Menus at Diners.... how can 1 kitchen make that many food items
 

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??

I do Love Jersey!!
 

The answer is: Poorly :p:D

Menus at Diners.... how can 1 kitchen make that many food items
 

Sysco

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.

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.

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!)

Crap. You beat me to it.

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

Then Y class is a real treat~

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

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....

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.

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!

...and a microwave.

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

I once attended, with a chef, a huge food show at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I was shocked at how much pre-prepared food was available. Think some of those diners are serving you good fried shrimp? Chances are they are serving pressed and formed shrimp pieces which when battered and fried look like the real thing. Sysco is indeed a big player but not the only one. Even dim sum from some of your favorite Chinese restaurants is coming out of a central location.

I've always wondered the same thing about Chinese take-out places in particular. Most of them have huge menus, pretty much the same from place to place, and when you go to pick up the food, there's one person working the counter and one person in the kitchen. I understand there must be a certain amount of prep rep and microwaving, but I'm curious to know more about how it works, ideally from someone who's actually worked in such a place. I guess come to think of it I have the same question about Indian restaurants and their menus as well.

Have you been to one of these restaurants that has an open kitchen? If so you'll see that there's considerable overlap in the ingredients. A handful of meats that can be prepared different ways. A handful of vegetables. A handful of sauces. Mix and match these and you can make dozens of dishes on demand.

Hah! A bit OT, but as frequent flyers we know how much pre-prep goes into airline food. I've twice done a tour of the massive Servair operation at CDG. It's very impressive how many meals they crank out. But when it comes to first class, they put together a meal that is amazing when you see it done from start to finish. And for first class flights to Japan, there is a special chef who is a real artist.

True at a restaurant that has an average level of quality. But at a top level restaurant, ingredients are very unique for each dish. I ate once at a table in the kitchen of a top level French/Japanese fusion restaurant. It was like being at the theatre and watching a performance.

Did you mean to reply to obscure2k? Heh

Yup, all true. I've perused some of their catalogs. But on the upside, it means the food that we eat at these places is much more likely not to make us sick or kill us. The last thing you want to eat is something "fresh" that has been sitting around too long, and with the financial pressures of the industry, that is not uncommon.

On the downside that industrial food may kill you in the long run. Or make you sicker if you are already sick. I'm so happy to live in a place where all my food is natural and sourced within 20 miles or so. The financial pressures you note exist in urban USA and a few other places, but thankfully not everywhere else in the world.

Actually, I am not defending the SYSCOization of the food supply, in fact, I rarely eat it. I live in an oasis of small menus, an abundance of restaurants sourcing local foodstuffs, and very few chain restaurants.

My oasis, however, is quite small. 20 miles inland and the food supply turns to just about "as middle America as it gets."

I also sense that the alternatives to SYSCO and its brethren in much of the USA are not very great. Also, just because you see a SYSCO truck doesn't mean the food comes from there - some restaurants use them just for supplies.

in tokyo and kyoto, the restauant seats 8 or 10 or 12. the menu has 50-100 items listed. all are cooked right in front of you (usually by the owner).

surprised no one said yet - "short order cook"

stimpy and obscure2k both talking about pre-prepared (like others)

there was a post on FT, was never able to find it, someone discussed expensive degustation / tasting menu restaurants, where everyone gets 1 set multi course menu. either whole restaurant gets each course at same time, or whole table. what the FT post described, was that if a dish, or multiple dishes, of a particular course, were done too soon, and ended up sitting in kitchen too long, they were thrown away and re-made. which goes into the operating cost of the restaurant, and the cost of its single multi course menu. there is also discussion here and elsewhere how some top restaurants always lose money, and are being operated for other reasons, sometimes as a loss leader. because the operating costs are so high. IIRC average net profit margins are something like 5% for all restaurants. so makes sense when expenses increase faster than revenue at top restaurants. even when prices are up to $500pp + for single fixed menu. and the more courses, the more chance of timing problem.

the problem in the US is the cycle of declining standards. (of both consumers and suppliers.) prices continue to go up, to the point where higher quality is not much more than lower quality, and the value difference, especially incremental value, is incredible. but really high quality is kept out of the market in most/many places. because rest of market doesnt want the impact it would have.

I think a few months back there was a lot of outrage in France, that a lot of restaurants, even high end ones, we're using outsourced prepared food.

As I recall, that was Paris, not France. The restaurateurs particularly in Burgundy took offence to any such suggestion. :)

we went a couple times to "Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse". in Lyon france. this place is very big close to the size of a floor of the javits center. they offer huge restaurant trays of prepared food, mainly for restaurants. a number of the one * restaurants we ate in were serving the stuff.

i think lyon is considered to be in burgundy.

First off, Lyon is NOT in Burgundy. :)

Secondly if it comes from Paul Bocuse, that is regarded as a good thing.

Third, no Michelin restaurant is going to give you a pre-prepared tray of food.

I just skip places with large menus. It just leads to an inefficient kitchen and dishes that aren't as good.

Yeah, but at least for heavily Americanized Chinese food, it's mostly different dishes that could be one mix-and-match dish:
- pick one or more of a handful of meats
- pick one or more of a handful or nuts and vegetables
- pick a sauce out of a handful
- stirfry together in a wok

Same is true for a lot of Americanized Italian food:
- handful of pasta types
- handful of meat add-ins
- handful of veggie add-ins
- handful of sauces
Mix and match makes a "big" menu

One of the fine restaurants just outside Seattle does a 100 mile 9 course dinner every year - it just started its run last week.

Here's where it gets hard. Every single ingredient must be from 100 miles or less. Thank goodness I live in a wine region!

For Salt - they get their own seawater and make salt
Pepper - not available. The local indigenous tribes used to use certain plants that are similar
Baking Powder (you do want breads and cakes?) - Before baking powder was a technique to use certain wood ash, so now they do that.
Coffee - There's a local tree bark that, after enough wine, kind of tastes like coffee! Although Seattle is known for coffee, no-one grows the stuff here!
Wheat for flour and beer - they found a small local grower otherwise they'd have to grow their own on their own farm.

It's really cool to see how hard it is to get even some of the basics from close by. http://www.theherbfarm.com/ronsweekl...f&XCharsX=1545

I do love they do this, but the point is that we are so used to having ingredients from all over the world, that it's difficult to think about how we'd do without certain things available.

I don't see a point in stressing about salt and pepper, etc. Salt is sodium chloride for goodness sake. Sodium chloride is sodium chloride no matter where you are in the world. Sure there can be trace amounts of other stuff in common table salt, but nothing to get too worried about. The things you should be concerned about are beef, chicken, tomatoes, etc. And wine of course! ;)

And it's not just that it's produced locally, but how it is produced that counts. If there are local controls, then at least you are close by enough to be aware of them and your community can police the growers, etc. When food is imported from elsewhere, the community has less or no visibility of how it is produced. And in the case of California, the large food industry lobbied against a recent vote to label food and won. Why did they fight so hard against food labeling? I think we all know the answer and we should all be very careful of what we eat when in California.

CKF is notorious for not preparing much of anything in house...it's all prepared at a central location, portion packaged, frozen and transferred to the site for final prep. I think the only items they actually cook onsite are pasta (boiled them combined with prepacked sauce), steaks, hamburgers, etc. Everything else is re-heated, so you're basically paying $20 for a frozen dinner, heated for you and served in a chaotic, annoying environment.

I think many restaurants "SYSCO" their menus to some extent, but not nearly to the extent taken by CKF and other big brand chains.

+1. I have had this discussion with someone who knows the restaurant business very well. This information about the Cheesecake Factory is definitely correct.

I agree. These guys know all their suppliers, as in general the food is all Pacific Northwest based. They have their own farm for things that aren't economical for other farmers to grow. They are now distributing heirloom seeds for some produce if they have any left over.

The 100 mile thing is the one time they go nuts to push themselves, even discovering old techniques that almost no-one has heard of to make the local ingredients work.

It's like a work of performance art.

Crazy! I mean, I love the idea and your description but I agree with the remark above that they're just taking it too far to make a point. Salt and pepper, please!

At first I actually thought the pro-CKF remarks upthread were tongue-in-cheek. I nearly stopped reading the thread when I found out otherwise!

That's all chain restaurants, though. I have gotten over that. So long as the food is good, I am happy. My issue with Cheesecake is that it is all pretty much the same blasted thing with just differences in sauces and garnishes. I have also noticed a bad case of inconsistency. We went there once, my brother and my father both ordered strawberry cheesecake. They were completely different! one was nice and thick and firm, the other one was like whipped cream.

[emp added]

:eek:


As already mentioned, a surprising number of places will do large parts of meals (esp a main meat & sauce) from water heated sealed bags. Good quality ones are chilled. Mass market are frozen. Pasta & rice can be had in precise quantity frozen blocks that you re-heat via steam 'cookers' - these are more common in Asia at 'european' restaurants there, but I've seen them all over the world. Soups are almost invariably from tetrapak sealed containers.

They only do this for 3 weeks a year - and sell out every year. The cool part is that the kitchen team learn a bunch of stuff about how to make food work without some of the basic ingredients that everyone has to hand.

Of course, this is exactly the opposite to what this thread is about, but is a fun diversion.

Before I knew how the restaurant industry actually worked, in the early 2000s I visited the UK several times. One of the notable things was that, no matter where we ate - good or bad - every single restaurant had Sticky Toffee Pudding on the menu.

In many places this was the best thing on the menu!

This made it very, very clear that this fine dessert was sourced from a central location - I think there's Sticky Toffee Pudding mines in Yorkshire. It didn't take too much thinking to work out that many places were just heating up stuff, and the quality reflected that.