Kitchen Pranks!? - Page 3

We used food spray on the inside of pants.
then covered with hot pepper powder.
then put back in locker

When they start running around working thats when the fun starts

Sending a noob to mop the freezer is always good for a few laughs.

Having them put bags over pots off hot water to catch the steam, because the steamer was acting up again, is another.

Honey or Karo syrup on the reach-in handles, plastic wrap over the toilet bowl.

Once put a broken ladle, handle only, in the bucket of wing sauce.
When the guy pulled it out, I said "****, how much pepper did you put in that?"

Silly, no?

wow i burn reading that, thats just mean, if u did that to me you would find something in your pants that is 10 times hotter with in the next week, and somthing that sokes in to the skin that you cant just brush off.


yes im a little crazy but arnt we all

I watched someone get fired and then get sued over exactly that. Kid had 2nd degree chemical burns in his crotch and had to go to the hospital because the capsicum seeped into his skin. It was really bad and very ugly.

The funniest practical joke that I've ever taken part in...our expeditor was a small guy, about 5'5". I had a full size low boy reach-in at my station on the hotline that he could easily fit into. I would then ask different people to grab me something out of the low boy. Just to see their faces when they opened the door and a little arm comes flying out and grabs them. The guy would scream "boo!" which was a really nice effect.

Because they never expected a human to be in there, the reactions where priceless. Pure horror. The best was when I told the Executive Chef that my fridge was leaking. When he reached in and got is hand smaked with a little growl, he jumped back and screamed like a little girl and then ran off the hotline.

Good thing he had a sense of humor...kinda.

sticky crotch syndrome

Switch out the baby powder in the mens room with powdered sugar. Many of the line cooks powder to keep chafing down. Powdered sugar gets really sticky when the sweating begins. Doesn't hurt. Just uncomfortable. And fun to watch.

we had a group pof service staff that would pick at plates, one night one of my cooks had his dinner picked apart at the end of the night while he was changing. so the next night, we cut up some chicken breaded and fried it.. we also cut op some rolled line towls breaded and fried them...

"this chicken sure is chewey"

Ah! I used to do the same thing but with corn starch instead of powdered sugar...classic!

Getting a server to grab a cup of steam from the coffee maker is another classic...

I once tied a server's apron to the silverware rack while she was putting desserts together (friend of mine, luckily). When she was finished she picked up the tray with about 5 slices of cheesecakes and pies and took a hard step towards the door....I don't know what made everyone laugh more, the look on her face when she heard 1000 pieces of silverware tumble to the floor or her screams. The desserts were fine though, have to give her that. But she ended up getting pretty good tips from the rest of her tables because they felt sorry for her...

Rubber bands on tray jacks... nuff said

French mustard on a palatte knife and then onto the back of someones pants. Priceless when a kp keeps rubbing it in, or when one of the sous doesnt realize it and spends half the day like that. You just have to make sure you keep them distracted enough while youre getting everything ready.

classic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Greek Hummus

OK, a friend made me come here and join so I could share this horrible story with "the gang"...I don't know if this constitutes a prank, or just a horrible and illegal thing to do, but I admit I LMAO'd when I heard it and have made more than a few kitchens collectively lose it in the telling...
In the early 80s on Long Island, growing up and working summers, I worked at a Greek deli and so became friends with the youngest of the owners 5 sons.
The youngest told me a story about a party they had catered once, a weekend long affair of some kind at which hummus was served, amongst other things.
Day one of the party didn't go well. I can't remember details other than the homeowner/client was described as an out of control, disrespectful arse-munch that had somehow managed to immediately and epically offend one of the brothers.
The result was that the now highly infuriated brother went back to the deli that afternoon and ate as many whole garbanzo beans as he could without chewing, careful not to mash them as he swallowed them whole.
Next morning, he pooped into a colander and ran water from the bathtub faucet over the mess until everything but the solids, mostly whole garbanzo beans, chunks of onion and such - now somewhat less than fresh - was washed away.
After a good rinsing, said brother proceeded to make hummus with the tainted beans, adding extra garlic and black olive to cover up the stinkiness and darker than ordinary hue and then served it at the party, where according to my friend, it was devoured.

nobody got sick.

well, there you have it.

sorry.

^^^That might be the nastiest thing ive ever heard in my life.

I always have problems with foh stealing fries and **** off plates i gonna have to use that fried barmop thing thats great. I mean we get people pretty good dont get me wrong.

Taping little russian waitresses time cards to the ceiling, Taking the nozzles off the soda machine during service, Deglazing the flattop and dumping the greasetrap into someones drink, The melting soufle cup (heat up the sauce for a dish and dont send it out with the dish, then when the foh comes back for the sauce put it in a soufle cup and send it out HOT. The heat from the sauce causes the plastic to shrink to the bottom leaving a waitress covered in sauce) Filling eachothers pockets, street or kitchen shoes (whichever arnt being worn at the time) and leaving them under the steam table (shoe seafood gratin anyone?) Saran wrapping peoples cars, Sending dishwashers or prep externs (down 2 flights of stairs outside in the rain, snow or other inclimate weather) for a number 10 can of mis en place. We usually just rip on each others girlfriends or debate about whose female parts look like butterfly'd steaks and such.

One winter in Aspen, while working at the Hotel Jerome, we did a large banquet and trout of some kind was on the menu and after prepping we had a bucket with at least 100 trout heads and a couple salmon heads. It was freezing cold and that night we took the bucket out behind the hotel and stuck the fish heads to some poor sap that worked at the hotel's car. They were wet and stuck instantly, cut side pressed against the car so the face stared out at you.
We pinstiped the doors, roof and hood with them in a decorative pattern, and then stuck the salmon heds to the headlights and put a cigarette in one of their mouths.

I should tell you about the Cowtail Septapus, but that's kinda long....

Tell a newbie that we need chopped flour on the fly!

Lemon water Ice!

For those of you who are not familiar with "water ice" it is Philadelphia Italian Ice. One day I brought in 1/2 gallon tub of lemon water ice for me so as a nice guy i am I was sharing it with all of my staff in the kitchen. well one of my food runners decided that he would help himself to it with out asking, finishing it before I even had a bite. I stayed calm and began to plot my revenge. The fowling day was around 90+ and 100+ in the kitchen. I brought in the same 1/2 gallon lemon water ice letting him see it . what he did not see was that I pureed white onions with ice and lemon zest! placed it into the freezer. after staff meal we all dug into the fresh water ice and watched him go right back to help him self to the decoy. He proceeded to have a good 4 or five spoon fulls before he started to inspect what he was eating. I was dying laughing. revenge is sweet or should i say not so sweet in this case...

Overlooked kitchen pranking essential

I registered just to enlighten you all to the best pranking tool that was not even mentioned in most of the previous posts... Okay, I admit, I didn't read them all.

PLASTIC WRAP.

Uses:
1. Take victim's purse, plastic wrap it good and tight as not to damage it, place inside 2 gallon plastic bag, cover with horrible concoctions of condiments. Seal with yet more plastic wrap inside yet another plastic bag and fill with water. Freeze and return to original location.
2. Take co-worker's knife roll. Wrap all knives (if you leave them any sharp tools it ruins it) at their access excessively in plastic wrap. Replace in knife roll. Wrap knife roll excessively in plastic wrap. Hide all sharp kitchen utensils. (Optional: Freeze.) This takes far less time to do than to un-do.
3. Oil all but the edges of a two-foot stretch of plastic wrap. At eye level, tape one edge to the in-door and the other to the door frame. For an added punch, add a bit of honey and sea salt. Sticky crap on the handles of kitchen tools can really infuriate a person when it is done, and then overdone.

And some eco-friendly pranks:
Make vinegar ice: enough said. You can even hand your victim their glass with a smile; they won't taste it right away if it's a strong-flavored soda.

Place bar coasters inside commercial size spice shakers. (or use plastic wrap!)

Prep cooks: this one rocks. If you have to slice tomatoes, simply cut the ends off, and then score the toms as if they are sliced, but the core still holds them together. Best to have backups ready if playing on a sous chef or above.

Happy pranking.

I like vacuum packing machines! Our favourite prank is to take an essential item from someone's kit and vacuum it into a small bag. Then either put it into another bag filled with water, vac again and freeze, or vac it into another bag with, say, raw eggs, then put that into another bag with, say, flour, then into another with something like honey, then another with maybe some breadcrumbs, etc etc... The latest one we did was a wheel from a manager's office chair encased in 10 bags alternating with dry and wet ingredients. FUN!!!

Makes me think of my old job.
We had swedish girls coming to Norway to get some practise during culinary school. We asked them to wash the elevator, wich is O.K., but we made them do it in all three stories, and so they did. Stupid blonde swedish girls.

The vacuuming reminds me of Kristoffer Hovland when the culinary team of Norway went to Beijing. He couldnt fit all his clothes into his travellingbag, so he used the vacuum-machine to minimize the space his clothes would need. It worked wonderfully, and he got to China with all of his clothes. His only problem was going back home with all his belongings, + everything he had bought.

At my old job it was all about getting everyones drink. My favorite was raw calamari in the sous chefs coffee. He drank almost the whole thing...yuck. Raw shrimp, tabasco is anotherall time favorite.

Then we moved into more hilarious pranks. Hand full of red chili flakes into the blackening pan..that would clear out the whole line. Then we would plastic wrap the tiolet bowl.

But my two favorites that I did and I still laugh about till this day. We had creme brulee on the menu and teh servers would always beg for them, so I took the ramkin and filled it with mayo and carmelized the top. The server came by and took the biggest spoonful I ever saw........HAHAHA I will never forget that look on his face....

The other one was wasbai thinned out to sauce like texture and drizzled on ice cream. "Hey come try this new sample keylime sauce" That poor girl....Good times

I highly recommend doing the carmelized mayo creme brulee to someone, I was crowned king of restaurant pranks

One of my prep guys asked a dishwasher (with some sense of authority and panic in his voice) to go to the walk-in and get him another gallon of "polka dot milk." The dishwasher said "polka dot milk?!" and the prep replied "yeah, just read the labels really closely. it looks just like the whole, the cream and the 2% but it says 'polka dot' in very small print on the label."

After ten minutes, i felt bad and found him in the cooler and told him that we worked around the polka dot milk need and he could give up, but we really needed him to get back to the dish pit and get us a left-handed china hat. He literally ran to the dish pit to wash whatever he thought was a left-handed chinoise.

The oldest one that I know of is the funnel trick. You bet someone they can't drop a quarter from their forehead into a funnel stuck in the waist band of their pants. Of course you get everybody talking about how impossible it is first to set the stage. Focus on the cockiest person in the kitchen. You put the funnel in their pants, make them tilt their head back and then put the quarter on their forehead. Meanwhile, you stand there casually holding a glass of ice water. As soon as they tilt their head forward, the quarter will fall in the funnel, so you start a big discussion about how they must be cheating as no one else has ever been able to do it, and eventually you come around to they must not be tilting their head far enough back. You get them to tilt their head back farther, and when they do, you empty the ice water into the funnel. Everybody gets a good laugh except the guy with the wet pants. So now you let on about how sorry you are, and you'll give them a chance to get even by betting that you can wipe up the puddle before they can smack your hands with a grill spat. You get the person to sit down behind the puddle with their legs splayed out and the puddle roughly about by their knees. You give them two grill spats and tell them on the count of three you will wipe up the puddle. They have a grill spat in each hand, you have a towel. You count one, two, and then grab their ankles and drag their butt though the puddle while shouting THREE. Now they're wet front and back. In case you bet any money, you win because they never get the quarter in the funnel after the ice water starts, and you do wipe up the puddle before they can hit you with a grill spat. They might hit you after, but that doesn't count. :smoking:

i like how in every bag of potatoes there's always a semi rotten,fowl smelling, semi liquified potato in the sack. i like finding it and tossing it at a fellow employee, along with a "here catch this". needless to say the caught potato liquifies and explodes in the victims hands and lands all over thier faces and uniforms, lol. just something to pass the monotiny of prep time.

You guys are freakin' MEAN!
...i love it :)

I can't bring myself to do these pranks anymore, but an ounce or two of salt or extract or food coloring goes a LONGGGGG way in someone's drink. So does hot sauce; molasses... liquid smoke... But these ideas are kinda amateurish compared to the previous posts.

For some reason ..... the paychecks were/are distributed from a drawer in the prep kitchen, much to the chagrin of me and a few others in that kitchen. 80 or so employees coming into your work area to get their paychecks...
We would cover the handle of the drawer with fish sauce.
A thin layer of canola oil on the table above the drawer ensured that everyone left with stinky fingers and greasy paychecks. They had no idea.
Subtlety.

oh man, there are so many...

back in the day when I was a line cook, we would get the food runner to run to the walk in/freezer/dry storage for all kinds of stuff...saute sticks which were hanging right next to the red handled grill press, cans of steam, burger glue, fish glue and they would all fall for it.. and we'd be busy too so they would be freaking out..

the worst though was to this kid no one liked. it was getting close to closing time and it was him, I, and my friend. he wasnt around and a 2 top walked in. we grabbed tongs off the wall and put them in the fryer....when he came back in there were tongs sitting on the cutting board across from the the broiler and as we walked out, asked him to grab the crabcakes out of the broiler...oh man, we got in a little bit of trouble for that one. :lol:

We always do drinks. The worst was the time someone put ginger oyster sauce in my coffee...

One of the funniest food pranks was when a server ordered French onion soup. we filled the bowl half way with french onion and the other half with chili sauce.

topped it off real nice so he could not see anything. Unfortunately, we had pranked him too many times and he suspected something. BUT the best part, he decided to get his girlfriend (the bartender) to try it. She cried a lot. it was the best.

OMG this thread is just too funny! I don't have any pranks to share besides the pie in the face one.

I was baking at a coffee shop and the owner asked me to make a chocolate pie with extra whip for him and I did it. He stood out of sight right beside the door to the kitchen and when the first foh staff came through he planned to pie them. Well it didn't turn out as he had planned because the next person through the door was his brother! We killed ourselves laughing but somehow the brothers didn't share our amusement!

OMG..no way...did you get that from chevy chase's movie? the griswalds? hahahah j/k