Special Terms. Service Area: A term often used for the part of the kitchen where the waiters and waitresses give and pick up orders.

Service Area: A term often used for the part of the kitchen where the waiters and waitresses give and pick up orders.

 

Pantry: An area in or near a restaurant kitchen where cold foods such as salads and sandwiches are prepared; pantryworkers may be responsible for non-alcoholic beverages as well. In some places, the term is also used to designate a storage area.

 

Chef: The head cook in a restaurant. A chef who has a large staff and many managerial duties is often called an executive chef. There are also specialty chefs, responsible for preparing one kind of dish such as sauces or desserts.

 

Cook: In restaurant usage, an assistant to the chef; some cooks work in the service area.

 

Kitchen Helper: A kitchen employee who performs non-cooking chores such as cutting vegetables or cleaning. Pot: A cooking utensil; the people who wash pots and dishes in a restaurant are called potwashers or dishwashers.

Storekeeper: The employee responsible for storage of equipment and food supplies.

 

Butcher: A person who cuts meats and prepares them for cooking.

 

Range: A large cooking stove.

 

Duck Board: A grill of boards, with spaces between them, that can be laid over a slippery floor.

 

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The size, arrangement and equipment in the food preparation area depend on the number of meals the restaurant handles and the kind of food it serves. It must include tables or counters where the chefs and their helpers can work and the necessary stoves or ranges on which the actual cooking is done. There are many different kinds of equipment on the market including machines for slicing, peeling, and shaping, as well as ranges and ovens for baking, grill, and broiling.

Refrigerators and freezers come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Portable equipment is preferable because it permits rearranging the work areas and easier cleaning.

Some equipment is self-cleaning to cut down on one of the hard­est kitchen chores. Many ranges and ovens are equipped with auto­matic timers that reduce the amount of attention required from chefs and cooks. Kitchen equipment can be purchased in standard models to be assembled according to the needs of the establishment or can be specially designed and custom-built for much more money. A strong trend today is toward automated equipment that reduces chores as much as possible.

Kitchen employees usually wear white uniforms including the famous chefs cap intended to keep hair out of food. The employees are usually provided with lockers in an area where they can change to and from their street clothes; washrooms are usually located adja­cent to the locker rooms.

Among the important considerations in the design of restaurant kitchens are sanitation and safety. Cleanliness is a vital factor in the operation of any restaurant; an establishment that makes its custom­ers sick from unsanitary food won't stay in business very long.

Both sanitation and safety require frequent cleaning of the equip­ment and washing down of the entire area. Most restaurant kitchens have washable floors and walls of tile or plastic that can be hosed. To prevent slipping on vegetable peelings or similar wastes, many kitchens are equipped with duck boards that are laid down in the work areas and removed when the kitchen is washed. Most commu­nities have local health inspectors who make periodic visits to restau­rant to enforce sanitation codes.

The worst health hazards are insects and rodents (rat and mice) that carry diseases, and unsanitary food handling procedures.

One of the biggest dangers in a kitchen comes from grease which is highly flammable. All equipment where a build-up of grease can occur must be carefully cleaned every day. Even self-cleaning equip­ment must be cleaned by hand at regular intervals.

Restaurant kitchens are not tranquil places,they are famous for the pressure under which employees must work during meal service hours. Even with modern air conditioning they are usually very hot and they present many hazards that result in industrial accidents. That's why another necessity in a well-planned kitchen is good ventilation. This should be included in the design when the kitchen is planned rather than later on, since repair or rebuild­ing can be very costly.

The ventilation system should be capable of removing hot air and cooking odours (but not in the direction of the dining room) and pumping in fresh, cool air.

A place that has as many cutting instruments and hot surfaces as a kitchen will inevitably be the scene of a certain number of accidents. The best way to prevent them is by means of an industrial safety training programme for the employees.

Much of the standard kitchen equipment has safety devices such as automatic cut-offs to reduce accidents.

Restaurant kitchens function outside the vision of those in the dining room. Although the work is often hard and hot and is some­times performed under great stress and pressure, it is the heart of the entire operation.

To an outsider the kitchen may be a scene of rush, noise, heat and contusion. Separation of the different duties and areas helps reduce the frantic activity that often characterizes a restaurant kitchen during mealtimes.

In some restaurants the kitchen spreads over several rooms or ar­eas. In the familiar part of the kitchen, hot food is prepared; in the service area, orders are placed and picked up; in the pantry cold food such as salads and sandwiches are made, often with assembly-line methods.

Depending on the size of the establishment, there may be kitchen offices, locker rooms and washrooms.

The boss of the back of the house is the chef who is always the head cook and may sometimes take charge of menu planning and purchasing. In some cases he or she is more manager than cook and is therefore called an executive chef. In larger establishments there may be one or more assistant chefs, in more elaborate restaurants there may be several specialty chefs — a sauce chef, a vegetable chef, a dessert chef, a baker.

Ranking below the chefs are the cooks. Cooks get orders ready for the waiters and prepare dishes such as grilled steaks that are cooked at the last minute. Most restaurants also employ one or more kitchen helpers whose duties include cutting vegetables, stirring, cleaning and other such chores. The helpers are to the kitchen what the bussers are to dining room.

Another job that must be performed continually in a kitchen is washing dishes and pots. During mealtimes a steady stream of dishes comes in dirty, and goes back to the dining room clean. Even when the restaurant has automatic dishwashers it is necessary for employ­ees to scrape and sort dishes and to load and unload the machine and there are always cooking pots from the kitchen to be scrubbed by hand.

The dish and pot washing area should be located so that it is ac­cessible from both the dining room and the kitchen. Bussers bring soiled dishes to the dishwashers who separate dishes from silver from glassware.

Not all restaurants employ a kitchen staff this large. A small es­tablishment may need only a chef and a helper to do the dishwash-jng. Regardless of the restaurant and its staff all these different jobs JRiust be done by the personnel available.