A line cook called my plating lazy, changed everything

Last Tuesday we got slammed during dinner rush. I was sending out plates fast, not caring how they looked. One of the new line cooks, kid's maybe 22, grabbed a plate before I could fire it and said 'this looks like you hate the food'. Stung pretty bad. But he was right. I was doing the same swoosh of sauce and dumping protein on top. Same thing every plate. After service I asked him what he meant. He showed me how he plates: sauce off center, protein angled, garnish placed not thrown. Took an extra 20 seconds per plate but man, it looks better. Customers are tipping more, servers stopped complaining about messy plates. Anyone else had a younger cook teach them something they should've known already?

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2 Comments

theas942d ago

Read once that young cooks see fresh eyes, no bad habits yet.

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iris_mason882d ago

My old chef used to say the opposite, that the fresh ones just haven't had time to mess up yet. What I've seen is new cooks come in with plenty of bad habits, they just come from home cooking or culinary school instead of a real kitchen. You can spot it fast, like someone who salts pasta water before it boils or holds a knife like a pencil. The bad habits are always there, they just change shape as you learn.

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