A professional restaurant kitchen is chaos — beautiful chaos, but chaos nonetheless — and even in the calmest of circumstances — dinner service floating like a cloud barely clinging to a light breeze — there's unseen chaos lurking beneath it all.
The goal is to control that chaos as planned and systematically as possible, proactively creating solutions that mitigate the inherent craziness of an environment where a thousand things can go wrong at any given time. We're talking about a troupe of dynamic personalities in a hot, wet, slippery room with fire and sharp objects attempting to perform complex tricks within a limited time frame dictated by someone on the other side of the wall with their own expectations. Sound fun? Great. Put on your apron.
Like a seasoned culinary pro, I was reminded (and perhaps traumatized) of this dynamic all over again as I watched the new season of Hulu's streaming smash hit. bearThe solution is some kitchen tape and a brand new Sharpie.
“It all begins with tape. Without tape, there is no organization. Tape is our higher power. We live and die by tape,” says executive producer Matty Matheson. bear He plays Neil Fuck, a handyman turned server who is also a chef in real life.
Having run five award-winning restaurants, Matheson understands building a successful kitchen culture around an organization and shares that knowledge with bearHe believes so strongly in the need for a tidy kitchen that he even quoted a verse from the Bible during our conversation: “The tape gives and it takes away.”
Why is kitchen tape so important?
The daily ritual of preparing a restaurant for its service period is akin to a Broadway show. There's strategy, planning, rehearsal, timing and preparation leading up to the moment the curtains rise and our guests are fed, entertained and delighted. It is our role as restaurateurs to create a consistently amazing experience every day, regardless of what's going on behind the scenes. After all, our paying customers are entrusting us with their hard-earned dollars and precious personal time.
This explains our collective obsession with structure, systems, organization, and preparation. For professional kitchen teams, a core organizational framework for any given day or night provides stability and ultimately helps limit the opportunity for mistakes or errors in judgment. Such a framework helps set concrete goals and informs daily routines like a GPS on an unpredictable road trip. No one knows what the weather will hold, but at least we have a map to help us make the best decisions in that moment. These are important controls in an uncontrollable environment.
Proper labeling of food is a critical control point in a professional kitchen. How old is this lettuce? When was this sauce made? As a chef, you can't rely on just your senses to judge the quality of your ingredients. Proper labeling not only provides a deeper understanding of ingredients and preparation methods, but also helps chefs communicate with each other as ingredients and preparation methods move from shift to shift, two ships passing each other in the night.
What is FIFO?
If you work in a professional kitchen, you'll inevitably hear the term “FIFO” – first in, first out. This means using the oldest food first. This product rotation is essential to ensure that your guests receive the freshest, safest, and most delicious food possible that day.
Claudette Cepeda, a San Diego-based chef and culinary entrepreneur known for her bold, daring approach to regional Mexican cuisine, emphasizes the importance of this practice. “We all preach the FIFO rule, but there are moments when it slips away. Nothing disrupts a busy service more than opening what you think is a spare sauce in the walk-in only to find a horribly smelly, undated deli container,” she says. “For some reason, chefs like me are always asked to taste something, even though it smells fine to everyone else.” Properly labeling your mise en place can help prevent these sensory insults.
Why do chefs care so much about labelling?
In my restaurant we often say, “Know your food. Know yourself.” In other words, if we communicate properly with each other about the food and the ingredients, the ingredients will tell us what they want from us and direct how we should go about our work.
For labeling in a professional kitchen, kitchen tape and mechanical pencils are a must. Not ballpoint pens, not brown masking tape like the ones we used in our childhood classrooms. Crisp, sticky, colorful, low-residue masking tape — which is plentiful on every countertop — combined with new, colorful, sharp mechanical pencils is the only way to prevent messes.
Beyond that, things get weird: each chef and kitchen manager has their own quirks when it comes to how they use these tools, like how to write dates (for example, spelling out the month or using numbers), whether cooks initial each label (this is a big one for me so my team knows who to look at when they have a question about a technique or recipe), cutting tape instead of tearing it, etc. Yes, many chefs insist on cutting the tape with scissors or a chef's knife so that the edges of the label are squared off and sharp.
“Excellence is cumulative, cultivated and collective,” says Evan Funke, executive chef and owner of Felix Trattoria in Venice, Calif. “It's defined by doing even the smallest tasks with intention and care. Cutting a ribbon is one of those small tasks that communicates a certain mindset among your team. Taking the time to neatly trim the edge of your restaurant's label communicates attention to detail.”
According to chefs, kitchen tape is non-negotiable
“Crisp lines and block lettering “You place two fingers over the rim of the container. The item name, date and initials are all actually written in a sharp mechanical pencil,” Funke says. “Every cook is responsible for the food at their station, whether they made it themselves or not. They need to know what's in it, who made it, when it was made, etc. All of that information is available on the tape.”
And the most important thing? “The greatest disrespect shown to your fellow dishwashers is leaving tape on the containers.” Be sure to remove it before pouring it down the dishwashing sink.“Yes, chef!” he said.
Also, knowing how much tape to use for what size container, the technique of laying a long length of tape on a table to quickly label large quantities of prepared food containers, and Bend the corners and to make the aforementioned tape easier to remove. These are all very personal nuances for many, and may be what keeps restaurants in business.
“Improper labeling is a food safety hazard and something we take very seriously in our kitchens.” Minced Champion and Boston celebrity chef Tatiana Lozana Ribbon cutting ceremony camp. “It's about respect for your kitchen and for yourself.”
However, perfect tape trimming is not everyone's primary concern. Best Chef “It doesn't matter if the tape is cut with scissors, a dispenser or torn by hand,” Brittany Anderson, star of Metzgerber & Butchery in Brenner Pass, Black Lodge and Leni near Richmond, Virginia, told me. What it is and the date it was madeI'm happy. Not labeling can have disastrous consequences.” For example, in a recent consulting project, Anderson says she saw about 20 pounds of roast beef end up in the trash because it wasn't labeled and the cook started using a new product. “The product just sat there for weeks with everyone wondering why,” she says. “That's a lot of money to waste because someone didn't write it on a kitchen tape.”
Matthew Jennings' Kitchen Tape Rules
The pressures of professional kitchen life are imposed by both external and internal forces. These pressures can come from the rapidly changing variables on the dining room floor or they can be self-imposed by career professionals who demand the best performance from themselves and their teams.
I'm talking prep lists, ordering guides, station sheets, checklists, inventory control, other standard operating procedures, and the tools of the trade — no chef would run a shop without kitchen tape and an all-purpose Sharpie.
As leaders in any industry, we want to instill a sense of pride in those we mentor and coach. It's safe to say that caring makes us better cooks and ultimately better people. This ethos permeates everything we do and impacts the quality of the food we sell and the experience our customers get. It's really that simple.
Tape Color: What's your color? I'm a blue person at heart, but green is okay too. Some chefs disagree with my choice (they say it's too low contrast and hard to see from a distance), but I stick to my guns. This is what I know and what I'm comfortable with. Plus, I love the blue and black combo because it feels stylish and sophisticated.
Whatever you do, don't use white or “plain” masking tape – it won't stick properly to the container, will leave marks, and will look messy. It should also be a maximum of 1 inch wide.
Sharpie: I'm a fan of fine-tip, drawer pens, and I hate having to constantly keep track of where my Sharpie caps are because they fall out of the pen, into my food, or on the floor. I'm a drawer person my whole life.
If you use anything other than these, you will be lovingly scolded. If you don't have your own Sharpie and ask for mine, prepare for my wrath. Consider your new Sharpie part of your uniform; it's just as important as wearing a side towel properly and having a clean apron and a little notebook for prep lists and recipes. Don't come to work with a blunt, dried-out, nearly unusable marker; throw it in the trash. Extra fine tips are a big no-no.
come on: Depending on how picky you are, there are a few options for getting the perfect tape. A weighted dispenser will do, but Joyce Chen scissors will get you more praise and compliments from chefs, if that's important to you.
