Had a brutal Saturday night that taught me about prep work

Last month we got slammed on a Saturday in Portland, 80 covers for dinner service and I thought I had enough shallots diced for the night. By 6:30 I was out and had to stop everything to chop more while tickets kept coming in. My sous chef looked at me and said 'you know better than this' which stung because she was right. I spent 20 minutes scrambling when I could have just done an extra quart during my afternoon prep. Has anyone else had a specific shift where poor prep almost wrecked the whole night?

2 comments

2 Comments

robinson.leo1mo ago

Hang on a second, that's a good story but the numbers don't quite line up for a Portland kitchen. 80 covers on a Saturday night is NOT "slammed" for a real dinner service, that's actually pretty slow. A busy Saturday should be twice that easy, maybe more depending on the place. If you're running out of shallots with only 80 people coming through, you might be over-portioning or your prep math is way off. I'd check your recipe costs too, because using that many shallots on 80 plates means something's out of whack with how you're cooking. Proper prep is critical, but your bigger issue might be portion control, not just needing more prep time.

wendy_bell831mo ago

80 covers on a Saturday in Portland is actually pretty busy for a lot of solid places that seat 40-50. I've worked at a few that would kill for that number on a weekend.