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Silliest Things...

21K views 75 replies 33 participants last post by  missmeganmouse 
#1 ·
Stupidest things heard/said/done in the kitchen..
Where I work I never cease to be amazed by some of the things I see and hear.
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*Whilst reducing berry coulis "Why don't you just thicken it with roux instead?", from the owner
*"How do I fold the pizza boxes?" -new cook
*"Can you get me the ingreadients for roux", I've done so only to be asked what the butter was for a moment later
*On a docket "Seafood Pizza - no seafood"
*The boss has seen me smelling some squid and said "Don't worry, it isn't going off, the smell is from the starch escaping"
*"This chicken is tough, dry and tastes strange", "chef, that's pork..."
*The boss has come up to me to tell me she washed/preped spinach for me "Um that's not spinach it's bok choy", "yeah they're the same thing"
*The place we buy bin liners from is closing down, the logical thing to do? Buy 8500 of course, yay we now have a seven year supply of garbage bags..
*Another docket "Mud cake - served very hot", so you want a bowl of hot chocolate soup yeah?
*And another docket "Chicken special - med rare" *sigh*
*"Which ocean do our capers come from?" -waitress
*"Maybe if we just leave the deep fryer on overnight?" One of the more common answers to fixing all the above..
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So anyone else seen some good ones? I can only hope most of you are spared this sort of thing, but do share if you're not that fortunate ;)
 
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#2 ·
"How would you know, I cut them?" - after telling someone that what they claimed were sliced oranges were actually grapefruit.
"Is the chicken fried steak made with white meat or dark meat?"
"Can I have a different pasta in that dish? I'm allergic to penne".
"Your spinach is too green". - Food & Beverage Manager, after looking at a spinach dip.
"They'll have the lasagna, but without the cheddar" - waitress, after being told that the pre-baked pans of lasagna have 4 cheeses, one being a small amount of cheddar.

On a slightly different bent.....
 
#3 ·
I love these

"Theres a problem with my Shrimp Cocktail, its cold"
"My lamb is overcooked!" Customer referring to the rack of lamb he ordered EXTRA-well done
"NY Strip Steak no mashed potatoes sub extra steak" - I stared at the waiter that put this in for a good 30 seconds before he realized it wasn't going to happen
"French Onion Soup, no onion"
 
#4 ·
So how do you deal with the 'morons', oops I meant customers of course!...for instance the idiot who said the super well done lamb was overcooked. Do you replace the order with a 'smile', say no way, or what. Are we in the "customer is always right territory" or have things advanced to where so-called customers like that are told to bugger off and never come back.
 
#5 ·
Lets see

-"this steak is not cooked" from a diner who ordered a rare steak
- " this was so spicy I could barely eat it" from a diner who asked for double hot sauce and proceeded to tell me about it as I looked at the crust they left on their plate
(and all I wanted to do was be sarcastic, but I told her that if that happens again to send it back and we will make a new one)
- "over well eggs on the fly" -from a server who forgot to punch in an order, sorry but over well eggs cannot be done on the fly (we smile and nod alot when that happens)
 
#6 ·
lol @ some of the above, let's see there's too many of them for me to think of ...


- "if the head chef can put fillet steak on a plate with a bone next to it and send it out as Venison ..."

- "this is how we got the White Rose Award for the best hotel in yorkshire, by cooking microwavable, frozen, pre-packed chicken satay noodles and pukka pies"

- "why you making cous cous, it's supposed to be a pasta salad"

- 'does anyone know what this oven timers for?' someone else: 'it's to tell you that the foods ready' "

- 'has anyone seen the tyhme?' someone else: 'yeah, it's half past three'

- 'does anyone know what the difference is between a blackberry and a bramble?' - 'yeah, blackberry's a phone and bramble's a fruit'

- 'the bechamel you made yesterday split' - 'no it didn't, that was just the melted butter i put on top of it to stop it forming a skin'

- 'i can see a dumb waiter from here'

- 'the plates are meant to be ****ing hot, you're taking out hot food and you're supposed to be a waiter you should know this'

- 'this stuffing is the best i have ever tasted' - a vegetarian waitress to the head chef that made stuffing with beef stock

- waiter to head chef: "chef, could you please make sure the soup for sunday is not mushroom soup"
head chef: "why is it someone you know who's booked in"
waiter: "yes"
head chef to me: "the soup for sunday is cream of mushroom soup"
 
#7 ·
I always liked the table of ten people which 1 person gets the 7 course tasting menu.

My personal favorite is-- excuse me, the cake with the marzipan carrots on the top, is that carrot cake?? Me- "es madame, the cake with the carrot garni is indeed carrot, you are quite the perceptive gourmand"
 
#8 ·
These made me giggle uncontrollably.

@shelta - I've always had to make it right for the customer. I had to give a refund for the overcooked lamb, had to saute shrimp to make a warm shrimp cocktail, and have had to skim onions out of onion soup so that its just oniony-flavored beef broth. The things we do to make the customer happy.

I know I have a few more to add here, I'll put them when I think of them.

*edit* Just thought about one.

Order for 2 steaks, one medium, one well. The person that ordered the medium steak asked for some a-1 sauce. The person that got the well done steak cried out "THAT IS A SIN, PUTTING A-1 ON IT. DONT YOU KNOW HOW TO EAT STEAK???"
 
#9 ·
"ooooh, what's that ?!!!"
(me) "smoked salmon M'am"
"Oh...... Is it, does it, like, taste fishy?"
(with a straight face) "Well, a lot of people say it tastes a bit like chicken".

The Chef overheard me on that one, and I got a tongue lashing. A few hours later I overheard him relating the incident to one of the owners, both were laughing.....
 
#10 ·
I had a peice of over cooked chicken sitting off to the side of my grill. It was a step under chicken jerky and the owners wife walks by. Here's the conversation:

Owner's Wife: "What's that chicken doing there? Are you planning on eating that."
Me: "No, I dropped one too many, and I was keeping it there to see if I could sell it. My fault, I'm sorry."
OW: "Well, is there anything you can do to make it moist again? Like, throw it in the steamer maybe?"
Me: "No, that would just cook it more. It's dead. It's trash."
OW: "Are you sure?"
Me: "Yes ma'am, there's nothing we can do with it."
OW: "Are you sure enough to be taking money out of my pocket?"
At this point, I'm doing everything I can not to say something about while she's bitching about 82 cents worth of chicken, the bartender is double pouring patron, and the server is taking the initiative to comp a meal without a manager's consent.
Me: "Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do with it."
OW: "Aren't you going to culinary school? And you can't even make chicken moist again?"
And I lose it.
Me: "Look, you're telling me to un-cook chicken. I can't do what's not physically possible. If I could, you'd be paying me a **** of a lot more." Then I pulled out a couple dollar bills out of my pocket. "Here, that's for the chicken."

That incident almost got me fired. I've grown up a bit, and I'm a little embarrassed about how I handled the situation, but I was busy, and she was standing way too close to me.

*Edit: Also, the oven timer joke made me laugh.
*Second Edit: So did the extra steak subbed for potatoes. I actually laughed out loud.
 
#12 ·
A former owner of mine once added a NY Strip special to the board without consulting me first. It was already on the menu at the same price with a choice of side, her "special" just came with steak fries. That was stupid enough, but when I found out about it mid-service and asked her what the **** she was thinking she said she thought they were called steak fries "because they go with steak".

This lady also insisted I used Sweet Baby Ray's on our ribs, without doctoring it in any way, and then had the gall to write "Famous Homemade Barbecue Sauce" on the menu. An authentic southern barbecue joint was located less than one mile down the road. I was ashamed to walk out of that kitchen wearing my whites most days.
 
#13 ·
The answer is yes. Just watch their faces. Than pause, for just a moment, and tell the truth so they don't run away crying. Again, toying with new people is a tradition that really breaks the tension in a kitchen.
 
#14 ·
I helped a student that I spent 90% of my classes and graduated with get a job where I'm at. I ask her one day to gather the ingredients for hollandaise as I needed to make an order on the fly (we don't feature it on the menu, but someone asked for it). She took an unusually long time but then returned with a big bowl. Inside are tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, peppers, and some garlic, but no eggs, butter, or lemon juice.

A cook for a very expensive downtown chicago restaurant made the mashed potatoes too liquidy. When told to "fix it" by the chef, he throws cornstarch in it and stirs it around, it thickens up. When the chef returns to taste the potatoes, he makes one of those gordon ramsay barf motions and orders the whole batch scrapped and redone by someone else.

As a parting gift from our former Executive Chef, he offered to clean and reorganize the cooler completely on his last day. He placed our raw poultry rack DIRECTLY next to our produce rack (they used tobe on opposite sides of the cooler). They weren't touching, but chicken and lettuce being 2 inches away from each other was a little too uncomfortable for the new chef, who ordered everything put back to where it originally was.

Our chef thought of a menu special for the day that included "braised root vegetables". When informed by our supervisor that our variety of root vegetables was not very plentiful, he ignored him and said "use whatever we have". He stopped the menu special from running when he saw the first plate come out with just celery and carrots.
 
#15 ·
Customer > waiter "Do you cook your roast potatoes in the deep fat fryer, or are they done properly in the oven?"
Waiter>Customer "Hold on, I'll go and ask"

Customer>waitress "I have an allergy, are there any nuts in the syrup sponge pudding?"
Waitress>customer "Hold on, I'll go and ask"

Customer>waitress "Can you tell me what's in the chicken and mushroom risotto?"
Waitress>customer "Errm well it has some chicken and er mushrooms"
Customer>waitress "So what is the risotto part then?"
Waitress>customer "That will be rice madam, risotto is a rice dish"
Customer>waitress "OK I'll have the chicken and mushroom risotto without the rice please"

Im sure there are plenty more, just can't think of them at the mo....
 
#16 ·
9 year old niece who's just dined with Auntie at a really nice restaurant.....
we had piccolo fritto with "black licorce vegetable"....lightly batter and fry veg and they'll eat it.

flounder with buerre blanc.....as we get in the car she asks if flounder is Ariel's friend from the movie......
 
#17 ·
There's no end to it. We once had a waitress go to the bar and order a shrimp cocktail from the bartender. I was visiting the kitchen of a place I used to work at and was talking to one of the cooks about the salamander in the kitchen where I work now. Another employee overheard and said "I didn't know you could eat those". Before I could say anything, the other guy started running with it. "Oh yeah, they're really good. " (Me) "Well you have to be really careful because it's easy to over-cook salamanders." (Him) " What would you say they taste like, frog legs?" "Nah, more like chicken I think. Or maybe escargo." I looked over at the kitchen manager who was sitting at his desk and his whole back was shaking he was laughing so hard. That guy still thinks we serve reptiles. We never told him what a salamander is.
 
#20 ·
A cook that lasted for two weeks "Do we really need to mop the floor? it's just going to get dirty again tomorrow." & "Hey boss can I go smoke a cigarette" me "after these orders go out" him "oh man, can't you just send them out for me" & "Dang I hoped it wouldn't be busy" & "do you think the waitresses could come back and read the tickets to me" same cook after cutting himself to my then girlfriend now wife "I only cut myself to have your undivided attention"

A server that lasted a month rang in a side of mashed potatoes ($.95) sub cheesecake ($7) the cook pointed it out to me and asked if he should make it. same server "i'm hypo glocemic so I need to snack alot" terminated after three write ups for eating in my walk in


A client with alot of gaul asked me at a table visit with three tables in my dining room at 7:00 on a snowy friday night in December 08' "how is the economy treating you?"

Training a cook at a bbq after soaking wood coals with lighter fluid "now what do we do with them?" some things I guess they don't teach at culinary school.

after running a 25% food cost and 11% labor cost a former boss told me "we really need to start hammering down these cost" I gave my notice two weeks later.

while interviewing for a job i ask "what kind of food cost do you run" the owner "why?"
me "well i would like to know what type of cost I am supposed to be running" the owner "well as long as we are making money it doesn't really matter."!

At CIA after seeing chef Siebold cut half of his finger off with a ban saw doing a demo on breaking down a whole veal wrapping it up with tape and throwing a glove over was then giving another demo asks the class "what are we looking at here" pointing with a bloody hand my classmate says "your finger" this was the same classmate that accidentally bumped his back that caused the accident with the ban saw.

I've seen people do alot of dumb things as well, so many I probably can't remember them all but that would be a funny forum as well.
 
#21 ·
I hear so many stupid things at work, from servers who enter an item months after it was discontinued to customers who don't know that seared ahi is raw in the center. But the ones that stand out to me are when we had a stir fry on the menu with optional chicken. And someone ordered the chicken blackened, which is idiotic enough. But then they sent it back because it was too spicy. Then there was the time our FOH manager called down to the kitchen and the food runner answered the phone. He asks us, "what's our dinner special tonight?" We say, "Grilled salmon steaks with mashed & veggies." Then he says, "What kind of steak is it?" And we all yell "SALMON STEAKS, YOU ****ING ****!!!"
 
#22 ·
I could go on for days about servers and their idiotic questions. In the top ten is one who asked, after serving a sesame crusted, torch charred yellow fin steak about 300 times in one week, "Why is this one raw in the middle?" The answer from our poissonier was, "Because it's 4 inches thick and seared with a torch just long enough to toast the sesame, you moron." It was even on the menu with a big red "Served Extra Raw" next to it.

Another was, again from a server, "What's in the minced pork and almond patties?" I responded, "Well, there's some pork and there's some almonds and there's some pork and some more almonds." He stared at me for a minute and said, "So it's just like it's written on the menu?" All I could muster was, "Please go away now." That makes a great sausage, by the way. The nuttieness of the almonds perfectly compliments the smokey sweetness and saltiness of the pork. Natural casing, chill over night to let it marry, roast, mangia.
 
#23 ·
I like the pork and almond combo... I am going to have to try making that myself!

Stupidest thing I have heard yet..

From a guy calling in to bail on his shift "I can't come in today because I don't know what happened but I thought it was tomorrow and I forgot I was working today." (guy was off the next day too) As annoying as it was, it has to be the lamest reason I have ever heard for missing work.
 
#26 ·
Menu item: Seared Tuna Salad-Seared Tuna on Baby Greens with Citrus-Hazelnut Vinaigrette

Customer asks me (Chef/Owner): "How do you sear the tuna, do you take it out of the can?"
 
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