Eli5 how on earth to restaurants get the orders out for each table at the same time despite the dishes taking different amounts of time to cook?

Question

Like, so many different tables, they can’t do each table at a time, so confusing

In: 327

Answer 1

Most kitchens don’t cook things from start to finish when ordered.

Pastas, sauces, soups, confectioneries, basically anything that isn’t a solid piece of meat is premade, and even preportioned by the prepcrew in the morning.

In essence, when you place an order, the only things they’re doing are:

1) Cooking a chicken breast/steak.

2) Dropping stuff into the deep fryer.

3) Heating up the rest of your meal.

This narrows the amount of time needed to get dishes out, and any other minor time differences are smoothed out by the use of a heat lamp to keep finished dishes warm.