Chef POV

November 19, 2023 10:12 AM

POV of Head Chef during a busy Friday lunch service. Fallow restaurant in London (Michelin) has a number of raw GoPro videos of chefs practicing their art. More POVs inside.

Service
Head Chef Saturday brunch
Grill
Garnish
Fry station
Pastry Chef
Plating

Prep
Sous Chef breakfast prep
Fish prep (CW: live Lobster)
Butchering a pig (CW: dead pig)

Bonus
Bartender
Tour of the kitchen
How an order comes to life

posted by swift (24 comments total)

I watched the lead video for a few minutes and the mf was touching food with his hands and wiping them off on the same grotty towel time after time. Hello? Gloves? Tongs? No one wants to eat your filth, dude. Shudders
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:06 AM on November 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

I couldn't watch too much because the camera movements were making me a little queasy. cool idea though.
posted by supermedusa at 11:30 AM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I watched the lead video for a few minutes and the mf was touching food with his hands and wiping them off on the same grotty towel time after time. Hello? Gloves? Tongs? No one wants to eat your filth, dude. Shudders

I thought the same thing. Lord help you if you have a food allergy, the cross contamination is wild.
posted by Toddles at 12:45 PM on November 19, 2023

While the touching didn't worry me much, we all need our bugs, the inefficiency surprised me. It seems like he is just wandering about, remembering bits on his way, while the food gets colder and dryer every minute. I have better mise en place in my chaotic home kitchen.
But I too stopped watching after a short while.
posted by mumimor at 12:53 PM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

the mf was touching food with his hands and wiping them off on the same grotty towel time after time. Hello? Gloves? Tongs?

I hate seeing food handlers wearing gloves, because it's not like anyone washes their hands while wearing gloves, nor changes gloves often.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:02 PM on November 19, 2023 [13 favorites]

These POV videos of a McDonald's grill are really interesting.
posted by chrchr at 2:32 PM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Seem rather inefficient. They should get some jelly packs to help keep track of things.
posted by donio at 2:39 PM on November 19, 2023 [17 favorites]

If one has an aversion to uncleanliness, eating in a restaurant is rife with exposure to germs on so many levels, so a grimy towel is the least of worries. Think about the utensils having been in hundreds of mouths, door handles with hands that have been coughed on or worse. If you think about it, it’s disgusting on so many levels. I block it all out and enjoy my meal.
posted by waving at 2:43 PM on November 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

I haven't watched any of these, because I still have nightmares from time to time about working in kitchens, and it's been 25 years now. I can't watch those kitchen competition shows either, for the same reason.

But if you're expecting a commercial kitchen to be squeaky clean, then...well, it's not. People do the best they can, but raw foodstuffs aren't the cleanest of materials to begin with, and add in the time pressure to get things done by opening and then trying to keep up, and things get messy.

I hate seeing food handlers wearing gloves, because it's not like anyone washes their hands while wearing gloves, nor changes gloves often.

I worked in places that made us wear gloves, and I worked in places without gloves. And without gloves you wash your hands much more frequently because you can feel how messy your hands are. With gloves on you don't get that tactile feedback so you go a lot longer without changing them or washing them.
posted by ralan at 3:43 PM on November 19, 2023 [13 favorites]

Wearing gloves to work in a restaurant is very much a US thing and a lot less common in the rest of the world. And I don't think the US has a great record on food-borne illness anyways, which is more to do with the food supply, not handling, so arguably the gloves are really aimed at the wrong part of that problem (and it's not at all clear that they are better anyways).
posted by ssg at 5:27 PM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Wearing gloves to work in a restaurant is very much a US thing

I think many Americans' ideas of proper mise-en-place and food handling are inspired by Chipotle.
posted by swift at 5:35 PM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ugh, that was a dumb and snarky thing for me to say and it really adds nothing to this discussion.

I'm just a little baffled by the reaction to this post. People who work at restaurants really do touch food.
posted by swift at 5:44 PM on November 19, 2023 [8 favorites]

Can’t say much about the video, but I was in London last summer and ate at Fallow. One of the best meals I’ve ever had… damn, them corn ribs!!!
posted by johnxlibris at 6:13 PM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

While the touching didn't worry me much, we all need our bugs, the inefficiency surprised me. It seems like he is just wandering about, remembering bits on his way, while the food gets colder and dryer every minute.

I've never worked in a restaurant kitchen, but I get the sense that as head chef, his job is mostly quality control. He's doing bits of work mostly to show others the paradigm to aim for in how the food is prepared and plated.

But yeah, I'm not too worried about him getting his hands on things. I think modern people sometimes have a hyperbolic sense of squeamishness about germs. This is the reality of just about every kitchen, everywhere, ever. We have immune systems; we can handle it.

Anyone who is so immunocompromised that the practices seen here would present a threat probably can't leave their house, much less eat in a restaurant around other people.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:43 PM on November 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

Blowtorch cameo in Pastry Chef
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:09 PM on November 19, 2023

American cheese featured prominently in Sous Chef Breakfast Prep.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:13 PM on November 19, 2023

I've personally observed the lack of handwashing among fancy-shmancy restaurant cooks. Like, I've seen people skip handwashing even between touching raw and cooked items.

The Chipotle comment above is interesting because at Chipotle if a worker were using freshly washed hands to touch bread (instead of the usual gloves) customers would scream bloody murder, and at a cheap Indian or Chinese buffet restaurant you're not even allowed to reuse your own plate to get a second helping because presumably your mouth germs could jump from your plate to the serving spoon - but then at this Michelin establishment you have this head chef grabbing a piece of fish and then five other things without handwashing and all these comments say "it's fine!"

It's elitist double standards is what it is.
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:16 PM on November 19, 2023

Blowtorch again in garnish; he really gives it to some greens
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:20 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Funny story, my American friend had a flesh eating bacteria on her hands while working in a sandwich shop. They did use gloves though...

For some reason this thread reminded me of that....
posted by Toddles at 8:54 PM on November 19, 2023

Anthony Bourdain:

If you are one of those people who cringe at the thought of strangers fondling your food, you shouldn’t go out to eat. As the author and former chef Nicolas Freeling notes in his definitive book “The Kitchen,” the better the restaurant, the more your food has been prodded, poked, handled, and tasted. By the time a three-star crew has finished carving and arranging your saddle of monkfish with dried cherries and wild-herb-infused nage into a Parthenon or a Space Needle, it’s had dozens of sweaty fingers all over it.

posted by destrius at 12:15 AM on November 20, 2023 [12 favorites]

Oh man I love that channel. Them and Stephen Patula's McDonalds POV videos. I have no idea why but it’s just interesting.
posted by tubedogg at 1:03 AM on November 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

American cheese featured prominently in Sous Chef Breakfast Prep.

That's because American cheese is delicious.
posted by slogger at 12:17 PM on November 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Apologies in advance to anyone who's squeamish about restaurant food prep...)

Back in college I worked as a short order cook at a very busy diner, like 200 covers from 6am to 2pm. I usually worked the grill top and steam table. The kitchen was somewhat open to the dining area so there was a pretty good view of the action. The owner was a nice enough guy, in that small-business owner asshole kind of way. Once day during a busy breakfast service, he pulled me aside with a pissed-off look on his face and said: "A customer just told me they saw you doing this," and he openly licked the palm of his hand up to his finger, just as I had done moments earlier when getting on sausage gravy from the steam table. He let me off with a warning and to this day, some 30 years later, I still think of that when discussing food handling safety.
posted by slogger at 12:26 PM on November 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

These are neat, thanks! It's really fun seeing him talk about adjusting dishes and plating with the other chefs on the fly, and how much snacking they get in. There's some sort of tasting spoon container/sink on the corner with a constantly running water tap that he runs his fingers under regularly, blink and you miss it.
posted by lucidium at 8:03 AM on November 23, 2023 [1 favorite]