Restaurant glossary Key Terms

Posted: May 20, 2022

If at all you are new to the restaurant industry or a seasoned veteran looking to get more involved, you will need to brush up on your restaurant lingo. Terms like the ones listed above are commonly used in most restaurants, and while some are more common than others, you should learn what they mean. Whether you're a new restaurant line cook or a manager who has no idea what firing a dish means, learning the lingo and proving to your coworkers that you know what you're talking about can be extremely beneficial.

ABCDEFGHLMNOPSTWVY

A:

All Day: Refers to the total number of items that must be dispatched from the kitchen. 

B:

Back of the House: Everything in the restaurant behind the dining room is referred to as the back of the house. The kitchen, storage rooms, offices, and any prep rooms are usually included. The restaurant's back end, typically includes the kitchen, prep, and storage areas.

Bartender: A bartender is the one who works in a restaurant, usually behind a bar, preparing and serving alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Bartenders are known by a variety of titles, including barkeep, barman, bar chef, mixologist, and barmaid. 

Blue Plate Special: A blue plate special is a dish that is almost exclusively served in the United States and Canada. Other countries serve a variation of this concept but do not call them 'blue plate specials.' This dish is a low-cost menu item that is changed daily and is commonly served at diners and cafes.

C:

Chef: A chef has received formal training in the art of food preparation and cooking. Most trained chefs will specialize in one cuisine, but it is not uncommon for a chef to be proficient in multiple cuisines. 

Chef’s Table: A Chef's Table experience is one of the most opulent ways to dine at a restaurant. Chef's Tables are reserved for special guests only and provide them with a custom curated dinner that they would not get in the regular dining room.

Check Back: Check Back refers to when a server checks on the customer's meal while also dropping the check, as opposed to having them be two separate events. 

Cooking To Order:  This is a dish that is prepared according to the specifications of the customer. Not something that has been pre-planned.

Commis: A commis is a novice chef who works directly beneath the Chef de Partie. Their main goal, similar to an internship or apprenticeship, is to learn as much as they can about their kitchen responsibilities.

Counter Meal: A counter meal is similar to a "Blue Plate Special," except that counter meals are more popular in Australian bars and pubs. These are usually pre-packaged meals that are changed daily and eaten at the counter.

D:

Dead Plate: A dead plate contains the items which cannot be served to customers. This can be due to a variety of factors, including poor appearance, incorrect temperature, taking too long to serve the dish, or using the wrong ingredients.

Dine and Dash This is not a difficult term to understand, and people who do not work in the restaurant industry will understand it. To dine and dash, a customer finishes their meal and leaves without paying the bill.

Dupe: A dupe is an information passed from the front of the house to the kitchen so that the chefs know what to prepare for the customers.

Early Bird Dinner: An early-bird dinner is typically held earlier than peak dinner times and is primarily aimed at elderly couples and tourists looking to eat as much as they can for as little as possible. A popular choice for buffets.

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E:

Expeditor: The employee in charge of arranging food from the kitchen and transporting it to the dining room for the servers.

F:

Food Cost: How much it costs to prepare a menu item. Your food cost is the price of a kitchen entrée with meat, sauce, vegetables, and starch. Most restaurants charge between 30 and 40% for food. This does not include the cost of overhead, which must be factored in before you can start making a profit.

Free Lunch: A free lunch is a marketing strategy used by restaurants to attract customers and increase revenue. Restaurant owners hope that by offering a free lunch with the purchase of a drink, customers will order more than one drink or become loyal long-term customers.

G:

Ghost Restaurant: A ghost restaurant is one that is usually empty and makes almost all of its money from food delivery.

Gueridon Service: Usually refers to food preparation at the table. This necessitates the use of a gueridon (trolley) to transport ingredients to a guest table where a dish is prepared live for the customer.

H:

Happy hours: Are strategies used by restaurants to increase traffic during off-peak hours. Most happy hour deals include free drinks, a free appetizer, discounts, or even a free meal.

Holding Time: The amount of time you can keep a dish after it's been prepared until it can be served without compromising the food's quality or safety. It also applies to raw food storage. Whether you're holding raw or cooked food, the ideal hold temperature is critical to the dish's food safety.

L:

Line Cooks: Are responsible for preparing ingredients and assembling dishes following the restaurant recipes. Line cooks are critical to the smooth operation of a busy restaurant kitchen.

M:

Menu: A restaurant menu is a list of everything that your establishment can serve its customers. This typically includes images and descriptions of each dish to entice customers to place an order.

Mispick: An item ordered from a vendor with a label that does not correspond to the product it contains.

N:

No Call/No Show: An employee who fails to appear and does not call, or a reservation that fails to appear and does not call.

O:

Overhead: Refers to any additional costs that are incurred when calculating food costs in your restaurant. This includes the cost of electricity used to prepare a dish, labor costs, and even shipping costs.

On the Rails or On the Fly: Something that needs to be done quickly, like yesterday.

P:

Paddy Well: A term commonly heard in Irish pubs and restaurants, that means to cook it until there is no chance of life remaining. 

Pop-Up Restaurant: A temporary restaurant where a chef or restaurateur can test-launch his food or concept in a brick-and-mortar format for a few days or weeks with a live audience.

Portion Control: Is the establishment of standards in a restaurant, for the weight, size, and number of items in each dish that the organization will serve consistently regardless of when or by whom.

S:

Sacked/ Fired: Typically, employees are sacked after a major gaffe, such as serving $100.00 bottles of Dom Perignon champagne to a banquet of 200 people instead of the $12.95 bottles that were supposed to be served.

Serving Cart: A serving cart is a small cart used for transporting dishes to a table. A serving cart is sometimes used to display specific items.

Sheet to Shelf: An inventory and ordering system referring to the sheet used to track the items in your walk-in cooler or dry storage. The sheet/list is laid out in the same order as the stock on the shelf.

Shelf Life: The amount of time a product can be stored and still maintain its quality, freshness, and edibility.

Shoe: A slacker chef/cook. Someone who isn't very good at cooking. The term Shoe was derived from the fact that in Northern Europe, most chefs wore wooden clogs in the kitchen. A bad or clumsy chef/cook would frequently stumble and be mocked by the other cooks and chefs as Shoe.

Small Plates: After the year 2000, small plates became popular in western food service. Small plates can refer to small dishes that resemble appetizers and are often shared (such as tapas) or to small courses served as part of a more formal meal.

Soft Launch: A low-key method of announcing the opening of a restaurant to a small group of people. The goal is to gain their approval before making it available to the general public.

Sous Chef: The second in command in a kitchen. An Executive Sous Chef can be found in a larger kitchen with a lot of staff. When the Chef is on vacation or unavailable, the Sous Chef runs the kitchen.

Starch: A side from the "Veg," the other accompaniment to a plated meal is starch, which can be potatoes, rice, grain, or pasta.

Station: The number of tables served by a single server.

Stretch: When a restaurant runs out of a certain ingredient, they will do whatever they can to "stretch" what is left to last them the entire night.

Sizzle Platter: A heavy metal plate used to serve sizzling dishes like fajitas or nachos. Excellent at retaining heat.

T:

Take Out: When a customer orders food from your restaurant but intends to eat it elsewhere.

Totes:  Plastic containers are commonly used to deliver fish. They are typically rectangular, but can also be square or round. Kitchen staff hoard totes because, once washed and sanitized, they make excellent airtight storage containers for almost anything.

Tourne: Vegetables are cut to look like a small, slightly tapered cork, but instead of being smooth, they have seven equally large facets. Root vegetables, potatoes, and carrots are commonly used, but zucchini and other soft vegetables are also used. They are traditionally boiled, steamed, or roasted.

W:

Waitron: A term coined in the late 1980s to avoid using the gender terms "waiter/waitress." The server took its place in the 1990s.

Walk-in: A refrigerated room used to keep perishable items cold.

Walked: Customer who has left without paying the bill or an employee who has become frustrated and has left in the middle of their shift.

V:

Value Meal: A value meal is a combination of restaurant items that are bundled and sold at a low price. This is typically done to increase restaurant revenue by increasing the number of items ordered.

Y:

Year to Date/YTD: The time period beginning at the start of the current year and ending on the current day. It is frequently used to compare how the business is doing up to the present day to its budget for that period in terms of sales, profits, and so on.

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