9x Gross and Bizarre Staff Meals in Hospitality That People Talked About for a Long Time

We know that hospitality staff love snacking late at night. But a long evening at work always starts with staff dinner. A very important meal, one that takes place early in the evening and needs to give you enough energy for a whole night of going all out. Something some chefs still don’t quite understand. Hospitality staff spill the beans. 

Staff dinner: deep-frying hour

We always know when our chef has really hit the bottle the night before. Then he empties the freezer of all the products we normally use as late-night snacks, and at 4:30 p.m. we eat frikandellen, chicken nuggets and cheese soufflés. Hmm… And then we all head to the bathroom just before the doors open. Not exactly relaxing… But secretly pretty tasty.

Pasta, pasta, pasta

If you work in a pasta restaurant where we make our own fresh pasta and there’s nothing else on the menu… You guessed it, you eat a lot of pasta. I never thought I’d eventually go crazy from my favorite food. Pasta is ruined for me forever. Recently, I went to eat at my mother’s. She had made pasta. I almost burst into tears.

Can I have some food with my salt?

The chef once ‘accidentally’ went overboard with the salt. And not just a little. I think he didn’t like us. Anyway: after one bite, you felt like Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away—in which he hadn’t had any water for months; an immediately bone-dry mouth and chapped lips. No, that wasn’t a success story: we hit the floor with a raging thirst!

Nein danke

I once worked at a place that did Oktoberfest. Or at least, they tried to. It wasn’t popular; hardly anyone came to the pub that week. I could already see what was coming: the staff would have to eat those sausages until June.

Hawaiian Hamburger

Hawaiian pizza; I’m not the biggest fan, but if it makes people happy, go for it! Eat whatever you like. But when we got pineapple on our hamburgers for staff dinner, I was still a little surprised. I cautiously took a bite of the burger, but instead of struggling to swallow it, I was pleasantly surprised! The sweetness of the pineapple actually went really well with the spicy jalapeños, the sour pickle and the deliciously juicy burger. Highly recommended!

Give us food!

I once worked somewhere where you really had to go all out in summer. A full terrace, all day and all evening. Running around with trays full of beer and plates of satay and spareribs. You need energy for that! It’s very nice that the chefs in question wanted us to eat healthily, but I can’t make it to the end of the evening on a small salad. And then they’d look at me strangely when I secretly ate someone’s leftover fries in the kitchen…

That’ll be €3.50. Anything else?

I understand that you have to pay for staff dinner at most places. After all, you can also just eat at home. But one place where I worked (for just one week) handled it completely wrong. Staff dinner here consisted of microwave meals from Albert Heijn. And then €3.50 per meal was deducted from your salary. Not okay.

Spice it up

I can handle spicy food pretty well. But the chef I worked for at the time took it to the extreme. He was always right on the edge, which I’m grateful to him for—in fact, thanks to him I really came to appreciate spicy food. But I will never forget the day he went too far with his Thai curry. We all broke out in a sweat, and during work you could see the staff’s flushed faces taking turns diving into the bathroom. Not a success.

Romanian cuisine

I once worked somewhere with a Romanian chef who was eager to introduce us to Romanian cuisine. Guess what? There’s a reason Romanian cuisine isn’t very popular. It isn’t tasty or appealing. We often didn’t really know what we were eating, except that it was brownish, greasy and oniony. Still, it was sweet how he kept trying his best. Out of politeness, we often ate it with great difficulty. But tasty? No, it wasn’t.

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