Food Preparation Assistants
Assist kitchen and service staff to prepare and serve food, and clean food preparation equipment and service areas.
Saturday night in the hotel kitchen
You are a kitchenhand and dishwasher at a hotel, helping the cooks, the pastry team and the dish area as needed. It is 4pm and the function room is booked for a hundred guests. The pastry chef needs you for prep, and the dish pit is already filling.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
I need you to set up for the cakes. The tray on the left is the plain batter, and the other one has crushed nuts through it. I'm running late, so don't mix them up. Which one goes on the allergy-free table?
Say you think the left tray, but you aren't sure which is which
Priya sighs, confirms it and moves on. You asked, which is good, but you could have said which tray you'd choose and why. A confident check saves the chef's time.
Check the labels with her before you move anything
Priya points to the labels and ticks the list. The allergy-free table gets the right tray. A moment's check protects a guest who cannot afford a mistake.
Pick the left tray and put it on the allergy-free table quickly
You guess right by luck, but Priya sees you did not check and has a firm word. With allergies there is no such thing as a small guess.
Mate, a glass broke in the sink full of water and I can't see where the pieces are. The sink's full of suds and it's heaps of plates. Just plunge your hands in and fish them out, yeah?
Plunge in and feel around, because it's the quickest way
A sliver goes into your finger and you need first aid and a break. The line cook feels bad, and the plates still need washing. Broken glass in a deep sink is a hazard that hides.
Tell the line cook it's not your problem, because the glass wasn't broken by you
The glass stays in the sink and someone else gets hurt reaching in. Who broke it doesn't matter. The dish pit is your area and the hazard is in it.
Drain the sink and pick out the pieces with tongs
You let the water out, find the pieces and put them in the sharps bin. It takes five minutes and nobody is hurt. A moment spent on the hazard saves a lot more later.
I need you to dice forty onions for the sauce. The big knife is on the board. Just crack on. I have to run to the cool room. We're short and you'll be fine.
Say you've not been shown the knife yet and ask for a quick lesson
Hugo looks surprised and then shows you the grip and the claw hand. Your onions are uneven at first but your fingers are safe. Asking was the best move you made today.
Start chopping carefully and see how it goes
You do your best, but the knife slips on a wet onion and nicks your thumb. Hugo returns to a bleeding thumb and a half-chopped pile. Doing a task you haven't been shown is a risk, however careful you try to be.
Quietly swap with another kitchenhand who knows how
The onions are diced well, but Hugo is annoyed that the swap wasn't mentioned, and you still don't know how to do it. Learning on the job means asking, not avoiding.
How it went
The function room is served, the dish pit is clear and the kitchen is wiped down. Kitchen support work is hard, fast and often unseen, and it keeps the cooks safe and the food clean. Could you enjoy being the person who keeps a busy kitchen running?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The bottle that was not water
A fictional case set in the kitchen of a busy hotel that supplies a restaurant, a bar and a function room.
The situation
Bao was the dishwasher at a hotel kitchen. At the end of a long Friday, while clearing the dish area, he found a clear plastic bottle on the shelf above the sink. It looked like a water bottle and was half full, but there was a faint chemical smell when he picked it up. A kitchenhand had probably decanted something from a larger container and not labelled it. The night chef, Lorenzo, was waiting to lock up.
What they did
Bao did not taste or pour out the liquid. He told Lorenzo straight away what he had found and where. Lorenzo took the bottle, checked it against the cleaning products list and found it was a strong degreaser. They poured it back into a labelled container, wrote an incident note and put a sign above the sink about labelling.
How it turned out
Nobody had been harmed, and the next morning the head chef spoke to the whole team about decanting. Bao was thanked in front of the team. He says that after that he began checking the shelves above the sink at the start of every shift.
What would you do?
- What clues told Bao that this was not water?
- Why do you think labelling matters in a kitchen where everyone is rushing?
- How would you raise a mistake like this with the person who made it?