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What is the workflow like for a restaurant serving pancakes?

11K views 49 replies 17 participants last post by  the novice 
#1 ·
(By pancakes, I'm referring to American-style fluffy breakfast pancakes.)

Are pancakes made to order? Is someone just constantly making them at a station not specific to any particular order so that there is a small pile accessible to other chefs to finish with toppings/plate? Is there some soft of holding method?
 
#3 ·
Stay 5 orders ahead at all times, they are cheap enough
 
#4 · (Edited)
You can make your best guess, based on business and anticipated rush, and make a batch up, enough that when

you get low you still have time to make more in a slowdown time. Hold them under or in enclosed heat, stacked.

New stack for each batch. My limit is 15 minutes--when that's up start tossing the earliest ones into the gunker.

If you have no reserve when another rush hits, well that's life on the line.

And expect a little waste here--that's the price you pay for making your life a little more convenient.

Now, that's basically for buttermilk fluffers--after a time they make LOOK okay but they start to taste like the

heat-lamp special. If in doubt, break off a piece of one and taste. However other types of cakes, like pumpkin

and other "filled" type batters tend to hold a little longer, but aren't usually as in demand. Experiment.
 
#7 ·
Hotcakes (either oatcakes, yeasted or blueberry) are run weekly at the summer camp. Since 75 percent of the campers (mostly families at Oakland Feather River Camp) come to the dining hall in the first 15 to 30 minutes of the meal, I work ahead to cover the rush. Twenty-four cakes go in each 2-inch hotel pan. I have enough in the hot box to take care of the rush. I switch to preparing a pan or two at a time after the rush is over.
 
#8 ·
How big is the restaurant, how many daily covers at what percentage of pancakes, and how big is the grill? We have 42 seats, do approximately 250 covers on a Sunday and average 20% pancakes on our 4' flat top. They cook in 4-5 minutes and are all cooked to order. I can't imagine trying to hold them.
 
#12 ·
Sandbagging is not something I'm a fan of, and nowhere I've worked has pre cooked pancakes. It's always better to be organized, IMO. Workflow at the one dedicated breakfast place i worked was one flattop, probably 6', shared by pancakes, crepes/swedish pancakes, french toast and hashbrowns.
In that scenario, cooking pancakes you didn't need could screw you if you got hit by crepes. But the hashbrowns were a different story, we would just start dropping them when people started coming in.
 
#16 ·
Hard to do 10-20 orders of eggs at a time in a pan to temp.
Eggs are better IMO on the flat top. Easy to flip too. Easy to control temp.
Of course. In fact, it's impossible to do 10-20 orders at a time with say, only an 8 burner stove! That's why I asked the OP how many seats, how many covers and what % of orders have eggs. We do 250 covers in our 42 seats and all in pans. What do you find hard about flipping in pans? Just a flick of the wrist. Big advantage over a flat top is you can turn off a burner to slow things down. You have to plate off a flat top to stop the cooking. Give me a pan fried egg any time.
 
#17 ·
Normally, I would feel like a jerk, but Lolzor.  The easiest thing to cook besides toast, is pancakes.  Honestly, I think toast is easier to screw up but not as hard to master, but that is a whole other debate per se.  If you are always getting screwed on grill space, then you may have too small of a grill for the number of seats and your extensive menu, but more likely it is just poor organization or bad habits.  If you have a six inch grill, and a six burner stove, which is most kitchens, no matter how buried you get 3 solid cooks should be able to pwn that rush.  Do the crepes and omelets in pans and everything else on the flat top.  Flat top eggs are so fast.  You can cram a ton of over-easy eggs, pancakes, home fires and other things on a 6 ft grill.  You can bury the service staff when the stars align.

Lol.  I am by no means a bona fide chef (yet), but I cooked breakfast in a little dump across from a University for years that would do easily 500+ tickets on a Sunday breakfast, mostly 4-6 tops, with a line out the door with just a 6ft grill, a 6 burner stove, and a conveyor toaster with less than 10 minute ticket times all day, with the lunch menu kicking in at noon on top of it all.  Granted, we didn't have crepes (praise be to Zeus for that!), but we had everything else and did benedicts, frittatas and steaks and would go through at least 500lbs of potatoes on a Sunday (6am-3pm).  One guy can bang out so many basic breakfasts by just flipping a field of eggs, pumping out toast, and grabbing potato and bacon that just hangs out.  We never really stuck to any one way, we flowed our way around whatever came by doing what would work best then, and we had all worked together for years, but there is no excuse for sandbagging anything breakfast besides bacon and potatoes.

A lot of Greek diners I have worked in keep their pancake batter a little runny because they thin out more and cook a lot faster.  Of course, these places are super cheap and turn serious tables so the average customer doesn't know what really good food is anyways.  But still, holding pancakes?  Hilarious.

I may get a lot of hate for this, but whatever.  I'd hate to have my first post on here ever to come off as a flaming one (not my intent), but I had to be the gadfly.  I may not have extensive knowledge (yet) that isn't even appreciated by most of the dining public, but I've run circles around a few chefs on their line doing their menu doing stuff I have just learned because of keen instincts and moves tempered in the bowels of Hades.  It's not just technique and terminology, optimizing your space, order of operations and movements is key. 
 
#18 ·
Normally, I would feel like a jerk, but Lolzor. The easiest thing to cook besides toast, is pancakes. Honestly, I think toast is easier to screw up but not as hard to master, but that is a whole other debate per se. If you are always getting screwed on grill space, then you may have too small of a grill for the number of seats and your extensive menu, but more likely it is just poor organization or bad habits. If you have a six inch grill, and a six burner stove, which is most kitchens, no matter how buried you get 3 solid cooks should be able to pwn that rush. Do the crepes and omelets in pans and everything else on the flat top. Flat top eggs are so fast. You can cram a ton of over-easy eggs, pancakes, home fires and other things on a 6 ft grill. You can bury the service staff when the stars align.

Lol. I am by no means a bona fide chef (yet), but I cooked breakfast in a little dump across from a University for years that would do easily 500+ tickets on a Sunday breakfast, mostly 4-6 tops, with a line out the door with just a 6ft grill, a 6 burner stove, and a conveyor toaster with less than 10 minute ticket times all day, with the lunch menu kicking in at noon on top of it all. Granted, we didn't have crepes (praise be to Zeus for that!), but we had everything else and did benedicts, frittatas and steaks and would go through at least 500lbs of potatoes on a Sunday (6am-3pm). One guy can bang out so many basic breakfasts by just flipping a field of eggs, pumping out toast, and grabbing potato and bacon that just hangs out. We never really stuck to any one way, we flowed our way around whatever came by doing what would work best then, and we had all worked together for years, but there is no excuse for sandbagging anything breakfast besides bacon and potatoes.

A lot of Greek diners I have worked in keep their pancake batter a little runny because they thin out more and cook a lot faster. Of course, these places are super cheap and turn serious tables so the average customer doesn't know what really good food is anyways. But still, holding pancakes? Hilarious.

I may get a lot of hate for this, but whatever. I'd hate to have my first post on here ever to come off as a flaming one (not my intent), but I had to be the gadfly. I may not have extensive knowledge (yet) that isn't even appreciated by most of the dining public, but I've run circles around a few chefs on their line doing their menu doing stuff I have just learned because of keen instincts and moves tempered in the bowels of Hades. It's not just technique and terminology, optimizing your space, order of operations and movements is key.
No need to apologize for one's own opinions, and I agree with most of your post, although I do prefer eggs cooked in a pan vs. flat top. We only sandbag potatoes, bacon and sausage. Never pancakes. That said, I suspect a bit of hyperbole in your post perhaps? 500 lbs. of potatoes for 500+ covers? Given that probably 20% of the count doesn't get potatoes (with their pancakes, french toast etc) that's well over a POUND of taters per person. That's either an exaggeration or just plain gross plating.
 
#20 ·
500 lbs for over 500 tickets. Most tickets on a Sunday breakfast rush were at least 3- 4 orders. Booths could seat 6, all tables were set up for 4. No 2 top seating. It was all families and groups of college kids on the weekends. No singles, not really any couples. We didn't even have a counter (they took it out for more booths). Double hashbrown was really popular with the basic special (buck more) and we loaded up the homefries. No one else around even did hashbrowns so people went there just for that. They came off the back of a sketchy unmarked truck hauled by possible felons working for some Ukranian guy that unloaded them from local distributors to the dumpy places. People could add an order of homefries or hashbrowns to anything breakfast for buck on the weekend (but everything went up in price on weekends, heh heh). So we sold a lot. There was no portion control with the potatoes either because they were nothing in cost. These were not Sysco's finest; often sprouted and getting to the edge. Didn't matter after boiling/peeling. That's 500+lbs of bagged potatoes, not prepped. After prepping (peeling, throwing out bad spots etc) and waste you lose weight as well. Not to mention the bags are never exactly 50lbs each.

I myself have no preference anymore. Each has its merits. I respect anyone's preference as well. Both are better than poaching lol. A master breakfast cook should be able to do both. But, many dive places use too much oil in the pan, especially if they do not use non-stick pans, so they can be too greasy for my taste. Scrambled is always much better from the pan though. If you have like 30 orders of over-easy all day, pans will bog you down, and then it takes 2 guys to cook/plate those. Plating from the grill is faster. But, flat top eggs can be an unnecessary pain, especially when doing lunch orders as well. We would just do whatever worked best at the moment given the board. Pan eggs are easier though. Anyone should be able to do them, which is what is god about the technique. I mastered it in half a day. In two days I could handle 4 pans with both hands and flip left-handed no problem. But, I had a good teacher. It takes much more skill to sling flat top eggs. It took me quite a while to master that. I always enjoy the endless conversation cooks can have about the topic though.

What is your opinion on omelets though? Most people think I'm nuts for actually liking pan omelets more. I think the presentation is never as good, but I think they taste better and have a better texture if they don't brown too much. I only worked at one place that did them (with real butter!) and they were so good. All fresh veggies sauteed in the pan first to order too.
 
#23 ·
It'd be about the same for Saturday too.  Idk.  We didn't count.  A lot less than you would think though.  Unfortunately you'd have to.  These cheap potatoes would be sprouted, have bad spots and peeling acted as a cheaper form of quality control than buying better potatoes.  They would be these massive Russetts that people around here just call chef potatoes, which usually means #2 Russetts.  We would call them number threes as a joke. We didn't exactly use classical techniques.  Around here the Greeks and Asians almost always boil and then peel while hot, it is much faster.  You put on thick rubber gloves and use the back of a cheap steak knife, and it goes fast.  There is a little more waste, but then again they're so cheap and it is really productive.  It hurts like hell when a stray chunk hits your arm though.  The skins fly off when you get it down.

You cool them whole (not in the cooler, the tub floods and they taste bad) before putting them on the slicer of a box grater.  Usually someone would always be doing potatoes during the day and at night once Wednesday or Thursday came around.  You spend half the week sandbagging for Saturday and Sunday.  We would try to not have to have any working on the stove for Friday, Saturday, Sunday breakfast so we'd have all the burners for soup, specials, cooking etc.  Usually the dad would put 6 smaller pots on at 4 am everymorning so they'd be off by opening, then you'd be down to 3 bigger pots on the back of the stove all morning, usually a soup, and just two burners for breakfast.  Most lunch and dinner items were grilled so you could load the stove up again at night during the week.  During the week we'd keep a poached tailpot on the charbroiler and move it onto the flatop if someone ordered poached, which almost never happened, and would be delayed.  Take that eggs benedict jerks.  We didn't exactly poach correctly during the week, but it never mattered.  We'd have like a whole shelf in the walk-in with just fish tubs of spuds.  Friday and Saturday was just non-stop FIFO, new would go in as old hit the line.  Usually those cheapskates would get the busboy in early to help out with potatoes at server wage lol. 
 
#24 ·
I don't get the sandbags away for tea saying.  I tried looking it up too lol.  Is that a local or oldschool thing?

Yeah, but easily a quarter of that would be the special which was 2 eggs, toast, potato, and two pieces of bacon.  Back in '06 this place would give you that with a cup of coffee for six bucks before tax. That's cheap for Long Island kids in Western NY with mommy's credit card. If you do flat top eggs, and have a sick grill guy, those orders just fly out.  One thing that helped: we had a big sign up and every page of our menu said NO SUBSTITUTIONS OR MODIFICATIONS at the top.  You could add stuff, but not much else.  A new server that forgot that would get reamed and the customer just got what we gave them lol.  No egg white junk either.  The running joke was the servers would tell the customer we were out of them.  Any questioning of that logic was met with that is what they told me, I don't know how they do them back there.  We wouldn't do special stuff for people, except for like a few locals we really liked, who always got the same thing.  If eggs benedict annoyed us too much that morning, they'd just 86 it.  If you wanted to eat there, it was their way or the highway.  You kind of had to be that way with stupid obnoxious hungover college kids at that volume.  Who knows what disaster they'd stick with if you let them.

Usually the old man would expedite in a heavy Greek accent, so he'd just call out how much to drop on the grill, and you'd just read the tickets to do toast and plate.  Plus, the servers or runners topped many items (salsa, powdered sugar, chocolate syrup etc) before drop off.  It was busy but not a complete poopstorm.

Could you imagine cooking that much breakfast with custom orders?  Ugh.  I never really appreciated their model until I left that town and worked at slower but more customer service oriented places.
 
#26 ·
You can hold them for up to a few hours ( covered in a slow oven, alto sham etc), with bad results IMO.

Make them to order they take like 5 minutes. When it is very busy, brunch, do some ahead or you will run out of space on a typical flat top grilla
You PEELED 500+ pounds of potatoes just for Sunday service? How many man hours did that take?
Get the dishwashers to do it as they come in. Peel them and put them in a big cambro full of water.
 
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