Like, so many different tables, they can’t do each table at a time, so confusing
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I’ve worked in a few different restaurants, and the most effective way I’ve seen is to have a position on your line called an expo, short for expediter. They will see the ticket first, then divide it up so each dish will come out at roughly the same time. The expo usually has knowledge of all the stations. For example, a ticket comes through with a steak, a lasagna, and a fettuccine alfredo. Expo will hand the steak part of the ticket to the grill. When expo sees it is about 3 mins away from being done, hands the fett alfredo to saute since that takes about 3 mins. When the steak has about a minute left, window position gets the lasagna (its already cooked, cheese on top just needs to be melted in the melter). Finally it is the expos job to final check the dish, and get it ready to be served (clean sauce dribbles, add garnish, etc.). While heat lamps and guess work will work at a cheaper restaurant, a nicer one will usually have someone like mentioned above.
A large portion of kitchens have adopted technology that has delays programmed for each item and sends them to the kitchen in a specific order based on their cook times. For example, if the kitchen screens are programmed that a well done ribeye takes 15 min, and a burger takes 7 min, the system won’t even send the burger until the steak has been on the grill for 8 min. Theoretically, they should come out at the same time.
My home kitchen, the oven has a warming drawer under it.
Food finishes when it finishes, goes in drawer, and then when everything’s close, the hot-as-shit plates go to the table.
I need to under cook slightly, because drawer/plates will keep cooking it a bit further.
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.
As someone who spent many years working as a line cook and worked his way up to management, it’s all very coordinated if you have a good crew in the kitchen. The guy calling out orders knows how long different things take to cook and calls out the items that take the longest first and then other dishes at the right time for everything to be ready at the right tome. There’s also the other end where someone is putting together the individual meals to sell a check. And an expediter coordinating it as well. All it takes is experience and a good crew.
They don’t. I don’t know what restaurant you’ve been to, but they usually have multiple cooks and orders arrive at different intervals
Some places use heat lamps and will happily let your food wither while the rest of the items for your table are prepared.
Great places will see the executive chef calling out which stations need to begin on which items and at what times, so everything finishes at roughly the same time and goes out to you fresh.
So for example at white tablecloth kinda place I used to work at would serve a multi course menu, and the ticket comes to the kitchen by seat and by course. So for example if it’s just a table for two, it’ll come back something like :
S1: spinach salad, duck confit, ribeye MR, cheesecake
S2: caesar salad, seared scallops, grilled salmon, chocolate cake
So it’s 2 people having 4 courses, and the order above would require cooks from 3 different stations
You’d think that the first thing that gets started is the salads, and you’d be correct, but because it takes a relatively long time to warm the duck confit is going to be started at the same as the salads. The spinach salad comes with a couple of little fried cheese nuggets, so those will be started in the fryer first and left to drain and cook while the rest of the salad is prepared. Dressings and garnish for both salads prepared earlier in the day, including sliced tomato, croutons, spicy pecans.
The duck is of course confit’d days in advance, but it’s still stored submerged in the fat, and it’s relatively dense and needs some time to warm through evenly before getting a light sear to get the skin crispy just before being served. By contrast, the scallops might take 90 seconds to sear, so those don’t get called out to begin until just a few minutes before they need to go out, maybe a little longer if that station is busy. Again the garnish for both are largely done in advance. The duck is served with a blood orange sauce,
Made in advance. The scallops is served on some blanched bok choy greens, and rounds of of crispy pancetta. The pancetta is cooked in advance, and is sliced so thin that it requires no warming beyond the heat of the scallop and bok choy it is served with. This also got a sauce, I forget what, but it was also made in advance.
The ribeye steak are large, so that’s probably going on the grill as soon as salads are sent out of the kitchen. Salmon cooks quicker, and will probably be started a few minutes before the second course is plated. They’re both served with duchess potatoes which are made ahead of time, then warmed in the oven and toasted just slightly under a broiler prior to being served. Both are served with green veg which will be started together, and both dishes have unique sauces which again are made ahead of time and warmed and plated just before service.
For dessert, both the cheesecake and the chocolate cake are made ahead of time, and just need a couple minutes each for plating. Crème anglaise and fresh berries for garnish on the chocolate, and a few squirts of strawberry sauce and and a fanned strawberry for garnish on the cheesecake.
I don’t think anybody has addressed the second part of your question. They do essentially cook for a table at a time (or a few tables at a time). It’s not like they’re firing orders for every table in the restaurant all at once.
At most restaurants expo is a job itself. Usually done by the head chef or a sous chef. At smaller restaurants they might work from sauté or grill (I prefer to expo from sauce/plating) and at bigger ones it will be their only job to coordinate service. If you have a five minute pizza going with a fifteen minute steak, and you know your grill cook is about five minutes behind on tickets (15 cook time plus 5 to finish other tickets and plate), then you tell pizza to fire the pizza after fifteen minutes, so that they both come out at the same time in 20. So that, times however many dishes per seat (how dinner is structured—starters salad tasting menu etc) times however many seats per table, times however many tables. There are a lot of skills other than cooking that you have to learn to be a chef, efficient and measured expo is one of the most important ones imo.
Edit: just saw this was explain like I’m five. TLDR: it’s literally someone’s job to tell cooks when to fire dishes so they all come out at the same time.
A lot of practice.
When I worked in a kitchen I knew exactly how long each order took to make.
A fish and chips basket required 5min of cooking, so I prepared the food, tossed the fish in the fryer, prepared the basket, added a couple lemon wedges and some vinegar then 2min after I dropped the fish, I dropped the fries.
Then you just pull everything out of the fryer at once, season and assemble.
If I also had a burger and fries on that ticket, I’d start by throwing a patty on the grill and drop a double order of fries in that last couple minutes.
Prep the bun, lettuce, tomatoe as well as the lemon and vinegar while the patty cooks. Then drop the fish when the burger is 5min away from being done.
Once that 5min is up you pull the fryer basket, take the patty off the grill, then season the fries and fish and everything is done at once.
This works for any sized order, and we basically all got off work and got drunk, it’s as stressful as it sounds.
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