I cleaned off the flat top with pickle juice...fooker looked brand new when I left.
Got a call 6 hours later by morning manager. It was Mother's Day brunch and was losing their mind, everything tasted like pickles.
That's kind of hilarious. I imagine the place in utter chaos, everyone scrambling around like a fire alarm had been pulled and your manager grabbing their hair from their head screaming into the phone: "EVERYTHING TASTES LIKE PICKLES AND WE DON'T KNOW WHYYYYYY"
Camaraderie is important...and the alternative was to live in fear that they'd fuck up my station on purpose in revenge.
The first bite was just like "oh, that's a lot of buttermilk" then the vinegar & dill kind of builds up, bite after bite.
When I worked kitchens I'd always use ice and vinegar for the flat top, but vinegar and pickle juice are two very separate substances. One you can throw into your washing machine to get even fresher smelling clean clothes, the other... not so much.
Accident. Discovered how good it was at cleaning after a spill, figured it was way better (and less work) than the prescribed cleaner packs.
I thought rinsing it good would be sufficient. It was not.
It’s crazy to me that it retained that much of the flavor. Like I’ve seen people use all sorts of crazy things to clean a flattop that never tinged the taste of anything cooked on it the next day
I found an unlabeled 22qt cambro in the walkin. Looked like it was half full of pickle brine. Without smelling or tasting, I dumped it out. I'd been at this place for a month. It was the housemade limoncello.
For the record, house made limoncello is usually just bottom shelf vodka with sugar and lemons. Tons of places were doing it in the 2010s for some reason. Not a massive loss as far as food cost.
If it ain't labeled (and not inert like sugar, flour, corn meal, etc.) it's my ***ethical duty*** to dispose of it, as I have no idea its origins, timing, etc. and thus absolutely no ability to verify its safety. If management wants to get mad, I'll direct them to the people opening the product and failing to properly secure it through simple communication that we universally understand. If they want to push it, I'll just ask, "Where were you, to manage the situation prior to now? I encountered it on its face. Once I found unlabeled product it was no longer a question of ***if.*** You're responsible for disposing of it, too. If you want those health rules bent, you should 'manage' faster, I guess?"
Same. I was the reason you weren't allowed to strain stock alone anymore. Not because of the weight, but someone's gotta stop me from pouring it down the sink.
What fucking chef orders gallon bottles of oil to fill the fryer? Every single place I've worked for 20+ years uses the 40# cardboard/plastic jug, or the semi solid sortening brick. There's been a couple times we had to top up with gallons of salad oil because the truck was late or delayed lol 😆
It’s not that busy except for weekends and we do not use the frier that much. Most of our dishes do not require anything fried. Therefore we only change it like twice a week.
That sounds like paying more for less product. Fryer oil can go bad(after many weeks), but the cost savings per gallon is so much more. I also don't think I've seen "fryer oil" specifically in gallons, it has anti-foaming agents in it to last longer than traditional veg oil. Even if you're using peanut oil/sunflower oil or like my new spot rice bran oil, buying by the single gallon is very cost prohibitive.
There's a person in our kitchen that constantly says "we have no WW Vinegar", I walk into dry store and there it is, 2 massive 5l bottles. She constantly thinks it's olive oil. I guess at least she doesn't use it for confit garlic or in a fryer, but still, you'd think she'd just learn to actually read the bottle.
My fuck up was standing by and watching a 3rd year apprentice convince a 1st year apprentice to do the stock down the sink shuffle.
Head chef fired the 3rd yr, despaired for the future of the 1st yr and chewed me (the line cook) for not stepping in to stop the muppet.
I left a mini Yorkshire pudding tray under a salamander , and went for a smoke just as a weddings speeches were starting and set of all the fire alarms in the hotel
A friend told me about a banquet where he prepped trays of fois gras and left them on the counter. The"new guy" needed some counter space and put them on top of the salamander to get them out of the way. Resulted in several trays of very expensive melted fat.
Before I was a cook, I was a busser in a fine dining place that had a separate private dining room across the parking lot. We were slammed one night and the foh manager decided I needed to run a 4 tops entrees across the parking lot in torrential rainfall. The outside door was in a hallway directly across from a door to the kitchen, hallway floors were soaking wet.
I slipped and dropped all 4 entrees, including the last tuna in house.
The chef (a notoriously angry, fire and brimstone old school chef) swung that kitchen door open and stared daggers into me like he wanted to kill me with his bare hands. However, he knew that I wasn’t supposed to be running food and the foh manager (his wife) got all the shit for it. He never said a word to me about it.
Worked for him boh for years, even became one of his execs for a while before I got burnt out at that place.
I have not done it since, but I did also set an alarm for order days to go back and look if it's submitted!
Head chef was actually pretty cool about it. It's not the mistakes that make you it's how you handle and fix them.
Yeah, when I was a KM, I forgot to order the corned beef AND the cabbage for St. Patrick’s day. That was an expensive run to the grocery store.
“The first time is a mistake, an accident. The second time, it’s a choice. You need to do whatever you need to do to prevent it from happening again.” Advice the GM gave me at the time that I still use, even in parenting our kids, lol.
I hadn't felt that rock in my stomach in a looooooong time. When I finally got back to my desk to do something else and the first thing that popped up was the big blue submit button I could have thrown up on the spot. I still get woozy thinking about it.
One chef put sour cream (which is kept in a piping bag) on top of an ice cream sundae instead of whipped cream (also kept in a piping bag). We found out when the customer returned the plate, having eaten almost the whole thing, saying the cream tasted funny.
Truly the best case scenario. Honestly I prolly would've done the same thing. "this whipped cream tastes funny but I better not say anything I don't wanna be a Karen"
Why are different colored twist ties or little bits of tape not a standard for this? I work somewhere with multiple white piping bags and it's obnoxious.
Wasn't a restaurant but a liquor store, but I was involved in the smashing of nearly an entire crate of imported french wine; like 80 a bottle or something like that.
Mind you, it wasn't really my fault but the winery we bought it from. I followed all the steps to pick this thing up by hand properly and was even being supervised, but they put the crate together upside down so even though the logo was right way up, the lid was actually on the bottom and of course the lid is practically plywood.
Only reason it never busted open before then is because it must've sat at the bottom of the pallet from france to here. I stooped to pick the thing up, stood up straight and out came 11 bottles that smashed immediately. Only one that survived was in my hand because I tried to catch it when I heard and felt the box break open.
Boss at the time was so pissed he just left for an hour lol while we cleaned up. Dude couldn't stay mad though, cause later that same day I found myself being the only propping up like 3 cases of handles of vodka cause *somebody* tried to cram a bunch of heavy ass bottles on a shelf that wasn't seated properly.
And of course nobody was listening to me when I got on the radio and called for help so I had to beg passing customers to go get somebody. It got to a point where I was about to start literally screaming and if nobody came I was just gonna let the shit drop.
Worked at a place without a fryer, but we had to fry off lamb shanks for a dish. Would use a big rondo pot to do so. We would let the oil cool down and strain into a 5 gallon bucket to reuse later.
One day I was a little impatient and strained the oil while it was still too hot. Lifted the bucket to move to its usual spot…. The handle and top lifted, while the bottom of the bucket remained in contact with the floor. I shouted out for a metal pot but it was too late. Hot oil all over the floor. Just looked at everybody and said, “I don’t want to hear a thing until I have this cleaned up.” The roasting lasted for weeks.
Oh man...sooo many good ones so far.
When I first started cooking as a prep cook, I was making a large batch of salsa. Recipe called for 5 Tbsp. I grabbed the 5 lbs box and my brain swapped meanings. Two days later I get a call from the KM asking me how much salt I put in the salsa.
I can't remember how but one time at a bakery I accidentally put in way too much yeast into a dough. Luckily my boss just shrugged and added more of everything else till it matched.
Not mine, but a coworker of mine accidentally put cayenne instead of paprika on all of our deviled eggs for a party
Didn't take long for that mistake to come back
This happened during a massive Christmas catering.. this kid put cayenne instead of paprika on ALL of the branzinos.. I'll never forget the look on the face of the KM when he tasted it! I was just an observer of this shitshow as I was doing all the pastas
Chicken sauce and hot and sour were in third pans right next to each other. I grabbed the wrong ladle. Told the fry guy, “I need a new fried chicken, right now, don’t ask me why!” Needless to say, fried chicken covered in hot and sour is delicious.
Pulled out of the kitchen by my boss to do an engagement party at a private home for his brother.
The containers for Wesson (cooking oil) and Paraffin (bug repellent) look very similar.
One is extremely combustible.
Fortunately, it was caught just before the pan coated with paraffin went into the oven.
For weeks, I was Paraffin Man.
I was so burned out after the weekend, I grabbed mangoes and thought, "These avocados are nowhere near ripe." I then 86ed avocado specials, not knowing we were already out of avocados the day before.
My second day EVER on saute in a very busy restaurant. Poured some herb saint into the pan of escargot. Realized that it wasn't enough and poured more in while it was already on fire...
The bottle had a speed pour. Flame went up and in. IGNITION!! + pressure. Bottle shot flames down the entire line, ignited grease buildup on top of the Salamander then shot backwards out of my hand. Found it under a prep table 20ft away while broil cook climbed up and beat out the flames with a side towel.
I collected the bottle, put the speed pour back in and kept my head down for the next two weeks
This wasn’t the worst thing I did, but definitely was the most spectacularly remedied of my fuck ups
Was going through service and grabbed the wrong squeeze bottle when plating a bread pudding dessert. This led to me accidentally putting red wine vinaigrette on top of the bread pudding, instead of our homemade caramel sauce (it was actually a similar color). Sent it out and left the bottle out cause it was about to be desert hour. A server walked by desert station and went to put some caramel on his finger and pop it in his mouth. He starts freaking out saying the caramel tastes horrible and how could caramel even go so bad…. I turned bright red and realized my fuck up and had to sheepishly tell my chef that the two top had a bread pudding in front of them with red wine vinaigrette on it.
We send a server out to touch the table and this couple was wasted apparently. They loved the bread pudding. They were so happy with it. I got so lucky. Chef was super mad at me and a couple months later he dramatically walked out right before service and was never seen again. Sous became chef and later told me that he had to talk that guy out of firing me that night.
I took the lid off a huge bucket of barbecue sauce and placed the bucket on a counter, dropped the lid, bent down to pick it up, and proceeded to be showered by an entire bucket of barbecue sauce that had slid off the slightly slanted counter
Owners Made me pay out of pocket for the overage, but at cost, and they put one pizza/check for a few months so it didn’t like fuck ne up.
The servers got a pie, I got 2 pies for me and the roomies.
The rest made some folks at the shelter real happy
Spilled an entire 8qt cambro of Alfredo sauce inside a dumbwaiter. It was my 2nd week cooking, after a bad day, and I was left in tears. I had an amazing manager though, she told me to get a drink and sit down, while she cleaned it up.
Veterans Day a long time ago. We would do a special where veterans eat free and we would get absolutely slammed.
So we would filter the fryers twice a day. Mid day and after close. I was filtering mid day when we finally got a lull, but there were still orders coming in so I was multitasking.
It was one of those fryer systems where there's a vat underneath where the oil drains, then you flip a switch and the oil pumps back in. I would dump the oil in one fryer, then move on to the next fryer and dump that oil as the first fryer was refilling to save time. (I hope this makes sense. People who have used these types of fryers should get it but it's hard to describe without drawing a diagram).
Well as I said, I was multitasking and I forgot to flip the switch to pump the oil back into fryer #1 while fryer #2 was draining. The bat overflowed and there was hot oil all over the fucking line that I obviously had to clean up. On the busiest day of the year.
After I got it cleaned up I went out for a cigarette. The kitchen manager came out and said, "You handled that situation way more calmly than I thought you were going to."
Forgot that freeze dried berries have a dehydration pack blended it all up together, then proceeded to add it to my cheesecake, wondered why my cheesecake was so dry and then I realized
Mistakenly knocked over a 5 gallon Lexan full of Ghee. It spilled right into a non thermal rated trash can. The can started to melt and spill the molten Ghee all over the floor. This happened right as I finished cleaning my station. Chef wasn’t even mad at me she just laughed and said throw some flour on it so it’s easier to shovel in the trash.
Not my fuck up and not as spectacular as your guys’ but the owner was trying to make champagne vin and he just poured a whole bottle of actual champagne in a container and started seasoning it until I told him that’s not how like.. any of this works.
So the thermostat in the oven got knocked loose. It's basically a long wire with a little metal bulb at the end. I should have known what it was, but I assumed it was a useless piece of wire, so I snipped it off with wire cutters. 30 minutes later the oven was scorching hot, and melting a nearby plastic piece of equipment (wheeled flour bin).
I turned on a smoker in the back alley, which was set up on a deck above a bunch of dry leaves. In addition to the dry leaves, we always dumped the drip trays of grease under the deck. AFTER it was already hot, I dumped the ashes under the deck, on top of the grease-soaked dead foliage, and put new chips in the smoker. Came out 15 min later to check if the smoker was ready and the entire back alley was engulfed in flames. Like at least a 15’ by 10’ giant fire. I managed to put it out though and all that got destroyed was a tarp somehow. But yeah. Almost burned down an entire block of buildings.
I made a fish pie filling using all of the fishmongers delivery including 5kg of both brown and white crab meat. I didn't know that the crab wasn't to be used as it was hideously expensive. It was an incredible pie tho. Boss went fucking ballistic, It was my first day.
Spilled 12qt cambro of caramelized banana gelato base in the walk in, literally two mins before I'd have locked up and left. Instead, I spent 30 minutes cleaning mats, squeegeeing floors and trying to figure out how to break the news to the pastry chef.
Man these comments make me feel A LOT better about my fuckups. My biggest L was probably when I worked as a dishwasher forgot to add hot water to our chafers. My manager caught it in time, but I still think about that and it keeps me up at night tbh
Joining the military to pay for college so I wouldn’t have to cook anymore, going to Iraq, coming back to drop out of college twice and develop a substance abuse problem. Only to end up cooking again.
Back when I was a kid, I worked at a ski lodge kitchen. Owner wanted to clean the deep fryers, so he told me to drain the oil as the last thing after clean up... So I did, into the plastic bucket he told me to.
It went about as well as you would expect. Although I was able to get out of the cleanup since I didn't drive, and my ride had arrive, so he let me go.
I've definitely told this one here, but I was 16 and working at the World Famous Brookfield Zoo just outside Chicago. I was on the fry station in the restaurant next to the Dolphin Show on a Sunday afternoon. Zoo closes at 5, so the restaurant closes at 3:30. That was 30 years ago and I didn't realize how sweet that was.
Anyway, Sunday nights we boiled and scrubbed the fryers. There are a total of 8 in the place, I am responsible for four. I forgot to close the valve while refilling one with fresh oil. Fuck me, what mess and a waste of money. I have done it two more times since then, both before I started getting high when I was 18.
I’ve also made this mistake, but only once! What was a simple clean/close job turned into atleast a 2 hour deep clean. I always make sure that valve is closed now.
I was the manager at a soup kitchen/food bank. Right before service a delivery truck came with a palate of food. I used the forklift, but lifted too high to place it, and ripped off a sprinkler off the roof. It caused the sprinkler system to flood our warehouse, kitchen, and dining hall.
Was cleaning out the fryer on a food truck using water and the fryer cleaner. Totally burned off all the water and decided the best remwdy was to throw a 12qt of fresh water in the hot fryer. Had a bad cough for at least a month.
Mandoline.
Was a stage at my first COOL restaurant as a young line cook.
Julienned carrots on the mandoline. A bus bin full..
Never used one before and the palms of my hands showed that after. Kept going & didn’t say anything. Got the job.
Not proud of that one.
Put cinnamon seasoning in the hamburger meat. In my defense, the bags were the same size, and color.i was in a hurry, short staffed, and did a grab and go.
Ruined that batch of taco meat.
Not me, but the biggest screw up I've seen was at my old pub. We had a fryer fire, whilst I was turning off the gas so was at the other end of the line, my chef decided dumping a bucket of water in the fryer would be a good idea (we'd no ansul system).
One explosion later... eh at least I got a new fryer out of it. When I left they still had the dent from it in the canopy.
At a catering gig, I was lighting a gel-filled sterno with a long lighter and accidentally stuck the end of the lighter into the gel. Seeing that the end of the lighter was on fire, I tried to put it out by waving the lighter back and forth. Not only did it not work, but it FLUNG on fire gel onto the disposable tablecloth that was underneath the entire spread, which quickly caught fire. Had to use the water from the chafing pan to put it out, and quickly reset the whole buffet before the guests arrived.
I showed up hung over one day and started making pancake batter. It was a big batch to get ready for brunch. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't getting to the right consistency until the chef had to point out that I had grabbed the corn starch instead of the flour.
Other than leaving the valve open when pouring in a new batch of oil…..
I was in the Army and told to make some Gatorade. We used these drink dispenser called “silver bullets”. Like 10 or 20 gallons insulated steel cans. Our method was to dilute the packet of powder in some boiling water and then to pour it into the bullet which was filled with ice, then we would top off with cold water. The bullets would chill for like 4 hours in our walk-in until we were ready to serve. We were setting up the service line and I went to get the bullets…I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too sweet or sour so I tried to dispense some and nothing came out. I opened the top and at first I didn’t comprehend what I was seeing it looked like thick green jelly,….then it occurred to me…..I made 40 gallons of green jello.
Been cooking for close to a decade now and am currently working underneath another executive chef. This happened two weeks ago; I was draining the dry oil to put in new oil. Tickets start flying off the printer, I turn around and the entire line had fry oil on it. Worst day of my life. Tools solid hour to clean up and every night I close, I’m still sweeping up that litter stuff.
It was a big bottle with a big hole ( sorry not an English native speaker) like a plastic 5 litre water bootle. So I was pouring fast. And the frier was big and the oil was a bit dirty allredy. When it first got agitated I did not pay attention and continued 🫣
Most spectacular fuck up...hmmm.
Cleaned a plancha/broiler combo with ice.
Plancha on top, broiler underneath.
The cold of the ice shocked the fire stones in the Broiler, and shattered them.
Kept my mouth shut about that for a long time
Next, I was using a rag to clean a pasta roller, while it was still plugged in....and accidentally hit the on button.
Rag got stuck in the gears and it didn't have a reverse function.....
Machine still makes noise
We don't talk about it at work.
80 person wedding, groom brought in wild sockeye salmon that he and his buddies caught for main course. Asked to roast it whole and serve it on the bone carving style.
Undercooked the shit out of it. Salmon sushi is cooked more than those fish were.
In my defense, I had never roasted whole salmon like that before.
They still enjoyed it I think. Not sure how much they tipped at the end.
Needed a lot of bacon on the fly, and 2 other dumbasses had burned 2 pots already that day. Chef wouldn't allow anyone else but him to cook the bacon after that. Whilst transferring that perfectly cooked bacon, I wasn't paying attention and for some reason, poured hand soap all over the bacon. No one seen. I tried to scoup out most of the soiled bacon, and we used that shit.
I had a second job as a pasta maker at a restsursnt i had like for a long time that relocated right down the street. It was at a competing hospitality group, and was a prospective escape plan/way up the ladder if I played my cards right, the chef knew I was a junior sous chef at a high profile Italian restaurant down the street.
They extruded pasta all day long, and I would come in and portion as I set up stocks and processed braises, and the chef basically had me make a few specials and do an impromptu tasting because he liked me more than his sous chef.
Their extruder was terrible, American manufactured and very fragile, and you would kneed the extruded dough inside of the machine instead of outside of it and then put it in.
A pocket of semolina got jammed in the tip of the extruder and caused a jam, and the jam made the whole machine bend in half and broke this 3-4k piece of shit extruder(I’ve worked with 6 extenders in my career and this was the only one that worked this way or could possibly break so easily.)
I quit 2 weeks later, the sous chefs used this as a spring board to attack me and reduce my hours, and would give me a prep list, I would complete it, go to clock out and head to my main job, and they would write a new prep list and say I didn’t complete any of my work. I got sous chef at my main job like 6 months later but that always went down as the biggest failure of my career.
We're short two men on superbowl sunday so I'm on expo calling tickets and trying to manage the fryers and help on grill at the same time. It's noon so the last minute catering orders are rolling the fuck in. Tickets were just about touching the floor. Even my boss and the dishies were on the line with me. Everyone's fucking stressed.
This ticket says they want an extra slice of pineapple on their burger, but we just ran out of pineapple. My boss tells me he'll just run to Walmart, no biggie. Mind you Walmart is about a quarter mile away. I look through the pass and literally see him on foot, sprinting across traffic to make time. About 10 minutes later, he comes back sweaty as hell, looking like he was gonna pass out. Turns out, I misread the ticket and it said "-Pineapple" and not "+Pineapple." We didn't even need it. He's got the thousand yard stare reaching into the back of my skull. "oops" Not a huge fuck up, but it definitely put him in a mood.
Dumped a gallon of fish sauce vinaigrette in the dish pit. It was the good fish sauce, too.
I look back on it, see everything I did, and mentally punch myself in the neck between the turning and the Dump.
I burned a whole tray of crab quiche. There were 24 on the sheetpan at ±$10 a pop (in 1978). I worked in a small, privately-owned restaurant. We made quiche with crepes for the crust in large glass dishes. One day I was making a sheet pan of crab quiches and someone was really late. So while I was doing his job, I forgot about the quiche. When I told the manager, she told me to put them in the trash and take it out to the dumpster immediately. Apparently the previous manager would tell the owner everything and she was canned, 'cause he didn't want to hear it. The new manager had a long tenure because she hid any mistakes from him. He loved her.
The other big on was not me, but one of the other cooks at a big casino/hotel main kitchen. He dumped (literally) a hundred gallons of hot beef-vegetable soup he had just finished making, on the kitchen floor! He threw his hands up in the air and just yelled, "STEWARDS!" and walked away.
My used oil container overflowed when I dumped a pot of fryer oil in it today. Went all over the back parking lot. Apparently the old chef had it picked up on a call only basis. Instead of them just picking it monthly or whatever. real bummer spending half an hour scrubbing and rinsing pavement after a 12 hour day. Not the biggest fuck up, but an annoying one for sure.
Not me, but my coworker came into work still tripping from the the night before. Put a huge plastic jug of cooking oil on a hot flat top. This was all while we were setting up to open. Cleaning up both the melted plastic and the oil that flooded the area was super fun.
Not me, but our chef at the time spilled a Bain Marie of fat into our woodfired grill. Fire was already burning a little hotter than we wanted but once that already hot fat hit it, it got out of control. chef burnt his hand up pretty good trying to recover the situation, Everyone dropped what they were doing and started pulling flaming logs out of the fire trying to get it to die down. Ash is flying everywhere, the baffles in the hood started glowing, no idea how we didn't set off the ansul. This is all in an open kitchen with a dining room of like 40-50 people staring at us.
Eventually got things under control (it was probably a total of 5 minutes but it felt like hours), sent chef home, cleaned up the kitchen as best we could and finished out the night.
I was carrying a pizza in each hand- one of them was a little too big for the pan and a few pieces started to fall, so I instinctively tried to catch them and ended up throwing an entire pizza down the server alley.
Bonus: Not me, but I was kitchen MOD the night our youngest dishwasher mixed bleach and drain cleaner.
First time ever coming in stoned at the place with the crackers and the barrels. Dropped 2 sheet trays. One containing 23 trout thawing out, and another containing 12 trout. Not my only fuck up that day but the worst. Still don't know how I kept my job after that.
Not me but my husband. He worked for about a month for a very popular national “Chinese” restaurant. He hated every minute of it and they were constantly violating food safety standards. He managed to get his old job back for better pay, so the last day he was at said restaurant he was basically there to collect his check. During the lunch rush he accidentally poured teriyaki sauce on the orange chicken, shrugged it off when questioned, then hung up his apron to drive off and never look back.
ruined 40 pounds of chicken cause some stuck to the bottom of the pot while it was boiling and it all tasted burnt, did the same with a fuck ton of beans, and was making hot sauce one day and gassed the whole kitchen and made eveyone cry/cough.
You can make the sauce for dulche de leche by boiling condensed sweetened milk in the can. Unless it’s a busy random Tuesday and you get called to the expo line and forgot about the dulche. When that water evaporates (and it will evaporate), the canned condensed milk becomes an IED. Luckily the only casualty was the milknand the hood. Still took me a week to get all the random caramel spots
Fuck, I still fuck up after 30 years of cooking. 2 weeks ago, I was temping our prime rib. Typically, we turn it off and let it rest when it hits around 100°f. I was cooking 14 USDA choice export ribs spread out between 5 ovens. Somehow, I managed to not turn one of the ovens off. No one caught it till about 2 hours later (which is a whole other conversation), but it was still my very expensive fuck up.
I overcooked a steam kettle full of rice noodles, had to scramble for a replacement and left it sitting there. Came back later to like 80 gallons of congealed rice gloop of course. I tried to disperse in among a few trash cans and cleaned up. Then later I heard the porter bitching about how heavy all the trash was and didn't say shit. :|
Let’s see. Not mine but some of my favorites. The time the new expo used cumin instead of black pepper to season Caesar salads and when called out said, “oh, that’s why they tasted so bad”.
The time the Sous chef tripped with a full sheet tray of tiramisu and it slammed into the wall and the tray slowly oozed down to the floor leaving a streak.
The time a cook dropped a huge cambro of tomato sauce in the walk in right after we cleaned and that shit must’ve had propellant in it because it exploded and went everywhere.
Oof! I was a deli manager and pretty much did everything since the staff were college kids. I was loading up the dolly and a huge 12 pack of artichoke hearts in oil, in glass smashed down off it. It took me an hour to clean up. So much olive oil...
My biggest fuck up was when I was in culinary school.
Chef wanted us to change the oil in a fryer. Had a pot filled and chef wanted it set on a table and wanted 2 people to lift. So it was me and another dude. He lifted his side a little fast at the counter of 3 and splashed hot hot oil on my hand. I quickly corrected and it splashed back onto his hand. He redirected again and it splashed my hand again. Had some solid burns on hand and fingers.
We didn’t drop the pot though, and that’s what’s important.
We had a giant rotisserie style smoker (Ole Hickory) at my last BBQ place. I was placing pork butts on the top shelf not taking account of the space between the top of the smoker and the butts. After I finished and stepped off we heard a freaking big ass bang. Two of the racks filled with with had flipped, one got wedged under the arm and was actually bent (big heavy steel rotisserie arms). Took me 2 hours to fish everything out and get it back up and running, minus one arm. Surprised I was not fired
I was working in a gourmet deli where we’d bring the prepped stuff out as we finished it for sales. Walking out to the sales case with a full hotel pan of hot lasagne, clipped the edge of the counter and flung the entire thing on the floor/counter/reach ins/people nearby. A quick thinking counter server called out “Lasagne, half price!”, lots of laughter but I still felt like a total moron.
I've genuinely burnt water.
Poured hot water in a pot so I could keep cooking pasta while I cleaned the bain-Marie, fast forward a couple of hours and I'm smelling something burnt: the water had evaporated and I now had an empty pot on a hot hob.
Had a huge pot of black beans getting to a simmer. The recipe called for a bit of Cumin, which was directly next to the ground cinnamon container as well. In goes a tablespoon of cinnamon just before open… didn’t take long for someone to notice that their black beans had a hint of Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Few hours before brunch service. Somebody else had batched a 12qt Cambro with scrambled eggs.
I get to working on pressing OJ. I’ve got my first pitcher full of it and dump it right into the eggs. 😞😞
First night closing alone at my new job I tripped while holding a cup of floor cleaner and dumped it in the fryer. Had to call my coworker, she said she'd clean it in the morning since the oil was too hot to drain.
One time I knocked a sani bucket into the hot fryer. *Super* fun cleaning melted red plastic out of it after escaping the bubbling hot oil waterfall lol
It was my first week on prep and I had to slice like five pounds of zucchini. I wasn't wearing my glasses because they kept fogging up in the walk-in, so I was slicing away until someone pointed out I was slicing cucumbers and not zucchini.
Not me...But I watched it happen. Working a wedding for the daughter of a very wealthy family. The mother of the bride had brought us a large bottle of vinegar to make the dressing with for the salad course. Well this vinegar she made herself from the fruit of an apple tree she planted after her daughter was born...think placenta tree or something to that effect. The vinegar was years in the making with a specific purpose...to be used at her daughters wedding... she hands this gallon glass jug to one of the cooks and it promptly slips out of his hand and shatters on the floor right in front of everyone...never forget that moment.
Making caramel from tins of condensed milk. Totally forgot about the pan on the back, boiled dry. Tins went off with the loudest bangs I've ever heard. Boiling hot condensed milk erupted everywhere. Got sent home to shower it off. Left them to clean the extractor hood covered in the stuff.
I use to run breakfast and one day I was cleaning the grill. I grab an unlabeled white bottle that I thought was vinegar. Realized I was wrong when the strong smell of rubbing alcohol hit my nose. The fire ball was spectacular
After boiling out the fryer, I opened the new oil, flipped it over in the fryer and walked away to fill up my mop bucket. When I came back the oil was all over the floor. I forgot to close the drain.
Not too me, but to a chef I worked with, wonky eyed Jamie as he was known.
He decided end of the night to clean the deep fryers. He opened the release valve, emptied into a pan, set it aside. Filled up another pan with hot water, which came from a brand new boiler, poured it in, boiling water came straight out of the release valve which he hadn't shut and went straight over his feet.
We could dedicate a whole sub reddit to how accident prone and incompetent he is.
the time i was hungover and wasted a
few gallons of fryer oil by not checking the valve or the time i dropped a whole cambro of this truffle cream sauce in the walk in not too bad but still embarrassing lmao
Before working in real restaurants, I worked at Jimmy Johns. After 9 months of delivering, I switched to a cooking position and was *solely* concentrating on making sandwiches fast.\
I very, very quickly made at least 15 deliveries worth of sandwiches before the first delivery reached it’s destination & the recipient called in to explain why I was able to make the sandwiches so fast… I completely forgot all protein, on all 15 deliveries. Just sending out bread, mayo and tomato, and they all had to be remade and redelivered.
Used salt instead of sugar and sugar instead of salt for a coleslaw recipe. It was the saltiest thing I’ve ever tasted… and I once ate a big heaping pile of salt!
We had a chemical water bath thing for deep cleaning (At a hotel with several kitchens). Like just put in metal trays and the grill tops in there overnight and the carbon or stains just fell off. Well me as a kitchen Porter found a bunch of ceramic dishes with stains that just wouldn't be removed so I had the fun idea to put the dishes in there for an hour or so.
Came back to find the dishes had the surface layer basically melted off so the dishes had the texture of a stone. These were also special dishes meant for events only. Luckily Head Kitchen Porter just shrugged, told me not to do it again and we threw the dishes away. It was only about 15 plates out of like 200 but management never did a full inventory so who cared.
Almost forgot to put sugar in a massive batch of cake batter. Had them all in pans and suddenly realized why it looked so strange and had to dump it back in the mixer.
I dumped 2 gallons of vinaigrette directly onto the owner/chef. He was sitting on the floor cleaning a mixer and suddenly a bucket of oil, vinegar, herbs and lime juice cascaded over his head. I've never heard that much French before all at one time...
I cleaned off the flat top with pickle juice...fooker looked brand new when I left. Got a call 6 hours later by morning manager. It was Mother's Day brunch and was losing their mind, everything tasted like pickles.
That's kind of hilarious. I imagine the place in utter chaos, everyone scrambling around like a fire alarm had been pulled and your manager grabbing their hair from their head screaming into the phone: "EVERYTHING TASTES LIKE PICKLES AND WE DON'T KNOW WHYYYYYY"
They saved me a stack of the pickled pancakes as penance.
And you ate them right?
Camaraderie is important...and the alternative was to live in fear that they'd fuck up my station on purpose in revenge. The first bite was just like "oh, that's a lot of buttermilk" then the vinegar & dill kind of builds up, bite after bite.
Really curious why the flavor lingered, I clean my grill with vinegar every night and it never leaves a flavor.
When I worked kitchens I'd always use ice and vinegar for the flat top, but vinegar and pickle juice are two very separate substances. One you can throw into your washing machine to get even fresher smelling clean clothes, the other... not so much.
I would guess, and it would only be a guess, that it has to do with the sugar or the salt or maybe the combination. Plus all the cucumber blood.
Well, that's definitely it. It's literally everything in pickle juice that ISN'T vinegar.
A little vinegar makes a flat top nice and shiny, so I know that's not it.
Legit concern. And good on you for just eating your humble pie, owning your mistakes is so important
This part made me laugh hard.
“JIM!! WHY DOES EVERYTHING TASTE LIKE PICKLES? I HAVE ASKED 5 DIFFERENT SERVERS TO VERIFY AND THEY ALL CONFIRMED THE SAME”
Did you do it on purpose or by accident? 🫣
Accident. Discovered how good it was at cleaning after a spill, figured it was way better (and less work) than the prescribed cleaner packs. I thought rinsing it good would be sufficient. It was not.
It’s crazy to me that it retained that much of the flavor. Like I’ve seen people use all sorts of crazy things to clean a flattop that never tinged the taste of anything cooked on it the next day
You win!
So, you didn't rinse properly?
Why would you use pickle juice?! Out of vinegar I'm guessing?
Guess you didn't rinse it very well, eh?
I found an unlabeled 22qt cambro in the walkin. Looked like it was half full of pickle brine. Without smelling or tasting, I dumped it out. I'd been at this place for a month. It was the housemade limoncello.
Tbf it wasn’t labeled.
That's my point. I offered to pay for it, but the owner was like "nah it sucked anyway"
That’s a pretty chill owner, nice. Did you get to learn to make good limoncello there?
I did not. It was literally not on the menu after that. Also the dude who made it got fired shortly after.
lmfao
this one is a welcome happy ending lol.
For the record, house made limoncello is usually just bottom shelf vodka with sugar and lemons. Tons of places were doing it in the 2010s for some reason. Not a massive loss as far as food cost.
If it ain't labeled it ain't your fault
If it ain't labeled (and not inert like sugar, flour, corn meal, etc.) it's my ***ethical duty*** to dispose of it, as I have no idea its origins, timing, etc. and thus absolutely no ability to verify its safety. If management wants to get mad, I'll direct them to the people opening the product and failing to properly secure it through simple communication that we universally understand. If they want to push it, I'll just ask, "Where were you, to manage the situation prior to now? I encountered it on its face. Once I found unlabeled product it was no longer a question of ***if.*** You're responsible for disposing of it, too. If you want those health rules bent, you should 'manage' faster, I guess?"
[this guy would have been PISSED](https://www.tiktok.com/@arkbykomi/video/7328099656339082528)
You are in my ligue haha
Why on earth was it in a oil bottle? Mine was Stock, strainer, sink. You all know what happened.
Same. I was the reason you weren't allowed to strain stock alone anymore. Not because of the weight, but someone's gotta stop me from pouring it down the sink.
I had a prep cook do that before and I told him he was why weed isn’t legal.
“Alright chef strained the stock into the sink, where do you want these wet bones?”
It was not in an oil bottle, it was just the same bottle… it had a label that said vinegar but the label was facing the wall….
Ohhhhhh.. Yeah I get that.
Oof, I can only imagine. The boiling vinegar would have cleared the line, maybe even the whole BoH. Learned that cleaning the flat top one time, lol.
the whole patio too if it’s downwind from the hood exhaust
What fucking chef orders gallon bottles of oil to fill the fryer? Every single place I've worked for 20+ years uses the 40# cardboard/plastic jug, or the semi solid sortening brick. There's been a couple times we had to top up with gallons of salad oil because the truck was late or delayed lol 😆
It’s not that busy except for weekends and we do not use the frier that much. Most of our dishes do not require anything fried. Therefore we only change it like twice a week.
That sounds like paying more for less product. Fryer oil can go bad(after many weeks), but the cost savings per gallon is so much more. I also don't think I've seen "fryer oil" specifically in gallons, it has anti-foaming agents in it to last longer than traditional veg oil. Even if you're using peanut oil/sunflower oil or like my new spot rice bran oil, buying by the single gallon is very cost prohibitive.
Im not in the US, it’s not a first place I work at that uses 5 l bottles
There's a person in our kitchen that constantly says "we have no WW Vinegar", I walk into dry store and there it is, 2 massive 5l bottles. She constantly thinks it's olive oil. I guess at least she doesn't use it for confit garlic or in a fryer, but still, you'd think she'd just learn to actually read the bottle.
My girl :D
This oil smells funny chef
I still make fun of a dude that did that like 15 years ago. Full batch of demi. Guess what his nickname was after that?
Hahaha way to go Demi. that’s the kind of situation where eventually everyone could be calling him G.I. Jane for years and nobody even remembers why
This fuckers name in my phone is demi. I'm only like 70% sure I know his real name.
Fucking dumbass?
My fuck up was standing by and watching a 3rd year apprentice convince a 1st year apprentice to do the stock down the sink shuffle. Head chef fired the 3rd yr, despaired for the future of the 1st yr and chewed me (the line cook) for not stepping in to stop the muppet.
It's been forever since I've worked in a kitchen, what is the stock down the sink shuffle?
Go to strain the stock and instead of straining it into another container it gets strained into a sink...
Oh I see now. The way he described it I thought it was someone stocking something on the line and moving really slow.
I left a mini Yorkshire pudding tray under a salamander , and went for a smoke just as a weddings speeches were starting and set of all the fire alarms in the hotel
You win
This one wins.
I knew a fire would be the top comment.
This one genuinely made me chuckle
Oh man, I hope they were understanding, lmao
A friend told me about a banquet where he prepped trays of fois gras and left them on the counter. The"new guy" needed some counter space and put them on top of the salamander to get them out of the way. Resulted in several trays of very expensive melted fat.
Before I was a cook, I was a busser in a fine dining place that had a separate private dining room across the parking lot. We were slammed one night and the foh manager decided I needed to run a 4 tops entrees across the parking lot in torrential rainfall. The outside door was in a hallway directly across from a door to the kitchen, hallway floors were soaking wet. I slipped and dropped all 4 entrees, including the last tuna in house. The chef (a notoriously angry, fire and brimstone old school chef) swung that kitchen door open and stared daggers into me like he wanted to kill me with his bare hands. However, he knew that I wasn’t supposed to be running food and the foh manager (his wife) got all the shit for it. He never said a word to me about it. Worked for him boh for years, even became one of his execs for a while before I got burnt out at that place.
Cheers to the chef, even with all that emotion he clearly was still thinking clearly
This man was scary, still is even pushing 60. I was young and dumb, I fully expected to get the shit kicked outta me in the parking lot that night.
I ripped out the power lines to a clients building with our food truck
Oh this ones gotta be the worst. The most expensive at least
I once put Buffalo sauce on a chimichanga instead of enchilada sauce
I forgot to hit submit on a Sysco order that had everything we needed for service for two days until the next delivery. I didn't sleep much that week.
That's when you find somebody with a truck or a van and head to the warehouse to pick it up.
2.5 hours away
Wake up early and roll a couple spliffs. That's a road trip. I'm kidding.
Did you do it only once? Because I have an alarm set on my phone to remind my KM to order bread daily.
I have not done it since, but I did also set an alarm for order days to go back and look if it's submitted! Head chef was actually pretty cool about it. It's not the mistakes that make you it's how you handle and fix them.
Yeah, when I was a KM, I forgot to order the corned beef AND the cabbage for St. Patrick’s day. That was an expensive run to the grocery store. “The first time is a mistake, an accident. The second time, it’s a choice. You need to do whatever you need to do to prevent it from happening again.” Advice the GM gave me at the time that I still use, even in parenting our kids, lol.
I hadn't felt that rock in my stomach in a looooooong time. When I finally got back to my desk to do something else and the first thing that popped up was the big blue submit button I could have thrown up on the spot. I still get woozy thinking about it.
Chef did that with a GFS order one time. Luckily we had another location sorta nearby and we had some back ups anyways.
Poured a ladle of bbq over a customer's Sunday roast instead of gravy
Had a chef who did that with stick toffee sauce instead of gravy, that was an experience
One chef put sour cream (which is kept in a piping bag) on top of an ice cream sundae instead of whipped cream (also kept in a piping bag). We found out when the customer returned the plate, having eaten almost the whole thing, saying the cream tasted funny.
Truly the best case scenario. Honestly I prolly would've done the same thing. "this whipped cream tastes funny but I better not say anything I don't wanna be a Karen"
Why are different colored twist ties or little bits of tape not a standard for this? I work somewhere with multiple white piping bags and it's obnoxious.
In this case the chef was a little old asian lady. The good thing is after this she went to an opticians and got prescription contacts
I'd eat it, lol. That actually sounds pretty good, ngl
Wasn't a restaurant but a liquor store, but I was involved in the smashing of nearly an entire crate of imported french wine; like 80 a bottle or something like that. Mind you, it wasn't really my fault but the winery we bought it from. I followed all the steps to pick this thing up by hand properly and was even being supervised, but they put the crate together upside down so even though the logo was right way up, the lid was actually on the bottom and of course the lid is practically plywood. Only reason it never busted open before then is because it must've sat at the bottom of the pallet from france to here. I stooped to pick the thing up, stood up straight and out came 11 bottles that smashed immediately. Only one that survived was in my hand because I tried to catch it when I heard and felt the box break open. Boss at the time was so pissed he just left for an hour lol while we cleaned up. Dude couldn't stay mad though, cause later that same day I found myself being the only propping up like 3 cases of handles of vodka cause *somebody* tried to cram a bunch of heavy ass bottles on a shelf that wasn't seated properly. And of course nobody was listening to me when I got on the radio and called for help so I had to beg passing customers to go get somebody. It got to a point where I was about to start literally screaming and if nobody came I was just gonna let the shit drop.
Nightmare on Elm Street 😁
Worked at a place without a fryer, but we had to fry off lamb shanks for a dish. Would use a big rondo pot to do so. We would let the oil cool down and strain into a 5 gallon bucket to reuse later. One day I was a little impatient and strained the oil while it was still too hot. Lifted the bucket to move to its usual spot…. The handle and top lifted, while the bottom of the bucket remained in contact with the floor. I shouted out for a metal pot but it was too late. Hot oil all over the floor. Just looked at everybody and said, “I don’t want to hear a thing until I have this cleaned up.” The roasting lasted for weeks.
Oh man...sooo many good ones so far. When I first started cooking as a prep cook, I was making a large batch of salsa. Recipe called for 5 Tbsp. I grabbed the 5 lbs box and my brain swapped meanings. Two days later I get a call from the KM asking me how much salt I put in the salsa.
Fucking incredible. Did you not taste the batch for seasoning as you were making it? Was it gritty? Lol
I can't remember how but one time at a bakery I accidentally put in way too much yeast into a dough. Luckily my boss just shrugged and added more of everything else till it matched.
Not mine, but a coworker of mine accidentally put cayenne instead of paprika on all of our deviled eggs for a party Didn't take long for that mistake to come back
Hahahahahahaha honestly id probably dig it. Though I'd be pissed due to how labor intensive them shits are.
This happened during a massive Christmas catering.. this kid put cayenne instead of paprika on ALL of the branzinos.. I'll never forget the look on the face of the KM when he tasted it! I was just an observer of this shitshow as I was doing all the pastas
Chicken sauce and hot and sour were in third pans right next to each other. I grabbed the wrong ladle. Told the fry guy, “I need a new fried chicken, right now, don’t ask me why!” Needless to say, fried chicken covered in hot and sour is delicious.
Would try
Pulled out of the kitchen by my boss to do an engagement party at a private home for his brother. The containers for Wesson (cooking oil) and Paraffin (bug repellent) look very similar. One is extremely combustible. Fortunately, it was caught just before the pan coated with paraffin went into the oven. For weeks, I was Paraffin Man.
I was so burned out after the weekend, I grabbed mangoes and thought, "These avocados are nowhere near ripe." I then 86ed avocado specials, not knowing we were already out of avocados the day before.
I’m loving the thought of not even wondering about why these unripe avocados are red-orange-yellow 😆
I could see green mango and green avocado looking similar.
My second day EVER on saute in a very busy restaurant. Poured some herb saint into the pan of escargot. Realized that it wasn't enough and poured more in while it was already on fire... The bottle had a speed pour. Flame went up and in. IGNITION!! + pressure. Bottle shot flames down the entire line, ignited grease buildup on top of the Salamander then shot backwards out of my hand. Found it under a prep table 20ft away while broil cook climbed up and beat out the flames with a side towel. I collected the bottle, put the speed pour back in and kept my head down for the next two weeks
This wasn’t the worst thing I did, but definitely was the most spectacularly remedied of my fuck ups Was going through service and grabbed the wrong squeeze bottle when plating a bread pudding dessert. This led to me accidentally putting red wine vinaigrette on top of the bread pudding, instead of our homemade caramel sauce (it was actually a similar color). Sent it out and left the bottle out cause it was about to be desert hour. A server walked by desert station and went to put some caramel on his finger and pop it in his mouth. He starts freaking out saying the caramel tastes horrible and how could caramel even go so bad…. I turned bright red and realized my fuck up and had to sheepishly tell my chef that the two top had a bread pudding in front of them with red wine vinaigrette on it. We send a server out to touch the table and this couple was wasted apparently. They loved the bread pudding. They were so happy with it. I got so lucky. Chef was super mad at me and a couple months later he dramatically walked out right before service and was never seen again. Sous became chef and later told me that he had to talk that guy out of firing me that night.
I love this story
I took the lid off a huge bucket of barbecue sauce and placed the bucket on a counter, dropped the lid, bent down to pick it up, and proceeded to be showered by an entire bucket of barbecue sauce that had slid off the slightly slanted counter
31 pizzas instead of 13
Welp. At least the staff loved you for feeding them that day?
Owners Made me pay out of pocket for the overage, but at cost, and they put one pizza/check for a few months so it didn’t like fuck ne up. The servers got a pie, I got 2 pies for me and the roomies. The rest made some folks at the shelter real happy
😂
Spilled an entire 8qt cambro of Alfredo sauce inside a dumbwaiter. It was my 2nd week cooking, after a bad day, and I was left in tears. I had an amazing manager though, she told me to get a drink and sit down, while she cleaned it up.
Good fucking manager.
Veterans Day a long time ago. We would do a special where veterans eat free and we would get absolutely slammed. So we would filter the fryers twice a day. Mid day and after close. I was filtering mid day when we finally got a lull, but there were still orders coming in so I was multitasking. It was one of those fryer systems where there's a vat underneath where the oil drains, then you flip a switch and the oil pumps back in. I would dump the oil in one fryer, then move on to the next fryer and dump that oil as the first fryer was refilling to save time. (I hope this makes sense. People who have used these types of fryers should get it but it's hard to describe without drawing a diagram). Well as I said, I was multitasking and I forgot to flip the switch to pump the oil back into fryer #1 while fryer #2 was draining. The bat overflowed and there was hot oil all over the fucking line that I obviously had to clean up. On the busiest day of the year. After I got it cleaned up I went out for a cigarette. The kitchen manager came out and said, "You handled that situation way more calmly than I thought you were going to."
Forgot that freeze dried berries have a dehydration pack blended it all up together, then proceeded to add it to my cheesecake, wondered why my cheesecake was so dry and then I realized
I have come so close to this SEVERAL times!! They need to make the dessicate part of the bag itself, like pre chopped vegetables lol.
Mistakenly knocked over a 5 gallon Lexan full of Ghee. It spilled right into a non thermal rated trash can. The can started to melt and spill the molten Ghee all over the floor. This happened right as I finished cleaning my station. Chef wasn’t even mad at me she just laughed and said throw some flour on it so it’s easier to shovel in the trash.
Not my fuck up and not as spectacular as your guys’ but the owner was trying to make champagne vin and he just poured a whole bottle of actual champagne in a container and started seasoning it until I told him that’s not how like.. any of this works.
Bet the floor was clean.
Fortunertly it was not
40 gallons of pot pie filling all over the commissary floor
So the thermostat in the oven got knocked loose. It's basically a long wire with a little metal bulb at the end. I should have known what it was, but I assumed it was a useless piece of wire, so I snipped it off with wire cutters. 30 minutes later the oven was scorching hot, and melting a nearby plastic piece of equipment (wheeled flour bin).
Bro sees an exposed wire and first idea is to cut it off 🤣
Not the biggest fuckup but probably the dumbest, good work
I turned on a smoker in the back alley, which was set up on a deck above a bunch of dry leaves. In addition to the dry leaves, we always dumped the drip trays of grease under the deck. AFTER it was already hot, I dumped the ashes under the deck, on top of the grease-soaked dead foliage, and put new chips in the smoker. Came out 15 min later to check if the smoker was ready and the entire back alley was engulfed in flames. Like at least a 15’ by 10’ giant fire. I managed to put it out though and all that got destroyed was a tarp somehow. But yeah. Almost burned down an entire block of buildings.
🔥
My buddy did almost the exact same thing.
I made a fish pie filling using all of the fishmongers delivery including 5kg of both brown and white crab meat. I didn't know that the crab wasn't to be used as it was hideously expensive. It was an incredible pie tho. Boss went fucking ballistic, It was my first day.
I once forgot to put sugar in a batch of evo cakes. Wasn't awful but certainly was missing something
Spilled 12qt cambro of caramelized banana gelato base in the walk in, literally two mins before I'd have locked up and left. Instead, I spent 30 minutes cleaning mats, squeegeeing floors and trying to figure out how to break the news to the pastry chef.
Man these comments make me feel A LOT better about my fuckups. My biggest L was probably when I worked as a dishwasher forgot to add hot water to our chafers. My manager caught it in time, but I still think about that and it keeps me up at night tbh
Joining the military to pay for college so I wouldn’t have to cook anymore, going to Iraq, coming back to drop out of college twice and develop a substance abuse problem. Only to end up cooking again.
Back when I was a kid, I worked at a ski lodge kitchen. Owner wanted to clean the deep fryers, so he told me to drain the oil as the last thing after clean up... So I did, into the plastic bucket he told me to. It went about as well as you would expect. Although I was able to get out of the cleanup since I didn't drive, and my ride had arrive, so he let me go.
I've definitely told this one here, but I was 16 and working at the World Famous Brookfield Zoo just outside Chicago. I was on the fry station in the restaurant next to the Dolphin Show on a Sunday afternoon. Zoo closes at 5, so the restaurant closes at 3:30. That was 30 years ago and I didn't realize how sweet that was. Anyway, Sunday nights we boiled and scrubbed the fryers. There are a total of 8 in the place, I am responsible for four. I forgot to close the valve while refilling one with fresh oil. Fuck me, what mess and a waste of money. I have done it two more times since then, both before I started getting high when I was 18.
I’ve also made this mistake, but only once! What was a simple clean/close job turned into atleast a 2 hour deep clean. I always make sure that valve is closed now.
I was the manager at a soup kitchen/food bank. Right before service a delivery truck came with a palate of food. I used the forklift, but lifted too high to place it, and ripped off a sprinkler off the roof. It caused the sprinkler system to flood our warehouse, kitchen, and dining hall.
Was cleaning out the fryer on a food truck using water and the fryer cleaner. Totally burned off all the water and decided the best remwdy was to throw a 12qt of fresh water in the hot fryer. Had a bad cough for at least a month.
Mandoline. Was a stage at my first COOL restaurant as a young line cook. Julienned carrots on the mandoline. A bus bin full.. Never used one before and the palms of my hands showed that after. Kept going & didn’t say anything. Got the job. Not proud of that one.
Are you saying you skinned bits of your palm?
Put cinnamon seasoning in the hamburger meat. In my defense, the bags were the same size, and color.i was in a hurry, short staffed, and did a grab and go. Ruined that batch of taco meat.
Not me, but the biggest screw up I've seen was at my old pub. We had a fryer fire, whilst I was turning off the gas so was at the other end of the line, my chef decided dumping a bucket of water in the fryer would be a good idea (we'd no ansul system). One explosion later... eh at least I got a new fryer out of it. When I left they still had the dent from it in the canopy.
At a catering gig, I was lighting a gel-filled sterno with a long lighter and accidentally stuck the end of the lighter into the gel. Seeing that the end of the lighter was on fire, I tried to put it out by waving the lighter back and forth. Not only did it not work, but it FLUNG on fire gel onto the disposable tablecloth that was underneath the entire spread, which quickly caught fire. Had to use the water from the chafing pan to put it out, and quickly reset the whole buffet before the guests arrived.
I showed up hung over one day and started making pancake batter. It was a big batch to get ready for brunch. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't getting to the right consistency until the chef had to point out that I had grabbed the corn starch instead of the flour.
I did that in a non professional situation. I was trying to make pierogies with potato starch 🫣
Other than leaving the valve open when pouring in a new batch of oil….. I was in the Army and told to make some Gatorade. We used these drink dispenser called “silver bullets”. Like 10 or 20 gallons insulated steel cans. Our method was to dilute the packet of powder in some boiling water and then to pour it into the bullet which was filled with ice, then we would top off with cold water. The bullets would chill for like 4 hours in our walk-in until we were ready to serve. We were setting up the service line and I went to get the bullets…I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too sweet or sour so I tried to dispense some and nothing came out. I opened the top and at first I didn’t comprehend what I was seeing it looked like thick green jelly,….then it occurred to me…..I made 40 gallons of green jello.
Been cooking for close to a decade now and am currently working underneath another executive chef. This happened two weeks ago; I was draining the dry oil to put in new oil. Tickets start flying off the printer, I turn around and the entire line had fry oil on it. Worst day of my life. Tools solid hour to clean up and every night I close, I’m still sweeping up that litter stuff.
I forgot there were wings on the smoker so I left them on… all night lol, had to throw away hundreds of burnt wings
What I don't understand is how you got through that much vinegar before realizing there was a problem?
It was a big bottle with a big hole ( sorry not an English native speaker) like a plastic 5 litre water bootle. So I was pouring fast. And the frier was big and the oil was a bit dirty allredy. When it first got agitated I did not pay attention and continued 🫣
Most spectacular fuck up...hmmm. Cleaned a plancha/broiler combo with ice. Plancha on top, broiler underneath. The cold of the ice shocked the fire stones in the Broiler, and shattered them. Kept my mouth shut about that for a long time Next, I was using a rag to clean a pasta roller, while it was still plugged in....and accidentally hit the on button. Rag got stuck in the gears and it didn't have a reverse function..... Machine still makes noise We don't talk about it at work.
80 person wedding, groom brought in wild sockeye salmon that he and his buddies caught for main course. Asked to roast it whole and serve it on the bone carving style. Undercooked the shit out of it. Salmon sushi is cooked more than those fish were. In my defense, I had never roasted whole salmon like that before. They still enjoyed it I think. Not sure how much they tipped at the end.
Needed a lot of bacon on the fly, and 2 other dumbasses had burned 2 pots already that day. Chef wouldn't allow anyone else but him to cook the bacon after that. Whilst transferring that perfectly cooked bacon, I wasn't paying attention and for some reason, poured hand soap all over the bacon. No one seen. I tried to scoup out most of the soiled bacon, and we used that shit.
I had a second job as a pasta maker at a restsursnt i had like for a long time that relocated right down the street. It was at a competing hospitality group, and was a prospective escape plan/way up the ladder if I played my cards right, the chef knew I was a junior sous chef at a high profile Italian restaurant down the street. They extruded pasta all day long, and I would come in and portion as I set up stocks and processed braises, and the chef basically had me make a few specials and do an impromptu tasting because he liked me more than his sous chef. Their extruder was terrible, American manufactured and very fragile, and you would kneed the extruded dough inside of the machine instead of outside of it and then put it in. A pocket of semolina got jammed in the tip of the extruder and caused a jam, and the jam made the whole machine bend in half and broke this 3-4k piece of shit extruder(I’ve worked with 6 extenders in my career and this was the only one that worked this way or could possibly break so easily.) I quit 2 weeks later, the sous chefs used this as a spring board to attack me and reduce my hours, and would give me a prep list, I would complete it, go to clock out and head to my main job, and they would write a new prep list and say I didn’t complete any of my work. I got sous chef at my main job like 6 months later but that always went down as the biggest failure of my career.
We're short two men on superbowl sunday so I'm on expo calling tickets and trying to manage the fryers and help on grill at the same time. It's noon so the last minute catering orders are rolling the fuck in. Tickets were just about touching the floor. Even my boss and the dishies were on the line with me. Everyone's fucking stressed. This ticket says they want an extra slice of pineapple on their burger, but we just ran out of pineapple. My boss tells me he'll just run to Walmart, no biggie. Mind you Walmart is about a quarter mile away. I look through the pass and literally see him on foot, sprinting across traffic to make time. About 10 minutes later, he comes back sweaty as hell, looking like he was gonna pass out. Turns out, I misread the ticket and it said "-Pineapple" and not "+Pineapple." We didn't even need it. He's got the thousand yard stare reaching into the back of my skull. "oops" Not a huge fuck up, but it definitely put him in a mood.
Line cook brought over a sheet pan of potatoes and told me to wash them. I was a dishie, first restaurant, and I ran them through dish.
Dumped a gallon of fish sauce vinaigrette in the dish pit. It was the good fish sauce, too. I look back on it, see everything I did, and mentally punch myself in the neck between the turning and the Dump.
I burned a whole tray of crab quiche. There were 24 on the sheetpan at ±$10 a pop (in 1978). I worked in a small, privately-owned restaurant. We made quiche with crepes for the crust in large glass dishes. One day I was making a sheet pan of crab quiches and someone was really late. So while I was doing his job, I forgot about the quiche. When I told the manager, she told me to put them in the trash and take it out to the dumpster immediately. Apparently the previous manager would tell the owner everything and she was canned, 'cause he didn't want to hear it. The new manager had a long tenure because she hid any mistakes from him. He loved her. The other big on was not me, but one of the other cooks at a big casino/hotel main kitchen. He dumped (literally) a hundred gallons of hot beef-vegetable soup he had just finished making, on the kitchen floor! He threw his hands up in the air and just yelled, "STEWARDS!" and walked away.
My used oil container overflowed when I dumped a pot of fryer oil in it today. Went all over the back parking lot. Apparently the old chef had it picked up on a call only basis. Instead of them just picking it monthly or whatever. real bummer spending half an hour scrubbing and rinsing pavement after a 12 hour day. Not the biggest fuck up, but an annoying one for sure.
Not me, but my coworker came into work still tripping from the the night before. Put a huge plastic jug of cooking oil on a hot flat top. This was all while we were setting up to open. Cleaning up both the melted plastic and the oil that flooded the area was super fun.
I caused a fire that destroyed my cafe. Could no longer operate. Had to do a complete rebuild overhaul.
Not me, but our chef at the time spilled a Bain Marie of fat into our woodfired grill. Fire was already burning a little hotter than we wanted but once that already hot fat hit it, it got out of control. chef burnt his hand up pretty good trying to recover the situation, Everyone dropped what they were doing and started pulling flaming logs out of the fire trying to get it to die down. Ash is flying everywhere, the baffles in the hood started glowing, no idea how we didn't set off the ansul. This is all in an open kitchen with a dining room of like 40-50 people staring at us. Eventually got things under control (it was probably a total of 5 minutes but it felt like hours), sent chef home, cleaned up the kitchen as best we could and finished out the night.
I was carrying a pizza in each hand- one of them was a little too big for the pan and a few pieces started to fall, so I instinctively tried to catch them and ended up throwing an entire pizza down the server alley. Bonus: Not me, but I was kitchen MOD the night our youngest dishwasher mixed bleach and drain cleaner.
First time ever coming in stoned at the place with the crackers and the barrels. Dropped 2 sheet trays. One containing 23 trout thawing out, and another containing 12 trout. Not my only fuck up that day but the worst. Still don't know how I kept my job after that.
Not me but my husband. He worked for about a month for a very popular national “Chinese” restaurant. He hated every minute of it and they were constantly violating food safety standards. He managed to get his old job back for better pay, so the last day he was at said restaurant he was basically there to collect his check. During the lunch rush he accidentally poured teriyaki sauce on the orange chicken, shrugged it off when questioned, then hung up his apron to drive off and never look back.
ruined 40 pounds of chicken cause some stuck to the bottom of the pot while it was boiling and it all tasted burnt, did the same with a fuck ton of beans, and was making hot sauce one day and gassed the whole kitchen and made eveyone cry/cough.
Dropped a 22 of buttermilk in our dry storage
You can make the sauce for dulche de leche by boiling condensed sweetened milk in the can. Unless it’s a busy random Tuesday and you get called to the expo line and forgot about the dulche. When that water evaporates (and it will evaporate), the canned condensed milk becomes an IED. Luckily the only casualty was the milknand the hood. Still took me a week to get all the random caramel spots
Fuck, I still fuck up after 30 years of cooking. 2 weeks ago, I was temping our prime rib. Typically, we turn it off and let it rest when it hits around 100°f. I was cooking 14 USDA choice export ribs spread out between 5 ovens. Somehow, I managed to not turn one of the ovens off. No one caught it till about 2 hours later (which is a whole other conversation), but it was still my very expensive fuck up.
I overcooked a steam kettle full of rice noodles, had to scramble for a replacement and left it sitting there. Came back later to like 80 gallons of congealed rice gloop of course. I tried to disperse in among a few trash cans and cleaned up. Then later I heard the porter bitching about how heavy all the trash was and didn't say shit. :|
Let’s see. Not mine but some of my favorites. The time the new expo used cumin instead of black pepper to season Caesar salads and when called out said, “oh, that’s why they tasted so bad”. The time the Sous chef tripped with a full sheet tray of tiramisu and it slammed into the wall and the tray slowly oozed down to the floor leaving a streak. The time a cook dropped a huge cambro of tomato sauce in the walk in right after we cleaned and that shit must’ve had propellant in it because it exploded and went everywhere.
Oof! I was a deli manager and pretty much did everything since the staff were college kids. I was loading up the dolly and a huge 12 pack of artichoke hearts in oil, in glass smashed down off it. It took me an hour to clean up. So much olive oil...
My biggest fuck up was when I was in culinary school. Chef wanted us to change the oil in a fryer. Had a pot filled and chef wanted it set on a table and wanted 2 people to lift. So it was me and another dude. He lifted his side a little fast at the counter of 3 and splashed hot hot oil on my hand. I quickly corrected and it splashed back onto his hand. He redirected again and it splashed my hand again. Had some solid burns on hand and fingers. We didn’t drop the pot though, and that’s what’s important.
That’s more like an accident than a fuck up
We had a giant rotisserie style smoker (Ole Hickory) at my last BBQ place. I was placing pork butts on the top shelf not taking account of the space between the top of the smoker and the butts. After I finished and stepped off we heard a freaking big ass bang. Two of the racks filled with with had flipped, one got wedged under the arm and was actually bent (big heavy steel rotisserie arms). Took me 2 hours to fish everything out and get it back up and running, minus one arm. Surprised I was not fired
Put a case of frozen salmon under water, it wasn't cold water......
I was working in a gourmet deli where we’d bring the prepped stuff out as we finished it for sales. Walking out to the sales case with a full hotel pan of hot lasagne, clipped the edge of the counter and flung the entire thing on the floor/counter/reach ins/people nearby. A quick thinking counter server called out “Lasagne, half price!”, lots of laughter but I still felt like a total moron.
I've genuinely burnt water. Poured hot water in a pot so I could keep cooking pasta while I cleaned the bain-Marie, fast forward a couple of hours and I'm smelling something burnt: the water had evaporated and I now had an empty pot on a hot hob.
Had a huge pot of black beans getting to a simmer. The recipe called for a bit of Cumin, which was directly next to the ground cinnamon container as well. In goes a tablespoon of cinnamon just before open… didn’t take long for someone to notice that their black beans had a hint of Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Few hours before brunch service. Somebody else had batched a 12qt Cambro with scrambled eggs. I get to working on pressing OJ. I’ve got my first pitcher full of it and dump it right into the eggs. 😞😞
First night closing alone at my new job I tripped while holding a cup of floor cleaner and dumped it in the fryer. Had to call my coworker, she said she'd clean it in the morning since the oil was too hot to drain.
I've left multiple rags to cremate on the burners
One time I knocked a sani bucket into the hot fryer. *Super* fun cleaning melted red plastic out of it after escaping the bubbling hot oil waterfall lol
It was my first week on prep and I had to slice like five pounds of zucchini. I wasn't wearing my glasses because they kept fogging up in the walk-in, so I was slicing away until someone pointed out I was slicing cucumbers and not zucchini.
Not me...But I watched it happen. Working a wedding for the daughter of a very wealthy family. The mother of the bride had brought us a large bottle of vinegar to make the dressing with for the salad course. Well this vinegar she made herself from the fruit of an apple tree she planted after her daughter was born...think placenta tree or something to that effect. The vinegar was years in the making with a specific purpose...to be used at her daughters wedding... she hands this gallon glass jug to one of the cooks and it promptly slips out of his hand and shatters on the floor right in front of everyone...never forget that moment.
Accidently left the deep fryer on over night twice in a row and got fired.
Forgot to put oil in the fryer before I turned it on
That's so scary!
Making caramel from tins of condensed milk. Totally forgot about the pan on the back, boiled dry. Tins went off with the loudest bangs I've ever heard. Boiling hot condensed milk erupted everywhere. Got sent home to shower it off. Left them to clean the extractor hood covered in the stuff.
I use to run breakfast and one day I was cleaning the grill. I grab an unlabeled white bottle that I thought was vinegar. Realized I was wrong when the strong smell of rubbing alcohol hit my nose. The fire ball was spectacular
After boiling out the fryer, I opened the new oil, flipped it over in the fryer and walked away to fill up my mop bucket. When I came back the oil was all over the floor. I forgot to close the drain.
Not too me, but to a chef I worked with, wonky eyed Jamie as he was known. He decided end of the night to clean the deep fryers. He opened the release valve, emptied into a pan, set it aside. Filled up another pan with hot water, which came from a brand new boiler, poured it in, boiling water came straight out of the release valve which he hadn't shut and went straight over his feet. We could dedicate a whole sub reddit to how accident prone and incompetent he is.
the time i was hungover and wasted a few gallons of fryer oil by not checking the valve or the time i dropped a whole cambro of this truffle cream sauce in the walk in not too bad but still embarrassing lmao
Before working in real restaurants, I worked at Jimmy Johns. After 9 months of delivering, I switched to a cooking position and was *solely* concentrating on making sandwiches fast.\ I very, very quickly made at least 15 deliveries worth of sandwiches before the first delivery reached it’s destination & the recipient called in to explain why I was able to make the sandwiches so fast… I completely forgot all protein, on all 15 deliveries. Just sending out bread, mayo and tomato, and they all had to be remade and redelivered.
Used salt instead of sugar and sugar instead of salt for a coleslaw recipe. It was the saltiest thing I’ve ever tasted… and I once ate a big heaping pile of salt!
We had a chemical water bath thing for deep cleaning (At a hotel with several kitchens). Like just put in metal trays and the grill tops in there overnight and the carbon or stains just fell off. Well me as a kitchen Porter found a bunch of ceramic dishes with stains that just wouldn't be removed so I had the fun idea to put the dishes in there for an hour or so. Came back to find the dishes had the surface layer basically melted off so the dishes had the texture of a stone. These were also special dishes meant for events only. Luckily Head Kitchen Porter just shrugged, told me not to do it again and we threw the dishes away. It was only about 15 plates out of like 200 but management never did a full inventory so who cared.
Almost forgot to put sugar in a massive batch of cake batter. Had them all in pans and suddenly realized why it looked so strange and had to dump it back in the mixer.
I dumped 2 gallons of vinaigrette directly onto the owner/chef. He was sitting on the floor cleaning a mixer and suddenly a bucket of oil, vinegar, herbs and lime juice cascaded over his head. I've never heard that much French before all at one time...
FYI - it’s spelled Geyser. Named after the original Geyser, Geysir.