Cooks
Prepare, season and cook food in dining and catering establishments.
A Friday dinner service
You are a cook working the main section of a busy pub kitchen on a Friday night, with the head cook on the pass next to you. It is 6:15pm and the dining room is filling up. A big party has just walked in, the fryer is acting up, and you have ten minutes before the first wave of orders hits.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
The fryer oil looks dark and it is smoking a bit. We should change it, but that takes twenty minutes and half the menu uses it. I have a booking of twenty-four in ten minutes. What do you think?
Keep using it tonight and change it tomorrow, since the rush is about to start
The food tastes burnt and two tables complain. Worse, the oil smokes even more halfway through service. Putting off a known problem usually makes it arrive at the worst moment.
Change one fryer's oil now, keep the other running, and tell the floor
The floor staff steer the party towards other dishes for twenty minutes, and the kitchen stays clean and calm. Alvaro likes that you had a plan, not just a worry.
Change the oil in both fryers and take the fried dishes off the menu for the night
The oil is fixed, but the dining room loses half its menu on a Friday. It is a clean answer to the fryer, but it costs the business more than a partial fix would have.
The man at table 12 says he has a shellfish allergy and he wants the chicken parmigiana. Is anything in the crumb or the sauce a problem? He is being very careful and the waiter before me said it was fine.
Tell Dom the parmigiana has no seafood in it, so it is fine, and send it out
The parmigiana itself is fine, but it was fried in the same oil as the prawn cutlets. For a serious allergy, shared oil matters. Answering from the recipe alone missed the way the kitchen actually works.
Ask Dom to wait, check the method with Alvaro, and use clean equipment
You cook it in a clean pan and tell Dom exactly what was done. The customer thanks the kitchen. Allergies are about the kitchen's process as much as the ingredients list.
Suggest Dom recommend a simpler dish with fewer ingredients to the customer, just to be safe
He picks the simpler dish, and it is safe. But he wanted the parmigiana, and you did not find out whether it could be done properly. Taking an option away is not the same as solving the problem.
I think I knocked something into the sink and now there is a knife at the bottom somewhere, under the dirty pots. I did not want to put my hand in. Should I just empty the sink and see?
Tell him to empty the sink carefully, one item at a time, while you watch for the knife
He finds the knife safely, but it was a close call with a lot of dirty gear and slippery hands. The knife needed to be found, and there was a safer way to do it.
Tell Beau to pull the plug and let the water out, then lift out the items one by one from the top
Pulling the plug is fine, but lifting items without clearing the top first means Beau reaches in blind and nicks his finger on the knife. A minor cut, a first aid kit, and a lost kitchen hand for the next hour.
Stop Beau, drain the sink, remove the items from the top in view, and call out when the knife is found
The knife is found and removed without anyone getting hurt. Beau learns to say something rather than reach in. In a kitchen, the safe way and the fast way are often the same if you stop for a moment.
How it went
The party was fed, the allergy was handled and the oil is clean. Cooking is craft, speed, hygiene and teamwork, and the evening shifts are long. Does a busy kitchen on a Friday night sound exciting, exhausting, or a mix of both to you?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The steak that came back twice
A fictional case set in the kitchen of a busy fictional pub bistro by the river, serving lunches and dinners.
The situation
Jasmine was a cook on the grill at the Riverside Bistro on a busy Sunday. A table of four sent back a steak for being overcooked, and Jasmine cooked a replacement. It came back again. The waiter, Dom, said the customer was polite but firm. The kitchen was full of tickets, and the head cook, Alvaro, was plating dessert at the other end.
What they did
Jasmine did not argue or assume the customer was wrong. She asked Dom what exactly the customer had said, and how they usually liked their steak. Then she checked her own timer and her grill. She found that the grill had a hot spot she had not noticed, which was cooking the meat faster than it should. She moved to a cooler part of the plate, cooked a third steak and told Alvaro.
How it turned out
The third steak was right and the table ate happily. Alvaro had the grill checked after service and the hot spot was fixed. Jasmine said she would have blamed the customer in her head if she had not stopped to check the equipment.
What would you do?
- What would you have been feeling when the second steak came back?
- Why might it help to check your equipment before deciding who is wrong?
- How do you think a cook and a waiter can help each other in a rush?