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

They do a lot of food preparation beforehand. So ingredients are cleaned, chopped and weighed out and the stoves are hot with warm frying pans and boiling water on them. Some things can be left to simmer all night waiting to be served. Even the meat can be cooked saus vide so that the chef only need to brown it for less then two minutes before serving.

When they get the table order in place they start by making sure they have everything in place. Then they go through cooking the thing that takes the longest first. A lot of the skill in cooking is the timing, knowing how long everything takes to cook and planning ahead so you have time to take care of each ingredient. So everything will be ready in the order they are needed to be put on the plates. Some ingredients need to rest a bit as well before serving. But even if the different orders might get ready at different times the servers will not serve until all of them are done. So the plate might be sitting there in the kitchen ready to be served but waiting for the other dishes to be ready.