Stuff I didn't know about restaurants until recently

[samarrange]

I am very old, but I only learned this year that hotel buffet scrambled eggs are usually made from powdered egg. That explains why they are a uniform colour. Scrambled eggs made from scratch have yellow and white bits.

On the plus side, I also learned recently that the chicken (or at least the "Original Recipe" pieces) at KFC is made from scratch in the shop every day from fresh chicken pieces, flour, and herbs'n'spices. I had imagined it was all done in a factory somewhere and then cooked from frozen.

What are some other bits of restaurant knowledge that surprised you?

I had powdered scrambled eggs on the States and there's no way most uk ones are. Even the premier inn breakfasts!

Microwaving results on the brown liquid

This is anecdote rather than fact, but my sister has worked in a lot of restaurants and pubs and says there is a pretty straightforward inverse correlation between how fancy somewhere is and how clean the kitchen is.

Wetherspoons was spotless, which makes sense - it's a lot less messy to microwave everything, the Michelin star places pretty grim.

I worked in a Little Chef in the 90s and scrambled eggs came ready done in little plastic packets, just needed to be microwaved, same with the omelettes. Had many a confused customer when we ran out but were still able to serve fried eggs (which were actually fried on the griddle!)

Don't read George Orwell's, "Down And Out In Paris And London" folks. The Paris hôtel bits might just carry you off.

Recently was in an Indian restaurant and the waitress stood cleaning her ear with a tooth pick at the counter in full view of the restaurant. Absolutely disgusting.. and dangerous for her ear too! proceeded to hand out drinks, bring out plates etc. was very awkward as there was no other out front staff to raise the issue with. We paid left and wrote them a review- never ordered from there again! I’d take powered scramble eggs over poor hygiene any day

Also, mushrooms like to wee a lot whilst they're being cooked - same as red cabbage!

@Redheadedstepchild I think you ought to rename yourself samurai of the spatula - that's genius!

My nephew, aged 12 months, in 1987. He was in hospital with something else, probably made worse by having salmonella, and had to be on an isolation ward because it’s so infectious.

It was a little time before Edwina Currie’s “Salmonella in Eggs” event.

According to Wikipedia,
Salmonella enteritidis had grown to become a larger worldwide issue in the late 1970s and 1980s than it had been in previous decades,[3] with cases having quadrupled in the first half of 1988 alone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonella-in-eggs_controversy

This thread is one of the many reasons I will not pay to eat out, unless it's at a very seriously rated food establishment. My late DM did C&G hotel catering qualifications (for school meals, in the 1970s), I cook quite well and my DS worked as a junior chef in a very high end hotel with a reputation for excellent food. I am unwilling to pay for food that's inferior to what I can cook at home, for much cheaper. I prefer self catering holidays, because I like cooking and enjoy buying unfamiliar ingredients. And by doing that, I/we save enough for a Michelin splurge every so often.

I'm so enjoying this thread.

that wasn’t me but I can see why they also thought of Nessa! Did you ever go out with John Prescott?

I'm an immigrant. Not an expat. I moved to Corsica by mistake when I was 21. I've done every kind of job imaginable (often three at once) and one of them was crêpe wrangler.

One of my three at once jobs was childminder/nanny/English teacher to a young lad who was going through the "Big Mouth Strikes Again" phase at about 12 and he was being a bit obnoxious to one of my fellow crêpe wranglers when we were buying a going home pancake at teatime. He was rude. Being a bit of an enfant gâté. (Spoilt brat) I told him off myself but you know how it is when you are a nanny. You can only say so much. My co worker on the crêpe stand had no such conflict of interest and said, (Roughly translated)

"You will stop saying these things to me, enfant gâté. (spoilt brat). Or I will put this spatule in your forehead and then tout le monde (everybody) will call you Monsieur Spatule."

It was a very mild insult, verbally. But it seemed to work.

I might add that the potential, "Monsieur Spatule" has grown up to be a lovely person and it was just a phase. How things would have gone if my other job co worker had followed the threat through, I don't know. Maybe I'd be telling you all about my life in a travelling circus as the assistant to the, "Incroyable Monsieur Spatule."

If you go to a nice guest house you'll get everything cooked to order exactly as you like it done, extremely fresh and hot. Lovely. Better than stuff kept under heat lamps for an hour.

The breakfast buffet at airport lounges makes me heave. Sat out for absolutely ages. No skill whatsoever, probably some of the cheapest and lowest quality cooked food to produce. And still people post their "bragging" photos on FB: "In the lounge waiting for our flight to Ibiza!", with a glass of cheap fizz next to it. Makes me laugh.

I know why the roast potatoes aren't good as I've work in a few pub kitchens. It's because they're not roast potatoes. A massive pot of boiled potatoes is prepared before opening. The cold boiled potatoes are put in the deep fat fryer to reheat and masquerade as roast potatoes.

No, but I once saw him in Blackpool at party conference time. I grew up near Blackpool. Much shorter than you might think and twice as sweaty.

Also when I worked at the country pub, the steaks were stored in tubs in the fridge and were simply given a good sniff before being used. To my knowledge no one ever got poisoned from eating them but we were very careful to lob out the whiffy ones.

They did do the best, best ever roast potatoes though, I’ve never found ones the same when eating out for a roast. They were all cooked on the Sunday morning in the biggest roasting tin in an oven that could have easily fit in both Hansel and Gretal inside with room, with absolutely lashings of goose fat and huge flakes of salt. The gravy was cooked in a massive cauldron like pan with meat juices added throughout the service to keep it topped up. On Sundays it was roast only, the chef probably would have come out and told you to F off if you tried to order something else from the menu. Prawn cocktail or pate with toast for starters. One pudding on the menu, usually apple crumble with custard. Pork or beef for meat.

This was only in the early 2000’s but it was a very traditional country pub, the only one for a few miles around.

Lots of scrambled egg is made from liquid egg, in a carton. Not as nice but not powdered.

no, that's nonsense.
I've been in a fair few michelin star kitchens and they are so spotless it's unbelieveable.
At the end of service at Core we watched the whole kitchen be scubbed from top to bottom.removing air filters etc.
Apparently they do that every day.
Can't speak for a Spoons kitchen as i've never been in one😁

Maybe she’d never made proper gravy. Plenty of people never do.

The horrifying realisation a penguin biscuit is just a bourbon with chocolate round it.

I'm sorry...what!

I love scrambled eggs. It’s so disappointing when they are rubbish. I stayed in the Sheraton in Edinburgh and they had terrible eggs. Apparently they were a house speciality but it was like finely chopped eggs in a sauce like a hot egg mayo with an odd aftertaste. Sadly I stayed again and forgot and ordered them with room service ( eggs were still disgusting). I did wonder if they were made up from some reconstituted stuff

I think part of the trouble is a lot of people do their scrambled eggs differently at home. I whisk mine into a pan of hot butter, serve very soft, and only season at the very end. When I was taught to make scrambled eggs as a child, it was mix them up with milk in a Pyrex jug with a fair bit of milk and salt and pepper and then put them in a pan with minimal whisking.

My dad microwaved them still in the jug and sometimes they’d come out like a sea sponge 🤣

This is a home kitchen thing, not a restaurant thing, but in the UK hens are healthy and don't have salmonella so you can keep your eggs in the cupboard. In the US farmers don't take the same precautions and wash eggs before they are sold, which removes the protective coating from the shall, and they have to be kept in the fridge.

That's why the gravy tastes so nice!