Mise en Place

  • Vegetables, cheese and stew beef now come whole and get cut up. One whole item fills several dishes: a tomato gives four portions, an onion or a head of lettuce six, a block of cheese eight.
  • The cooks cut ahead into clear containers kept on a new mise en place rail beside the prep tables. A cook takes the container from the rail, brings the whole items from the fridge on a tray, cuts them one at a time on the board, scoops each pile into the container, and carries it back.
  • In the hour before opening the cooks fill every container. During service a cook tops one up once it's down to a third.
  • An order starts once its portions are on the rail. The cook carries them over on a tray, so building a burger or a salad is quicker than when every order was chopped from scratch.
  • The kitchen now stocks whole items for everything that gets cut, and they leave stock when they're cut, not when a guest orders.

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