Do restaurants really serve microwaved 'ready meals'?

[AtleastitsnotMonday]

As it says really. This has come up several times on threads about eating out recently. Basically people saying they are not paying restaurant price for microwaved food. Is this really true? What's the point in having chefs if it's a case of sticking things in a microwave? Surely they wouldn't get away with it. It's often mentioned in discussion about pasta dishes in Italian chain restaurants, surely buying in ready made meals would cost them a whole lot more that cooking a bit of pasta and sauce anyway.

You guys make me feel better. I was brought up on home cooking and the only reasons people would eat out would be big events like weddings or travelling away from home.

I still haven't shaken off the idea that a meal made at home is healthier and fresher and cringe when someone mentions going out for a meal as a treat although I eat out when away.

In the 80s I worked as a student in a shiny new NHS hospital kitchen where the food was mostly made from scratch, potatoes peeled and cooked in various ways depending on orders, soups and cakes made fresh. I actually don't recall microwaves, the meals were served under lids to keep them warm in transit. I was involved in food prep and serving and it was a speedy operation. They had chefs for different functions, eg meat, veg, pastry etc.

Those were the days...

When I was 19 and early 20s, I drove everywhere pretty much, wouldn't even have one drink.

I love a nice bar but it's vanishingly rare for me to go due to cost. So I only found out last summer, when rose and lychee was the martini of the month (or season or whatever) and was pushed hard by our waiter when I wanted something else - that clearly didn't come from a commission laden mix 😂

But...that cocktail was £14. (Work paid).

Sidoli cakes look lovely but do not have a good taste. I think they are not worth the calories.

LOL - as anywhere they have a range of cheap and high end - you will deffo have eaten these - and not known

@YogaLite I worked in a very very old NHS hospital in the early 90s, as an untrained ward orderly while doing a Masters. It was one of the best paid jobs I ever had by the time you added on shift allowances, weekend working (which I wanted anyway) etc etc. And one of the jobs was dishing out the food from the massive kitchens and it was all made in the kitchens not bought in.

I'm not sure that happens anymore.

Though our local council run care homes all have kitchens that produce their own stuff rather than being a centralised operation - which is great as it's a huge part of being in a home that the food is nice.

LOL - as anywhere they have a range of cheap and high end - you will deffo have eaten these - and not known

Undoubtedly! We have a wonderful local place, where the main meals all appear to be home-made and not bought in (whether pre-prepared by them in advance or not); but even their desserts do sometimes seem to be 'generic'. I think they make one or two 'specials' themselves, but probably do buy in the rest.

Desserts do seem to be a bit of an outlier - a kind of 'bit of a bonus' rather than the main focus of why you've gone there.

Then again, how do you classify 'lazy' or 'proper' with some desserts? Do you expect them to churn the ice cream themselves?! I wonder if they're more considered like an extension of the drinks, where not a single one doesn't come from a bottle/can/keg/sachet that's been pre-prepared and bought in and nobody questions that. Except for if you request tap water, which is then 'freshly drawn' to order!

There are chefs and there are 'cooks'. Chefs are rightly paid more. If you pay £5 for your dinner it's probably not cooked by a chef. You get what you pay for.

My brother runs a company that does high end frozen food for restaurants. It's cooked by restaurant chefs then quick frozen, he says it's no different to having it cooked fresh. He only does certain types of dishes that travel/ freeze well. I've not tasted them though! Not knowingly anyway...

My brother runs a company that does high end frozen food for restaurants. It's cooked by restaurant chefs then quick frozen, he says it's no different to having it cooked fresh.

I see his point there, but I think it largely depends on volume, quality and care taken. Given how massive and ubiquitous the likes of Brake's and others are (is 3663 still going?), if they didn't cut corners, go for lowest acceptable quality and put in the bare minimum effort they could possibly get away with, along the whole process, they'd be extremely rare amongst huge companies as a whole.

This is why my favourite restaurants are the ones where they actually make the ingredients themselves, then it's worth the money. There's one near me that does handmade pasta they make fresh every day. And another that makes their own salami and cures their own bacon etc.
Places that make their own bread are good too. None of them are high end, just family run and they care about food quality.

In our local paper an ex chef said the majority of food in Gino is microwaved

My dad always said to eat in a restaurant where you could see the kitchen if you possibly could.

He worked in pest control and said it was the best way to ensure food hygiene. This, of course, was back in the day before they did all the certificates. The idea still holds up but for different reasons now.

Yes but red someone earlier said when it looks like they are making fresh pizza because you can see them making it they are simply reheating frozen stuff.

So even then unless you're actually at chefs table how do you know

In Pizza Express, you can see the chefs rolling and shaping the dough and then putting on the toppings. OK, the dough and toppings may arrive ready made and frozen, so the skill level is not what you might see in an old-fashioned Italian pizzeria, but they're not re-heating pizzas. The pizza is baked to order. That's good enough for me.

I don't mind premade and frozen pizza dough as long as it's not pre-cooked. I think that's fair enough as it reduces waste and doesn't necessarily adversely affect the quality of the end product. Wouldn't want a pre-made pizza, previously frozen. Or all previously frozen toppings. Then I might as well just buy one myself from the supermarket!

Of course they do and clearly you must be able to taste it. I don't go out particularly often, but when I do go and get to chose where to eat, I go to smaller restaurants where I know it's made more or less from scratch. I think a lot of the bigger chains use microwave meals or frozen meals. I don't mind spending money on good food, but can't really be bothered going out when paying restaurant prices for a microwaved meal. Even worse with deserts...

I will only eat out at restaurants where I am certain the food is prepared and cooked on the premises. Otherwise, I generally reckon I can do better myself, much cheaper, at home. From a burger to haute cuisine. I don't mind cleaning up (because I am a tidy cook). It needs Michelin stars and a big occasion before I'd concede someone cooks (that much) better than I do.

Every restaurant serves dishes that are assembled from prepared components.

In good independent restaurants, everything will be made on the premises, but if you order slow-cooked beef or confit duck, this must have been cooked in advance. Classical French restaurant cookery is based on using pre-made "mother sauces" (béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato) in different combinations to make a whole range of dishes. The kitchen will be set up to use these components to assemble dishes reasonably quickly when orders come in.

At the other extreme, in cheap places such as chain pubs with suspiciously long menus, many dishes could well be little different from supermarket ready-meals, heated up and plated to serve with e.g. a handful of leaves or some chips added.

There will be a whole spectrum of things in between - for example, a "quality" restaurant chain might well have a central facility to make the sorts of components that any restaurant has to precook. This will help them to ensure consistency between branches. The overall process might be little different from that in a top independent place, it's just that not all the stages of preparing the food take place on the same site.

If you've ever ordered food from somewhere like "Cote at Home" then I would guess that many restaurant chains would deliver food to their branches in pretty much the same way as these work - pre-made sauces, slow-cooked meat in sous-vide packs, etc. Indeed, I've always sort of assumed Cote launched this service as quickly as they did when their restaurants had to close due to COVID precisely because they were left with a central facility that had the capacity to crank out dishes but nowhere to sell them!

We ate in Chiquitos once and I had a rice dish that arrived with the top of the blue bag (with the seal) it was obviously in

I assume all chains are mostly microwaved

Friends daughter worked in Zizzi pasta dishes were microwaved I'd never eat there again

Some time ago I saw the staff from a local Italian restaurant bulk buying carbonara and other ready made sauces in Sainsbury's.
I haven't been to the restaurant since.

Had chicken korma curry at a restaurant in a budget hotel several years ago. Took them 6 minutes. There's no way in hell that they would have been able to have cooked that in 6 minutes. Strongly believe they did a microwave one. I have heard many times also, that Wetherspoons do microwave meals.

Yes they do.

In the same way that @CasperGutman has posted about restaurants pre-preparing the food, it's also commonplace to part cook pasta and risotto then finish it off to order. Otherwise you'd either have to pre-order a restaurant meal (and pay) before you were due to arrive or wait a long time whilst they cooked everything from scratch for you. It doesn't mean it's inferior in any way.

Well, to cook this absolutely from scratch would be a couple of hours! Yours was probably microwaved but even somewhere that makes everything in house would probably have a batch of chicken korma and a batch of rice ready to plate up after being reheated so I’d never be surprised that arrived quickly.