Are chefs/cooks at resturants allowed to cook food that hasn't been ordered yet?

Question

Are chefs/cooks at resturants allowed to cook food that hasn't been ordered yet?

Answer 1

It depends on what type of rest. you decide to eat at. If you go to a fine dining rest. then NO! Every thing is cooked to order.If you to a chain  rest were there is no chef only cooks then yes.

Answer 2

They don't pre-cook their food, unless it's a special or something that can be prepared beforehand. I work in a family owned restaurant, and unless it's chili, or soups, or casseroles, it's not precooked.

However, if you are talking restaurants like Olive Garden, Denny's, Perkins, then their food is prepackaged to a degree. That's why when you order something from the menu and it looks just like the menu's picture, it's because they basically just heat it up. Like scrambled eggs and omelets are frozen eggs, like eggbeaters.  You can tell by looking at the food that it's already made up. I've gotten the same thing from those restaurants and it looks the same each and every time.

We just ate at Olive Garden, and the chicken parm were just patties of chicken. My son ordered Chicken alfredo, and the chicken was grilled just like what you can buy in a  store. I can definately cook better than Olive Garden!

So I would dare say that any chain restaurants do already have prepared food to work with. But I would say that private restaurants do not. Any meat is not precooked.

Answer 3

My Husband is a cook for an Italian restaurant and they prep food like cut everything like onion,pepers and herbs they have everything ready but they don't cook your meal until you order it but of course they have partial of it ready but not cooked yet

Answer 4

a lot of restaurants do partial cooking or preparation to make the final prep go faster..  for example, sauces and salads are often prepped in advance..  any meats served cold as well..

Answer 5

All restaurants prepare food in advance. Pate, roast, soups, casseroles, potatoes, puddings, desserts, etc. There is no way you can go into a restaurant, pub, cafe of the street and order a roast dinner and expect it to be ready in 15 minutes. They will know from experience how much food to prepare.

Answer 6

Well, provided they keep the pre-cooked food stored properly and heated or cooled according to health code regulations, there is no specific policy that prohibits serving pre-cooked and prepared foods to a customer.  

So...yes they are allowed to cook food that hasn't been ordered yet.  

But it's not usually the "done" thing at fine dining establishments and while many restaurants do precook portions of their fare--particularly side dishes--it’s very unusual for an entire dish to be already plated and waiting prior to your order unless you are in a fast food place or a cafeteria setting, but it does happen, usually due to one of the following reasons.

1. ANTICIPATION: With a very popular menu item or "daily special".  Daily specials are often made up in mass quantities in advance and just heated and served when you order.  Basically the food is heated, plated and garnished prettily then served.  So with an item that the staff knows will be a "hot seller" the kitchen staff could "anticipate" your order and have a certain number of plates hot and ready to go out upon ordering during a rush--that might be a forgivable "pre cooked meal" situation.

2. OOPS!: With a missed special order.  This is done--but rarely, and only when the food has not been sitting for too long and has been properly stored according to health and sanitation regulations.  For example, the kitchen gets an order for a chef's salad, makes it, then the waitress returns after it is prepared to say that the customer requested no bleu cheese or onion.  It is set aside and staff remake the special order--meanwhile an order for a regular chef's salad arrives, so the previously made salad is sent out to the new customer.  

But neither of those are a "usual" situation by any means, and generally speaking, most restaurants do not serve you a plate of food that was waiting fully cooked prior to you ordering it.  They cook at least the main dish of your meal fresh.  

In fact, restaurants choose main dishes carefully to ensure that they have quick cooking times.  If a dish has a long cooking time and it would significantly hinder the food's taste, appearance and/or texture to be precooked and heated prior to serving, then it's not going to be a "regular menu item" at any successful restaurant.  That's partly why you see so many of the same kinds of dishes at so many different restaurants.  Foods like pizza, burgers, sandwiches, salads, seafoods and steaks that cook quickly can almost always be freshly prepared when you order.

And while most restaurants will also offer dishes that take longer to prepare and cook like soups, baked or roasted chicken, beef and pork roasts, baked pasta dishes and casseroles, those sorts of dishes that take longer to cook are usually assembled in advance, then partially (sometimes fully) cooked and refrigerated--so when you order them they are heated, plated, garnished and served when you order to save time.  

This precooking and prepping of some of the food served is essential to high demand restaurants.  Restaurants depend on prepping the food in advance in order to serve customers in a timely manner, and a chef or kitchen manager who can correctly calculate what foods and how much of them to prep prior to service makes the difference between a successful business and a flop.  Proper kitchen prep leads to timely service and happy customers--not prepping enough leads to disappointed customers hearing "sorry we've run out of that dish..." from wait staff or to customers experiencing colossal wait times for their food.  That increased wait time spells disaster for most restaurants since they depend on timely service not just to please their waiting customers, but also to ensure that they can fill each table in the restaurant as many times as possible in an evening.  When you have unhappy customers sitting there taking up a table while waiting for their food to arrive--the restaurant suffers--they do less business that evening and also in future evenings via word of mouth from the unhappy clientele who waited for food or tables.  So if you prep the food properly in advance everything runs smoother--customers order, you serve them, they eat and you repeat with new customers at the same table until closing.  

Consequently almost every restaurant has their kitchen staff prep food for hours before opening.  But prepping food is completely different than pre-cooking your entire order--it's slicing, dicing, deveining, marinating, cleaning, trimming, etc...  When it includes pre-cooking things--it's usually not your main entrée.  It’s generally just desserts and side dishes and partial cooking of large joints of meat or casseroles. You will often find that even the finest of fine dining restaurants prep and precook things prior to the start of service like soups, desserts, savory mousse, terrine and pate, side dishes and baked potatoes, even partially cooking roasts, chicken and casserole dishes like lasagne until they just need to be baked and heated in the oven for a few minutes to brown and warm prior to serving.  But will you see a quality restaurant fully cooking a dish and having it sitting around waiting for you to order?  Probably not.  

I'd personally think twice about returning to a restaurant that didn't serve me a fresh main course.

Answer 7

Definitely yes!

Answer 8

most returants that have large volume precook to stay ahead of flow of business

Answer 9

Sure, as long as it's held at the proper temp.  You can't magically cook prime rib in 5 minutes, so that was already done and being held at temp.  On chicken night, one batch took 15 minutes, so we'd always drop more than we needed and then hold it under the heat lamps.  Most of my stuff was cook-to-order, but some things just had to be ready to go at a moment's notice.

Answer 10

Not to say it doesn't happen. But no is the answer. Mainly because a restaurant wants their food hot and fresh tasting. Plus if you cook it in advance how do you know that this meal won't be sitting around for a while. I cook and worked at restaurants. We cooked when the orders came in, It would also bring the costs up. Food would be thrown away,just another added expense no restaurant wants.

Answer 11

Uhm, to serve to guests???

I hope not!