Every job has its upsides and downsides, and even if you’ve found a career that you really love, there are bound to be aspects of the work that really aren’t the best (or aren’t your favorite).
That goes for chefs, too, but you probably don’t consider their feelings when you choose a menu item and order it from your waitress – nor should you.
That said, if you’re curious what offerings they wish weren’t, well, offered, these 16 chefs are confessing below!
16. That doesn’t sound half bad.
When the McRib first dropped the sauce was so fragrant it would give you headaches.
It was like getting smacked in the face with a bbq yankee candle.
15. Picky about eggs.
Former chef, it’s some of the simplest dishes that are the most annoying. I always hated working breakfast rushes, people are very particular about eggs, and it is very easy to accidentally break a yolk.
Outside of that, while pastry and desserts were some of my favorite things to make, working with phyllo dough is a major test of patience
Also eff cleaning mussels
14. Now I’m glad I don’t eat it.
Calamari…
if you worked in a restaurant cleaning them and prepping them to cook you would know… they come with all kinds of crap in them and they smell terrible when spoiled raw…
never again…
13. That sounds delicious.
Our German Apple pancake.
First you sauté Granny Smiths in clarified butter.
Then add three ladles of our German batter into sauté pan.
Throw in oven for 15 minutes.
Remove from oven and add clarified butter and cinnamon sugar.
Flip delicate pancake with spatula and a dash of learning curve.
Return to oven and cook 5 more minutes.
Flip pancake onto plate and insure it makes it to the table in less than a minute as it deflates rapidly.
Bonus points for when it’s ordered 10 minutes before we close.
12. French fries are life, though.
At my old job they had a thing called a fry sampler.
It was 4 10 oz fries that couldn’t be cooked together and took up either half the fryer or the entire thing depending on how many were ordered at the same time.
It would suck even more when people ordered more than one during a rush because they would take forever to plate.
11. A bit of a letdown.
Slightly different take, but I was a chef at a nursing home and anything puréed for people who are on that dietary restriction was gross to me.
I literally had to take whatever meal I made, throw in a blender and put it in a bowl. I always felt so bad.
10. Break that down per hour.
Baker here…
Cinnamon buns are the majority of our business but so f**king time intensive and while the finished product comes out SO good they take 3 days to make between dough, proofing, and baking by the time the customer gets them (warm).
I swear they owe me much more than $5 a bun lol.
Exhausting.
9. Just eat the soup.
Customizing the soups.
I used to work at a Michelin star restaurant.
WE ALREADY HAVE THE SOUPS PREPARED BEFORE YOU WALK IN.
I can’t just take out the shrimp taste of a paella soup that i prepped before you walked in here.
8. Maybe nothing, then.
usually depends on how the kitchen is run.
if your menu is designed for your kitchen, it’s no problem.
if it’s designed for twice the space, cooking surfaces and cooks, it’s going to run like shit and there’s gonna be multiple items that halt production.
7. Good ol’ five mix.
I used to work at a grocery store and I was the person who made all those pre-cut fruit boxes. I didn’t particularly mind any of them all that much except clementines. We had to peel clementines and put them in a box. First, it was a huge waste because no one ever bought them (why would you pay $5 for 6 peeled clementines when you could buy a whole bag unpeeled for the same price) except for old people who couldn’t peel the fruit themselves, and secondly because the acid would eat through our gloves and then destroy our nails and leave orange smell on your fingers for days.
The only other thing I hated making was 5 mix. We have a mixture called “six mix” which is just 6 different kinds of fruit together, but this one guy would come in and ask for six mix without the cantaloupe in it. We actually started calling him 5 mix. When he walked in someone from a different department would ring us and let us know 5 mix was there and to start making some 5 mix.
I hated it because when he asked we’d have to go get a whole watermelon, a whole honeydew, and 3 other fruits and cut them all up just so he could have like 5 cut up pieces of each instead of just eating around the cantaloupe.
And he always showed up right as our department was starting to close down for the night too. So we had to them rewatch all our surfaces after five mix came in
6. Food allergy woes.
Worked in a sandwich shop for a bot in college. Not fine dining by any stretch of the imagination, but a couple steps above Subway.
Every time someone ordered a PB&J off the kids menu we had to clear off both lines, change our gloves, wipe down every surface the peanut butter got close to, and wash the knife we used to cut it. Like, I get it. But having to treat peanut butter like nuclear waste in the middle of a lunch rush was never fun.
Plus, the peanut butter was too thick for the bread we used for the PB&J, so the bread ended up tearing half the time
5. People actually order that?
Not working in a traditional restaurant anymore but the f**king ringmold stacked beet salad.
It took like 3 minutes to make just one and if a table of four all ordered them it slowed down the entire salad line.
4. They all have that one.
On every menu lies an item that no one ever orders, so you never really prepare for it.
Yet, without warning or explanation, this a$$hole item gets ordered right in the middle of dinner rush, completely messing up service.
Also, those dishes that have 15 steps and 20 ingredients and that mise en place is kept 2 stations down.
3. Too many steps.
Soufflés.
We make the creme pate in advance but when it’s ordered the process is: Warm creme pate over a double boiler, while that is warming you need to hand whip a fresh meringue.
Once the creme pate is warm, you have about 3 minutes to fold in the whites, fill your molds to make sure you don’t touch the edges(as it makes them rise crooked). Into the oven for 3 minutes, open oven and rotate for 2 minutes. In those 5 minutes you have to plate the rest of the tables desserts, which all have 8-10 components. Soufflé comes out to a waiting waiter, has to go to the table immediately or deflates.
While it’s not the most difficult thing in the world, when you’re busy and have 4-6 on order and each one needs to pass a 3 finger test(height above rim of mold or it gets sent back and you need to restart), it can get quite hard and demoralizing when they don’t work.
And then you send out 4 at once and someone at the table gets up to go to the bathroom or have a cigarette and the tray comes back and you start again and cry inside.
2. That’s the price for deliciousness.
Sautéing shrimp pretty much blows.
They release a lot of water which explodes when it hits the hot oil. So you get a lot of burns.
Sometimes oil hits you in the face. It sucks. But whatever.
You cook the shrimp and get on with it.
1. I guess health comes at a price.
I used to work at McDonalds. Years ago we had this promotional burger we called the ‘lean beef burger’.
It was aimed at people who wanted to be more healthy – haha.
Normally the meat patties are cooked on the grill, but this one was nuked in the microwave.
When it was heated, it looked grey, and it smelled so putrid no one wanted to work near the microwave so they wouldn’t have to smell it.
I honestly had no idea.
If you’re a chef, share your most-hated item with us in the comments!
