Knives in Restaurants Past Security?
 

I was sitting in the Wolfgang Puck cafe in ORD, having a pretty good meal, and wondering if they manage to prepare foods without knives. The cafe has a somewhat "open" kitchen and I watched and watched and could not see anyone ever use a knife during cooking/preparing food. Maybe my view was just blocked. But, I don't see how you can cook without a knife, even the simple things like cutting sandwich in half. Do they have knives in restaurants/food outlets post-security? And, if so, are there controls on these knives? Not worried about this, just curious.

IIRC, at the Jersey Mike's in Terminal C at RDU they have knives they use to cut subs in half once prepared. I'll try to verify that next time I'm there.

I think the U.S. has allowed flights to have metal cultery back for quite some time already.

Rejuvenated - Customers (me) were eating with plastic. I guess it was the little plastic knife that I was struggling with that made me wonder if metal was being used in the kitchen....

Certain restaurants choose to use plastic cultery because they are cheaper and disposable, thus they can save $$$ both on the materials and labor (for not washing them). It's not that their decision to use plastic has much to do with whether they are allowed to use them or not given the fact that the metal ones have been allowed onboard for quite a while.

While metal knives may be allowed onboard, would a chef's knife or other similarly dangerous weapon be allowed onboard or past security?

A number of airlines (AS comes to mind) have metal cutlery in-flight.

I can remember about a year post-9/11 seeing restaurants inside security starting to use "normal" cooking knives again, but they were always firmly attached to something huge and heavy with what looked like a sturdy cable lock. I see this same pattern in most airports, now. I'm sure it's what's going on in the kitchens of the restaurants like Wolfgang Puck's.

When it comes down to it, in these days of non-compliant flight crews and secure cockpit doors, exactly what could be done with a knife that couldn't be done on the ground anyway?