7x this happens in the hospitality industry that you’d rather not know about
It’s always entertaining when hospitality staff spill the beans. From strange drink requests from sommeliers to what they snack on themselves after closing time. This time, they’re sharing the things you’d rather not know about, but that really do all happen in the hospitality industry. To protect their employers (and themselves), they share their experiences anonymously.
Revived beer
“As a bartender, you experience enough strange things. But the most astonishing was when my manager needed two beers, saw the other, by then flat, beers standing on the bar, and didn’t hesitate for a moment. In went two fingers, a quick stir, and they were brought back to life. He then took them and simply put them on the guests’ table.”
Reused chicken satay
“Hospitality owners are naturally careful with their money and therefore prefer to reuse as much as possible. The owner of the Chinese restaurant where I worked took that reuse very seriously indeed. Everything that came back from the table, including food that had already been eaten, had to be sorted with the utmost care. So we had to scrape the ‘still usable’ chicken off the satay skewers, and the satay sticks were recycled too. We would soak the scraps of chicken loose in the tin filled with a layer of water. Then, using the soaked sticks and the leftover pieces of chicken, we made ‘new’ satay.”
Half grilled sandwiches
“When you’re constantly busy with food, you inevitably get hungry. It wasn’t just the servers who regularly snacked on a fry here and there; the chefs had their own tactic too. During lunch, the grilled sandwiches were deliberately cut into one large and one small piece. Then an extra strip was cut off the large piece so it was exactly the same size as the other one. And that strip? The chefs ate it themselves.”
Cockroach?
“A familiar problem in the city center: cockroaches. The cockroaches at our place were literally dying in the kitchen too. The stacked cups on top of the coffee machine apparently made the perfect, pleasantly warm place to stay. A few minutes after pouring the last cup, a woman walked up to the bar and said, remarkably calmly: “I don’t know exactly what it is, but this was in my mouth when I took a sip of the coffee,” after which she unfolded her hand and a piece of cockroach appeared. I apologized a thousand times. To which she simply replied: “Oh, don’t worry, I worked at the place next door for years, so I’m used to it.” I still can’t believe it after all these years”.
The fryer mouse
“These days, we don’t bat an eyelid at mice in Amsterdam. Every day, one would run through the restaurant. I regularly worked the morning shift and had to open up the place. One day, I switched on the kitchen light, and my eye fell on something moving in the fryer. As I walked over, a mouse painfully pulled itself out of the grease and ran away. I never ate anything from the fryer again.”
3-second rule
“While serving, a croquette once rolled off the plate and fell on the floor. I hesitated for a moment, but after quickly checking whether anyone might have seen it, I hurriedly put the croquette back on the plate. And believe me, I’m definitely not the only one this has happened to.”
Drops of sweat
“During the summer months, the kitchen temperature was unbearable—so hot. The thermometer once reached 41 degrees. You can imagine that sweat was literally pouring from e-ve-ry-where. As I bent over, intensely focused, placing the duck-liver curls on top of the carpaccio, the drops fell straight from my forehead onto the plate. And no, you don’t make a new plate in that situation.”
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