Restaurant horror stories

Culture, Media, General Culture, Chains, General Discussions
41

I just re read Kitchen Confidential. Love that book.

I think just going to high school with a lot of kids in food prep, you hear stuff that makes you queasy. Then again, I got a lot of great food deals because I knew those folks. God knows if those food deals came off the floor.

42

Happens all the time.

43

Nooooooo

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44

NOT HERE!! I hope. :fearful:

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45

LOL - listen I’m not saying employees/servers/dishwashers etc. will eat a piece of half-eaten chicken parm. However, things like, whole uneaten shrimp cocktail, whole uneaten mozzarella sticks, fries/onion rings etc. will all get eaten by staff once returned to the kitchen if not wrapped up to take home.

46

Um…wow!

47

Not properly refrigerating deli meat was the cause of a horrible case of food poisoning for me, on my last night in South Africa before I had to fly back to the US. My mother-in-law probably thought I’d gotten sick on the dinner she’d made, which was not the case at all (it was actually a lovely meal). I still hadn’t fully gotten over things before I boarded the plane for my 16-hour flight, in a window seat.

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48

So this is where the dichotomy between a reasonably priced chain restaurant or perhaps even independent restaurant versus higher end dining gets highlighted.

When you try to create a place that is accessible to many, corners will be cut, shortcuts taken. All in the interest of keeping costs down.

At the other end of the spectrum where cost of the food is a smaller input, the horror stories are not about the prep of food but other things.

I have a friend who was the chef and owner of a starred restaurant. He was obsessed with the quality of ingredients. The quantity of butter that went into his cooking was breathtaking. Nothing was reused. If the quality wasn’t right of something that was just delivered, into the trash it went.

There is a restaurant we often go to that has an open kitchen with a bar that wraps around two sides and diners sit there and watch everything as it’s made. No hiding anything. I remember the first time I went and sat at the bar. I watched a young sous chef fastidiously wiping the counter between preps and I was so impressed by that. The care that went into the food showed up on the plate. Dinner for two is not 29.95. More like 5x of that for the food alone.

You get what you pay for.

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49

“crop dusting”

50

He has lot that sort of stuff in there. Great read for food lovers.

51

Don’t get me started! Okay, here’s my next installment:

  1. I left a place that was actually militant about sauce bottles (date stamped for 21 days after poured, not to exceed the expiration date of the jug it came from of course, constantly refrigerated, and washed, rinsed, sanitized after it was empty before being refilled) to the horror show in my previous posts. I remember it was my first week there and had seen people just refilling sauces day after day without cleaning. Finally, I asked, “So when do we clean them out?” and everyone just kind of looked at me. “We don’t really”, someone said. So I asked when the last time they were cleaned and heard, “Well, [insert name here] used to clean them but she’s been gone for two years.” I went to the manager and asked if I could start cleaning them as they were finished and she said it was a waste of time since we went through the product so fast. Her logic was that these bottles had both a top and bottom cap-- flip the bottle upside down and pour the new stuff in so that it “cycles” through. But I noted how there would still be remnants accumulating over the course of however long the bottles were used (in this case, about two years). Finally, she grabbed my arm and dragged me to the back sinks as a mother would pull their misbehaving child along, handed me a bottle, and said, "You want to clean sauce bottles? Go ahead. GO AHEAD AND CLEAN IT. And she watched me clean this single sauce bottle. I was fumbling with it, of course, and it took longer than normal. I finally handed her the clean bottle and she says, “Great. Are you satisfied?” I just looked at her wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. There was a bottle of ketchup that was kept precariously close to our flat top grill, a very hot area. Left there all day, refrigerated at night, out again, refrigerated etc. At one point it actually turned brown. Still served.
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52

Here is a secondhand story from a coworker who worked as a line cook at a very popular Irish pub in the area. He had many stories, but I will only share one since I want to keep my posts to my own experiences. Anyway, he had come across a piece of moldy corned beef in the fridge and threw it in the garbage. The head chef or whoever saw this said, “What the fuck are you doing?” and pulled the corned beef out of the garbage can, grabbed his knife, and sliced off the mold. “We can still serve this.” I haven’t eaten there since hearing this, though this kind of thing happens everywhere. Kind of like Bourdain in his book mentioning that steaks about to spoil (and actually spoiling) were saved for the well-done customers.

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53

The other classic along these lines are the restaurants who have Heinz Ketchup bottles but fill them with the Sysco / Generic ketchup brand.

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54

Ha! Funny you should say. We had a frequent visitor from Napoli stay with us whenever he got to the US, and dude LOVED Heinz. Had to be Heinz. So, we went out and he tried some out of the old style Heinz glass bottle, and immediately, he exclaimed, “this no is Haynz, is no Haynz.” I tried it. No sht, he was right. Heinz does have it’s own thing going on.

55

This is one reason why I avoid bottles on the table and choose/ask for packets… another is I have no idea how they treat/clean/refill their bottles. The thought of condiments out of refrigeration for days/weeks/months is not a good one for me.

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56

Oh boy. Harkening back to the refrigeration thread from CH days. Ketchup, eggs. Should they be in the fridge?

57

Both are in the fridge here. And these days even more than what I used to put in it (seeds, nuts, some flours, anything with fat, etc.).

58

Jesus, Greg (@gcaggiano) and Junior (@NotJrvedivici) you guys are killing me. Like, dying small deaths with every post you make.

Still, somehow, I say “Thank you” for the info.

Thanks, Greg and Junior for stuff I really didn’t WANT to know, but stuff I’m actually GLAD to know.

I think.

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59

Cooking oils?

60

Some… like toasted sesame, where even small bottles can hang around for a while. I mostly use EVOO for everything except frying, and canola for shallow frying (I don’t deep fry) and they stay in the cupboard as I’ve never had one go rancid.