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Hypothetical food safety and ethics question

post #1 of 6
7/19/09 at 11:45pm
Thread Starter 
We were extremely busy for a Sunday today. The servers were in the weeds despite the fact that the kitchen was running smoothly. Usually an order is picked up within a minute of being put up. Today the servers ran long, in a few cases as long as 3 or 4 minutes.

All of this may or may not be what I did, or what my chef said to do. I'm just curious as to what reaction and how severe it would be to the various options.

The servers are at the height of the weeds. Two separate tickets call for a three of the same dish (braised escarole). After it sits in the window for several minutes, then gets taken out, they both bring it back soon within 10 seconds of each other and say it's not hot enough. Server 2 has two of them at her table, server 1 has one. For what it's worth, I'm 100% certain that it was more than hot enough when I put it up.

Should I (a) toss the dishes out and start over? (b) reheat them each in separate pans? (c) combine the two dishes from server 2 in one pan and use a different pan for server 1 or (d) combine them all in one pan and reheat?

Obviously (d) is the shadiest. Assume you did it. What would you do if you realized you did it, told your chef, and he said it's no problem, just keep going. (c) is the second shadiest. Same question. (b) seems ok by me, but to be honest, I haven't taken a food safety course, I've learned all I know from just working. If this is a problem, let me know.
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post #2 of 6
7/20/09 at 4:21am
tough question that I'm sure everyone has encountered a number of times.

I think legally, the answer depends on the health and hygeine laws that exist in your country or state.

Where I am at, if food is sent out to a customer and then sent back to be "corrected" it MUST be made again from scratch. However in the height of service when the metaphorical faecal matter may hit the fan because of this dish and all of the service is resting on this one linch pin of a return then it is not unknown for a plate to be reheated in a pan. Seperately though. As though each plate were a seperate customer on a seperate table.

I would only do this if I had to. I wouldn't combine them all together under any circumstance. You just don't know what that customer has or has doen with it. Maybe I'm too retentive but my head chef just drills it into me.

I just think if I were a customer eating at a restaurant under the same circusmstance I wouldn't want my food reheated with the sickly looking guy on table 2 next to me. Kitchen Karma I call it
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post #3 of 6
7/20/09 at 1:41pm
I think it depends on many circumstances.
I probably won't even be able to think of them all right now.

I'd look to my chef for instruction, sometimes, not always.
I could even disobey a direct order from chef if he/she says to re-heat it and I choose to re-do it again.
You could re-heat depending on the dish, whether it would ruin the dish or not.

It totally depends on many factors, you know...
But in the end I think everyone would agree that the dish should be thrown and re-done again.
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post #4 of 6
7/20/09 at 8:49pm
Practically, what the Chef says is what gets done.

Hypothetically, the guest has complained it wasn't hot enough--not too salty or too raw or whatever, just not hot enough, so I'd reheat each dish separately.

For me, it's the same situation when a guest orders a med. rare steak and you cook it that way, and it comes back becasue it isn't "Cooked enough". In this case I'd toss the steak back on the fire, no qualms. It was the guest's, and presumeably only touched by the guest, and to be consumed by the same guest, he just wanted it cooked more.
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post #5 of 6
7/22/09 at 12:52am
All in separate dishe and all in the nuke at the same time is fine, but you need to track which came off of which plate. If it's reheated to 165 deg, it shouldn't matter, but in my book it does. If you assume each person took more than one bite, then each could possibly have an illness that is now in that dish. If it's bacterial, then 165 deg. should kill it. However, if it's a virus, it can live at a much higher temperature. Don't get me wrong, I came from the time when we never heard of food service gloves. I still think they're nothing more than window dressing for the public. I saw far less contaminated food back then than I do now. With swine flu lurking, however, I'm more cautious than normal. I had a fit one night because the bartender was out to lunch (as usual) and when refilling my drink glass, mixed it up with the person sitting next to me. I told him to either make each drink separate, pay attention (good luck with that!) or use a fresh glass for each drink.
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post #6 of 6
8/24/09 at 2:39pm
It would depend on how the plate came back for me. If they had taken one bite and it was not to their liking I would make them something fresh, but if they had taken half of the plate and then sent it back.. I'd nuke it.
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