]
When I want something not on the menu, I prefer family-run Thai or Chinese takeout with it cooked in a wok right in front of me. There’s a lot of ahead-of-time preparation especially of veggies, but I can mix up the veggies how I want and mix with either tofu or shrimp. Extra onions and garlic. No bean sprouts. Make it hot. And Thai soups are made from scratch. Ah, coconut milk. I do tip 20% at the takeout. And I go back to the same places.
Now I’m hungry.
Me, too, and I already ate lunch. Maybe a little chocolate…
There’s never a bad time for chocolate.
(Except for those who either don’t like chocolate, or have some sort of sensitivity to it, in which case “Come over here and sit by me!”)
You’ll be kind enough to eat their share?
You poor soul, I know this is genetically determined and can’t be changed. I love cilantro, I can’t help but pity you.
I think a shrinking portion of Americans have any idea of what it takes to prepare an elaborate meal from scratch and serve the courses at the appropriate time. The most elaborate homecooked meal most Americans enjoy is probably Thanksgiving, but if my family Thanksgiving is typical then you’ve got a crack team of grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and the only male relative who learned how to cook (yours truly) working the event. Plus, many of those dishes can be prepared the day before (pies, mashed potatoes, etc.). There are just fewer and fewer people who have an appreciation for the immense amount of time, skill, coordination, and occasionally luck required to serve an elaborate meal cooked from scratch.
I lived briefly at a graduate student coop when I moved out to Berkeley, and managed to snag one of the head cook workshifts (cooking? How fun, I can do that!). I had to plan and prepare meals for sixty graduate students with the help of a few assistant cooks who often could not be trusted with anything sharper than a butter knife. One of my housemates was a gluten intolerant, vegan, devout Hindu—no onions, garlic, eggs, dairy, meat, or wheat. On several occasions I had to prepare separate pizzas, for example, built on a crust of sliced roasted potatoes instead of my famous sourdough crust. Luckily the housemates were more than gracious and thanked us profusely before digging in—the kitchen of course was open to them, and they had but to stroll through it on the way to the back yard to appreciate the whirlwind of activity.