elg26

I am born and raised in NJ....the "Home of the Diner"..... but still to this day it amazes me when I walk in a diner and look at the menu the amount of food items they can offer at any given time...

From pancakes, to omlettes, to Bagels and Lox, to burgers of all sorts, to gyros, to veal parm platter, to matzo brei, to buffalo chicken wrap, to rib eye steak, to New England clam chowder, to Chicken Marasala, to.......

You get my point.... the list goes on and on and on.....

How does one kitchen do this??

Madone59

The answer is: Poorly

bigshooter

Sysco

emma69

There are a number of components:

1. Some restaurants will rely very heavily on their freezers and pre-prepped items. You can buy reasonable (not good!) quality soups, chowders, sauces and all you have to do is reheat. Other restaurants may make their own products and freeze, or refrigerate.

2. Some restaurants may have extensive "all day" dining, but their experience will tell them the 10am on a Sunday crowd will be ordering the pancakes, waffles and omelets, not the Chicken Tikka Massala. Likewise, the lunch crowd on a Tuesday will be sandwich and salad heavy, far fewer orders of waffles and whipped cream. You pull items out of the freezer, prep fresh items based on past experiences and the vast majority of the time that will work fine. Other times they might be 'out' of an item (that really is just not going to be ready in a time frame you think acceptable).

3. Simple to produce dishes that take minimum time - pancakes, omelets, chicken wraps, bagels, steaks, French fries, stir fries, nachos, wings - in short anything that goes on a grill top, fry pan, under the broiler or in the deep fat fryer is generally easy and quick. A restaurant will have boiling water ready, so pasta / rice can be cooked quickly to order.

4. Cross use of ingredients - it may *look* like there are a million and one items on the menu, but chances are there are relatively few unique sides (lots of items with fries or salad for example). The bacon and sausage used for the all day breakfast platter is the same as goes with the pancakes, the waffles, the bacon is also used on the grilled cheese sandwich, the sausage is used on a breakfast bagel sandwich.

SimonB77

You mean very poor quality foods. The top quality eating establishments always have smaller sized menus and serve fresh. Places with large menus should always trigger red flags.

emma69

Pre-prepped doesn't necessarily mean poor quality. In the UK, a very very small percentage of restaurants serving a 'full English breakfast' will make their own sausages, or their own baked beans for example. You can purchase excellent pork and leek sausages from mass catering companies, that have won blind taste tests.

The soups we used to buy in at one place where I worked were fresh, never frozen, but vacuum sealed so could be kept in the fridge on hand - they were made at a small farm shop, from organic vegetables, no artificial ingredients, and tasted pretty good. Were they as good as if we had made them fresh on site that morning, probably not, but they were pretty decent.

You'd also be very surprised, I would wager, by some of the 'higher' end restaurants, what they actually buy in pre-prepped, simply to save on staff labor costs. One of the largest catering suppliers does what I would lovingly call 'boil in the bag' but what chefs prefer to call 'sous vide' dishes that you literally shove in hot water, then snip the corner off. Lamb confit, a venison and red wine stew, chicken chausseur, all aimed at higher tier restaurants (just take a look at the truck name that delivers their food, and then look at what that company offers in terms of pre-prepped food, it is enlightening!)

DonCarpenter

Crap. You beat me to it.

Clint Bint

The short sweary TV chef Gordon Ramsay has pre-cooked meals delivered to his London restaurants from a central location.
In unbranded vans naturally.

BuildingMyBento

Then Y class is a real treat~

stimpy

Ever been to the Cheesecake Factory? That's an impressive menu in terms of volume and the food is really good.

elg26

That is true....large menu and food is good indeed. However their kitchen is quite large...you go to a typical NJ diner and the kitchen is 1/3 of the size in many cases....

Cloudship

That is probably not a proper diner. Most true diners have limited menus - this comes from not really having a kitchen. The original diners simply had a grill at the counter. Only later did they add full kitchens. Btw, Worcester MA is the home of the diner. They made most of them.

You will find however that most of those menu items come from mixing and matching basics. You have a few select proteins, whioch you dress up with various sauces. Eggs can be cooked multiple ways. And Sandwiches come from what essentially amounts to a salad bar.

emma69

Cheesecake factory kitchens are enormous, and they have prep chefs (who do nothing but chop veggies, pre-package meat into portions, etc. and then cooks who take all the pre prepped parts and actually put the dish together (grill the meat, etc.) (which I really like as they don't say no to restaurant modifications )

The do use a lot of the same ingredients, crossover, so you see, for example, avocados, chicken breast, vinaigrette used in multiple dishes (starters and mains) which reduces the actual number of ingredients needed. They also have a pretty predictable forecasting model, knowing what customers will order on a given day.

However... every single one of their cheesecakes is made at a factory, and shipped in frozen!

KevinDTW

...and a microwave.

Cloudship

A good diner usually makes their food fresh. Then again, good diners focus on breakfast and lunch, and not dinner.