ALL DAY!

“COMIN’ AROUND HOT!”

“CORNER!”

“RUNNER!”

“BEHIND!”

“CAN YOU GIVE ME AN ALL-DAY!??”

Goodness. What a week it’s been.

These words and phrases are in my head from saying them, well, all day.
If you’ve worked in a restaurant and/or kitchen, these terms will either make your reminisce fondly on the old times, or give you some sort of post traumatic stress disorder.

I sometimes find myself in grocery stores, hollerin’ at people, “Behind ya..” when I move past them. I mean, it makes sense, right?
Communication is important in a kitchen. If a pan is hot, you don’t want one of the dishwashers to pick it up with their bare hands. Communication builds a good structure for people. It reminds you not to be careless with other people.

Well, except when the chef jokingly says, “I’m gonna burn you…”

When someone asks for an “all-day”, they are asking for all of the items they have to make or the ones they are personally responsible for out of all the tickets on their board. Say you have your own tickets to work on, then the dude shouting out orders gives you something else to make. It can be a lot. Especially with so much going on behind you. So, sometimes, you need an all-day just to make sure you’re on everything.

This is something you get better at with practice. Remembering food in your head comes with knowing the menu and knowing how to make it efficiently. Just like any other job, the more you do it the better you get, unless you have a crappy short term memory and are clumsy. If that’s the case, then cooking on the line may not be for you.

You also have to do five things at once. The days where I’m doing a bunch of prep, I try to maintain a few projects at one time. Especially when you walk in in the morning to see your to-do list crammed with words and asterisks and exclamations. Ya just gotta crank down and do it.

These are things I’m learning about the industry, specifically kitchen work where communication is just as important as the food.

It’s hard work, but it’s good. It doesn’t make sense unless you love it.

Usually I come home from a long day and still wanna cook,

and well…I love that.

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