Chefs
Plan and organise the preparation and cooking of food in dining and catering establishments.
Saturday night, sixty booked
You are a chef running the kitchen at a neighbourhood restaurant tonight, because the head chef has unexpectedly taken the night off. It is 4pm. Sixty guests are booked from 6pm. You have one cook, one apprentice and a dishwasher. Things start going sideways before the doors open.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
Chef, the fish delivery has only just come and it is half what we ordered. The special is on every menu, and it needs that fish. What do you want me to do?
Stretch it by making the portions smaller and hope nobody notices on a busy night
Guests do notice, and two tables ask why the dish looks so small at that price. You saved the menu, but you have put the restaurant's name on something you are not proud of.
Count the portions you can sell, brief the floor and prepare an alternative
You count the portions, tell the servers exactly how many there are and turn what you have in the cool room into a second option. Everyone knows the plan, and it sells out on purpose.
Ring around other suppliers and nearby restaurants to try to get more fish in before service
It could work, and one contact may help, but you lose forty minutes of prep time and nobody else knows the plan. You get some fish, while your sauces and sides fall behind.
Table 8 booked for four and just turned up with nine, and they are the owner's friends. Tickets are already backing up. Can you take them all now? They are not very happy to wait.
Take them all now, and tell the team to push through
Everyone else's food slows down, an order goes out cold, and Ari burns a tray in the rush. Saying yes felt good for one minute, and it cost you the next hour.
Refuse outright, since they did not book for nine
You protect your kitchen, but Jo is left to manage an awkward conversation alone and the owner hears about it. You were right about the pressure, and there was a better way to say it.
Tell Jo how long you can honestly do, and suggest drinks and shared entrees to start
Jo has something real to offer them, the shared plates buy you twenty minutes and the kitchen keeps its rhythm. Good kitchens and good floor teams solve problems together.
Chef, I am so sorry. I just dropped the whole tray of duck for table 3 and there is one portion left. Should I just rinse these off? Nobody would know. I can still fix it.
Tell Ari to bin it, take a breath, and have the floor explain a short delay
Food that has hit the floor goes in the bin, every time. You stay calm, cook what you can, and offer table 3 something honest. Ari remembers how you handled it for years.
Yell at Ari so it never happens again, then take over the section yourself for service
The food is safe, but Ari goes quiet and makes two more mistakes before service ends. Kitchens are high pressure, and that is exactly when how a leader behaves matters most.
Bin it, tell Ari it is fine, and swap in the last portion without telling the floor
The food is safe and you were kind, but the rest of the table's meal is now running late and Jo has no idea why. A short message would have kept the floor on your side.
How it went
Sixty guests are fed, the kitchen is scrubbed and it is after midnight. Your feet hurt, and a table sent their thanks. Being a chef is creative, and also about planning, pressure, hygiene and looking after a team. Does a night like that sound exhausting, exciting or both?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The allergy that nearly slipped through
A fictional case set in the kitchen of a busy fictional neighbourhood restaurant.
The situation
On a packed Friday night at Saltbush Kitchen, a server called out a table of six with one guest who had a serious nut allergy. Tomas, the sous chef, was running the pass. The special that night was a fish dish with a sauce that had been prepared earlier in the day by an apprentice, who had already gone home. The recipe card said it was nut free. But Tomas remembered that a batch of the base had been changed that week when a supplier ran out of an ingredient.
What they did
With tickets stacking up, Tomas stopped and checked the label on the replacement product, which listed traces of nuts. He told the head chef and took that dish off for the table, then asked the server to explain clearly to the guest what they could safely offer. He cooked the guest's meal separately with clean equipment. After service, he rewrote the recipe card and started a rule that any substitution must be written on the card that day.
How it turned out
The guest had a good night and never knew how close it had been. The kitchen lost a few minutes on a busy service, and nobody complained. The new rule stuck, and the apprentice who had made the substitution was shown why it mattered, not blamed for it.
What would you do?
- Would you have stopped a busy service for something you only half remembered?
- How would you have spoken with the apprentice the next day?
- What in this story surprised you about the work of a chef?