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 think it's really depending of the luxury nursing home.
I work in one and milk and eggs are real.
Most foods cooked from scratch, cakes bake daily.
And puddings served at lunch time looks similar to attached picture.

Lol, I'm not that bad! It's just that I always hated bourbons but loved penguins so felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed! Like the 'wine conesseur' being found out when they love the £5 lidls prosecco!

Hmm, I’m thinking the temperature the soup was prepared in the pan was going to be plenty hot enough to kill off any breathing germs. It would be proper bubbling away and only cooled when it was time for the cream be mixed in and/or blended.

I once pulled up a member of staff at Maccy's. She had just put stuff in the bin and then took a bag out to a customer.

She said, "the bag is sanitized", which may well be true but her hands were not.

And this was a mature woman not a teen.

@BobbyBiscuits a proper Yorkshire is the size of a roasting tin.

Yes, chefs do breathe, they need to to be able to shout 🤣 and food is prepped and 'left out' but it's covered with lids, for the breathing and so nothing else gets dropped splashed in it.

Anything that comes back from a table is binned, working in hospitality you soon learn that people can be disgusting creatures and you just never know. It's an awful lot of waste, but if you serve less to the table or on the plates, people complain it's not enough. We trialled smaller portions with waiting staff saying that if you want some more, we'll happily deliver it, but we're trying to cut waste food down, people moaned, people asked for more, ate one forkful and left the rest. Pointless exercise.
Anything left over in the kitchen is used for soups etc, but not from the tables.
And we use fresh & free range local eggs.

Guess I'll be able to tell that we have any MN guests when they start telling me that they know our eggs are powdered and our soup made from table scrapings 🤣

Were they deliberately aiming for the 'dead snowman skidmark' look?!

Well, thanks to this thread about industrial food, I had a craving for McDonald’s breakfast and you all FORCED me to order it. Yes, totally all of your fault(s) that I’m now scarfing down a sausage, egg, cheese, and bacon bap with brown sauce and hash browns. Oh, and a pineapple stick… you know, for health. 😔

How have you been in so many restaurant kitchens when you don't work in restaurants?

Because how do you know the carrot on that serving dish wasn't dropped on the floor? Handled and licked by a grubby 2 year old and put back?

It is a bit grim tbh even if you're boiling the veggies in soup etc.

enjoy the delicious feast!

But the wasn't handling the food... ?

But that's how you make gravy from scratch

Not really,
a tasty brownie with chocolate sauce, blob of whipped cream

I have often found Indian restaurant raita to be too sweet. Bottled mint sauce has a lot of sugar in it. I just use finely chopped mint.

I've been to lots of very top restaurants and most of them show you round the kitchen.
Also had a lot of meals at a 'chefs table' where you get a full view of the kitchen while you eat

And never, ever ordered a well-done steak....

Do you live in mumbles?

When I worked in a hotel years ago,being short staffed one day they had the care taker come to help in the kitchen and he made up the scrambled eggs in the jug and microwaved.
I used to love when the buffet breakfast was over and all the staff could then go and help themselves..fried bread and beans! Yum

Couldn't think of anything more dull than looking round a kitchen... Oooh here's someone frying something, ahh here's someone putting watercress on a plate.

Yes but thats not the (only) point. You could make the "germs will be killed of" for lots of things that restaurant food and safety inspectors would frown at. e.g. you wash you hands between going to the toilet and prepping raw meat/veg etc even though "cooking it will kill the germs of".

Where I worked leftover prepped vegetables or cooked vegetables in the kitchen would absolutely be recycled into soup. But food that's been taken out and put on tables is leftovers and should be binned. I don't think there is much difference between food that has gone out on someone's plate and food that has gone out in a side bowl. A lot of people tip used napkins etc into those bowls once they are done eating as part of "tidying".

Are you sure that maybe it wasn't a big dish of cooked veg in the kitchens that was used to fill the table plates that was being reused?

When I used to do breakfast the mushrooms were out in to cook slowly at the start of the shift.

Massive pan, a bit of water, two blocks of butter and tip in the mushrooms. They’d cook down gently to give the type of mushroom you mention.

well if you are into your food it's actually incredibly interesting.
I take it you've never been in a really top notch kitchen?
you should try it if you get the chance

Nope! I worked as a waitress and sometimes on sous, so I know what I saw.

My mum worked at a breakfast buffet place on the M1 back in the day and the mushrooms came in huge tins

@Ionut thank you, I did! I haven’t had that in almost a year so it was a real treat!