How do restaurants and food establishments prepare food so quickly?

Question

And I’m not talking about fast-food joints like macdonald’s. I’m talking about your everyday restaurants, especially asian restaurants where they have many dishes. How do they take your order and have it cooked and out in a reasonable timeframe? (Less than 10mins waiting time)

In: Other

Answer 1

They do most of the food preparation in the morning. Things like thawing ingredients, chopping vegetables, making dough, etc. Things that can cook for hours are started early, things like soups, sous vide meat, sauce, etc. Even potatoes and similar things are made in batches throughout the day so there can be a pot of hot potatoes or rice ready to be served at all times.

The kitchen staff also heats up all ovens and pans before the first customer comes inn, and they stay on all day. And pots of water are put to boil in case they are needed. This means that when the kitchen gets an order they can get straight on with cooking as everything is hot, all ingredients have been prepared, and all long cook time items are already done. It does not take more then 10 minutes to sear a steak and boil some vegetables then serve with potatoes and sauce.

When you see restaurants with many dishes these are often just variants of the same ingredients. For example a burger joint can have a huge menu but most of the items are just different variants of the same dish. Similar with pizza as it is the same dish with slightly different toppings. And most Chinese food is variants of rice and chop suey which are both made in batches waiting to be served as well as ingredients prepared well in advanced that just needs to be fried before serving. There are some restaurants that have a big menu with lots of different items on it, but you should avoid these as there is no efficient way to prepare for all dishes so the kitchen is usually not prepared to make half the menu items. Similarly any oddball item on a menu like salad at a pizza place is probably not going to be good. The best restaurants usually only have one or two items on the menu in each category.