Insider Secrets: What Restaurant And Bar Workers Won’t Tell You About How They Cut Costs Behind The Scenes
He couldn’t afford cleaners so he expected his servers to come in an hour before their shifts, clean the bathrooms and then PREP THE FOOD. Sometimes he would even make me clean the front porches by hand with a wash cloth and bleach (it was an Inn/Restaurant) prior to opening.
He even kept his compost in the walk in fridge, which in hindsight is the weirdest thing he did, who does that???
I won’t say where the place is though, he had to close and the place was bought by a new owner who has done an absolutely wonderful job!!!
UPDATE: Yesterday I drove by this place on my way to my parents and it is absolutely amazing there now, so clean they even gave me a tour of the facilities (including the kitchen!). It’s a far cry from what it once was and I cannot believe how awesome it looks now! The new owners really deserve a hand for how they turned it around!
Back in the late 70’s I had a close friend who worked at a swanky restaurant in Calabasas, CA. One of the jobs she had was to remove the unused “garnish” from plates returning to the kitchen, to be used on new plates going out to customers. I was incredulous and had to see for myself, so I stopped by one night. Sure enough, she was the first person in “scrape” (kitchen slang for the area where used plates were brought to be scraped of major food debris before loading into the dishwasher), and would take parsley off and put it in a pile to the side, then scrape off the little pile of peas and carrots into a bin. Eventually, someone would come by and grab the parsley, peas & carrots, and take them to where new dishes were being assembled and the garnish would be used again. Gross!!! Who know what happens to that food while it’s out there, or how many times it was re-used? Now, when I eat at a restaurant that has garnish on the plate, I carefully shove it to the side so it won’t touch the rest of my food.
Besides watering down booze or lying about premium labels, I think the worst atrocity is claiming local,organic, farm to table yada yada & getting all your products off a Syso truck.
I have never worked in a restaurant but I cook a lot and find it interesting to take a scientific approach to cooking. I therefore know that one common method of tenderizing sliced meat is to add baking soda. The baking soda breaks down protein and leaves the meat very tender, with a slightly spongy texture. It only works on the muscle tissue however, and still leaves any stringy connective tissue just as tough and stringy as before. It also adds a slight alkaline flavor, which can usually be covered up with a marinade or seasoning. Having figured this out, I can instantly spot when restaurants use this trick. The biggest giveaway is the presence of tough connective tissue within otherwise very tender meat. And it bothers me quite a bit when an establishment advertises a dish to contain “flank steak” or “rib eye” when it’s just a cheap cut tenderized with baking soda. There’s nothing wrong with using baking soda for this purpose (actually aids digestion), but I still like truth in advertising! This trick is used mainly in Chinese stir-fry, and is quite prevalent, from what I’ve experienced.
I went with friends to a local chain Mexican restaurant in Northern Virginia for dessert.
As it was close to closing time the staff were cleaning up for the night. They were emptying the bowls of tortillas and the salsa from the tables back in the packets/jars. My friends questioned the staff about the hygiene and the manager denied they were doing anything wrong. Needless to say we left and my friends have never been back
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