On Jul 26, 7:11 pm, "brooklyn1" > wrote:
> "Damaeus" > wrote in message
>
> ...
>
> > Reading from news:rec.food.cooking,
> > "Gregory Morrow" > posted:
>
> >> And cooking in a restaurant is *very* hard work...exhausting, in fact.
>
> > Just seeing line cooks at work makes me not want to work in a restaurant.
> > And having worked in a couple of restaurants, myself, I know the confusion
> > that can happen with orders not coming out together, or being delayed, nor
> > not being right. It's no wonder more of them don't come out wrong with
> > all the stuff that goes on in kitchens.
>
> > And the prep work. My gosh, I remember seeing one prep cook sitting down
> > peeling two or three cases of potatoes. If I had to do that even once a
> > week, I'd go mad from the repetition.
>
> What size cases? Restaurants don't peel many spuds anymore, haven't for
> many years... they buy most spuds frozen, already prepped and par cooked.
> Those that regularly peel raw spuds use automatic vegetable peelers, a
> rotating drum with an abrasive lined interior that sands away the peel and
> has water jets to wash the peeling debis out and away... they look somewaht
> like a small portable cement mixer, the typical restuarant size would have
> no problem peeling 50 lbs of spuds in like 5 minutes, the only labor being
> to pour in the spuds and dump them out.... just have to remember to set the
> timer that shuts off the machine or 40 minutes later there will be no spuds.
> Restaurants, when they can, buy extra large nicely shapen spuds with fewer
> eyes, called Chef's grade (they're like a pound and more each)d they are
> fairly easy to pare manually.

Years ago, at an odd korean/mexican/chicago diner, the kind of place
that was open all night with $2 breakfast specials, I saw a couple of
late-night drinkers come in for the cheap food. The cook took a
boiled potato, peeled and grated it and made an order of hashbrowns.
I was very impressed.

To digress a bit, the area around Irving Park and Milwaukee Aves was a
great mix of people. Probably is still - I haven't lived in the
neighborhood for 15 years. This particular diner, I think, before my
time, started as one of those normal italian beef, gyros places that
are everywhere (and I miss so much now, in the land of coneydogs and
gas station pizza). When I got there, it was run by Mexicans. Kept
the old chicago greek influenced fast food staples, but added tacos,
burritos, nachos. Then, taken over by Koreans. Nothing taken off the
menu, just stuff added, and maybe a different sensibility in the
cooking. Had the wierdest sandwich - I can't remember if it was
supposed to be a gyros or a taco or what.