#line cook

[weaselle]

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

#long post #sorry #i just have a lot of DO PEOPLE UNDERSTAND feelings left over from all my years in restaurants #restaurants #line cook #service industry

[sreegs]

Rating: NOT CUTE!!!

While a fully-stocked kitchen and well-sharpened knives will make the line cook very happy, you can tell something is very wrong here. Notice its quiet demeanor and folded-back ears. I don't think this one has had a smoke break in the past day, let alone the recommended frequency of 1-2 hours.

#is the line cook video cute #food service #line cook

[marusketch]

Someone with a death wish just asked the only line cook on shift to remake their eggs for the 4th time during the breakfast rush.

(egg reveal below)

#sketch #line cook #the customer is always wrong #this one is a little rowdy tbh

[creepymutelilbugger]

back of house rule

#196 #rule #shitpost #kitchen confidential #r/kitchenconfidential #r/196 #/r/196 #r196 #line cook #weed mention

[crabs-brencil]

me when i keep employing it at slightly-above-minimum-wage jobs

#RAAGHHHHH LONG HAIR MB #anyways forgive any wonkiness i drew this absolutely wasted #the murderbot diaries #tmbd #tmbd fanart #tmbd sketch #tmbd art #tmbd mb #murderbot #secunit #line cook #omg speaking of linecooks i learned that tiktok has developed a thing for linecooks while looking for outfit references and yeah i will neve #never recover (tumblr character limit you will be the death of me) #krita

[pixeljade]

Kinda wanna draw Senshi as a line cook on break, smoking in an alleyway sitting on a milk crate

#line cook #Senshi #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon

[asskylosaurus]

Working in a kitchen is like

Line Cook 1: (Just downed half a quart container of pepsi) Fuck man I swear they put something in the fountain soda that makes it hit different

Line Cook 2: Actually there's a lot of work that goes into calibrating the syrup levels in those machines. Did you know Disney pays Coke mad money to do slight adjustments on the levels in their parks throughout the year depending on season that saves them hundreds of thousands of dollars in syrup overhead? I almost went to school for it.

Line Cook 3: (Heard the machine print out another ticket and immediately started growling like a rabid dog)

#line cook #food service #Guess which one I was

[weixuldo]

lemme just say… i’ve got some head cannons cookin rn

so context: i’m a waitress as a part time job while i’m in college and i love love love when the line cooks are sweet :) but also when they flirt hehe so… Line cook Anakin :)

- he’d have the nice veiny forearms and would be great with his hands 😳

- when you grab food off the window he’d lean down to wink at you through it

- you love to see him take off the apron at the end of the night cause sometimes his shirt rides up and you get a view of his toned body

i’m pretty sure @hanasnx has something abt this too but i’ve spent the last hour making a list of my own :) so if ur interested pls comment!! and i’ll see if it’s something i should post :)

#darth vader #darth vader x reader #vader #anakin x reader #sw darth vader #anakin #darth vader fic #star wars #star wars x reader #anakin x you #anakin star wars #sw anakin #anakin skywalker x reader #line cook #line cook anakin

[trojanteapot]

another ATSV shitpost

this time its the line cook/ elf prince/ depressed dad venn diagram

#atsv #across the spider verse #spiderverse #spiderverse 2 #spiderverse meme #line cook #elf prince #depressed dad #venn diagram #peter parker #peter b parker #miles morales #pavitr prabhakar #miguel o'hara #hobie brown #ben reilly #spider man noir #spectacular spider man #shitpost

[maladaptations]

#tweet #fav #couldn’t find the tumblr post for this so reposting it #little elf prince #depressed middle aged father #line cook #female gaze #hommes

[seoz-seoz]

Line cook + existential crisis + obito =

Idea from @caninekakashi <3 Based on this photo

🤠

#lol obt def has line cook vibes to me #he is both too smart and not smart enough for the work he does #uchiha obito #obito fanart #obito #i vibe w this pic so hard qfter spending 10 years in food service #obito my beloved #seoz art #wip #naruto fanart #scrungly mother fucker #line cook meme #naruto meme #naruto #lol #line cook

[glitchygoblin]

Listen I know all you girlies out there watched The Bear and now you want a strung out skinny linecook bf but linecooks are very hard to care for.

We need to be fed a pack of Marlboro reds a day, and we cannot survive on water, we need energy drinks.

Also, it’s important to give your line cook proper enrichment. Tossing an 8ball of meth into his enclosure can make a world of difference in your line cook’s well-being.

#line cook #the bear

[pragmaticjedi]

My adhd found a meme on an unrelated google search and got stuck on it

Decided Geralt is a himbo, which is too close to muscle hunk to belong there and had to update the meme

Then decided to place other male characters on the continuum

Then forged a new meme

Please send help.

#I still don’t know why Keanu reeves is in the center #please direct my adhd toward my dissertation and not whatever this is #I release this into the void #line cook #elf prince #depressed father #the bear #lord of the rings #himbo #the mandalorian #Star Wars #the witcher #stranger things #jack black #taron egerton #daniel radcliffe #kronk #the rock

[kingdomofsixx]

punk!steve is a line cook and hes DEFINITELY the one everyone tries to fuck

#punk steve harrington #line cook #every server is in love with him but sous chef eddie bends him over in the bar bathroom every night #steddie #eddie munson #sorry i cant help it #steve x eddie #i will never shut up about this

[trickstermoonjuice]

If you are a 25 top who comes in for brunch on a Monday morning this is why your food is taking so long- also quit making my server cry

#line cook #chef #brunch #restaurant

[asillylittleduck]

I bring a sorta raw and unfiltered homoerotic out of pocket takes vibe to line that diminishes the other chef’s toxic masculinity

#chefs kiss #cooking #line cook #cooks #boys will be boys #straight up #shitpost #shower thots #mlm thoughts #can’t just be me #meirl #men >:)) #working hard