This summer I was hired to run a tiny lobster shack in Maine. The shack opened in 2018 and apparently has never had a health inspection ever. All the locals said “they kind of forget about us out here”, since we’re on a tiny island, (winter population under 60 people) and the shack is only open in the summer.

Well I was really lucky that they trusted my judgement when they hired me- let me triple the size of the menu, buy so many new pans, equipment, shelves, that came in cascading weeks. I have 7 employees most of which with no kitchen experience so it was an intense first 2 months of 70+hour weeks for me training people and constantly improving procedure as we received new supplies.

Well about halfway through my season we did a deep deep clean on our day off- we reorganized where everything went on all our new shelves and foot shelves to keep everything off the floor, we got on our hands and knees and scrubbed everything. We’d been having a fly problem since we don’t have screens on our service and pick up windows so I even brought a fly zapper from home and set it out overnight to try to eradicate the escalating number.

It worked, no flies the next day and the store was the cleanest it’s ever been.

And literally that day - during our 3 hour midday rush, the health inspector comes in. Turns out the old one retired and the new one would be doubling down on all the places that used to be ignored.

She kept remarking, wow your coolers are so clean inside, everything is so well organized and labeled, this is exemplary.
I am the line chef so I was working throughout the entire inspection while answering her questions.

We passed with flying colors, no warnings, no faults. She even came back after the inspection to order something she saw me make and said it looked “so original and delicious”.

I was worried about our 3 compartment being a prep sink and dish sink (not at the same time of course) but it turns out we are so tiny that we are legally a food truck and have different rules around some things.

Couldn’t be prouder of this crazy lucky timing.

I was walking on air that week, (even though an employee dropped an entire box of chocolate sprinkles onto every inch of the floor the day after the inspection.)

Realized I could share my good fortune here.

Still not perfect- but worlds ahead of where it was in June!

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Update:

Thank you everyone for the kind words! I did not expect so much positivity and praise and it means a lot after this summer. I am very supported by my bosses and the community here, little cranberry island is an amazing place to live and work.

I’m so proud of my team and so excited for next year! And your kind words will definitely be in my head anytime challenges to high standards inevitably arise.

I think from some reviews that some of you have already come out and enjoyed the food and I wasn’t expecting that at all. Thank you so much that’s so cool!

Please feel free to say hi! I’m there every day we’re open.

"Gambas al Ajillo," apparently. This is the type of place with $30+ entrees. What do we think, chefs?

A cook asked the dishwasher to put "meat" through the deli slicer mid service (Another discussion for another day). Gave the dishwasher (Who has cooking experience) a chunk of grizzled fat and skin. Guy drove it through the slicer a couple times. He laughs at how awful it looks. Asked the cook if he is sure that this is what he wants, the cook said, and I quote "Slice it thinner"

This malevolent mass of carcass was just flying off the slicer wheel. Unable to be properly sliced at a thickness less than a centimer due to its lack of structure. Chunks flying off the wheel, slamming into the window. A true masterpiece being made before our eyes as the dishwasher laughs maniacally.

I don't see what the big deal is, I take a couple extra seconds to top and tail the lemons before slicing, then i make sure there are no seeds or white pith visible (photos are mine vs other chefs lemons), I'm pretty new to this place but in other kitchens I've always done this too but my new coworkers mock me for spending "too much time chopping lemons".

yes the guest might not notice, but what if they do? We're just a pub so nothing fancy but our guests deserve nice lemons on their fish Idk 😂

I just feel the way I do it is pretty standard, and they're just lazy haha

Just over a decade ago, I worked for a popular BBQ spot in the south that prided itself on being authentic this, authentic that. The smoked butts that sat in a smoker all day was where the real BBQ started and stopped, all the other food was typical frozen Sisco stuff, which was whatever, but the most egregious example of deception was also the biggest moneymaker.

The owner had a secret family recipe BBQ sauce that he made a killing on. People came from all over (it was located right along a well travelled north/south route) and bought tons of this stuff, as did the locals. My second week there I was tasked with making a few batches, and was handed a worn down index card with the ingredients. To my saaurprise, the instructions were to simply take gallon jugs of Sweet Baby Rays sauce from out back, and dump it in a 5 gallon bucket with water. I think it was 4:1 if I recall correctly. Then you put a couple cups of molasses in there. That was it.

We put them in pint and quart mason jars, vacuum sealed them, slapped his restaurant label on them, and sold them for $6 a pint, $10 a quart. What always got me was how the locals raved about how distinct and unique it was, when it was basically just Sweet Baby Rays (which I love, don't get me wrong)

I finally did it. I've posted about this job here twice and had to delete the posts in fear of any coworkers seeing them and ratting me out to the bosses. But I've just quit, and called in the health inspector. My old coworkers are pissed off and said they could have lost their jobs.

However, knowing what was going on in that kitchen did weigh on me. To recap for anyone who hasn't seen the posts before getting deleted: Morning prep makes pretty much ALL of our food. We are a buffet so there's an abundance of prepped food to be made before lunch and dinner service. Unfortunately, there are no cooling measures in place in this establishment. So hot soups and gravies get shoved right into a big plastic bucket while piping hot and thrown right into the walk in. Mac n cheese (among other things, this is just one example) gets poured into 6" 3rd pans right off the boiler and put into the walk in. The head chef wanted huge vent holes in everything to help with the cooling; that is the ONLY thing we do for it. But that means everything in that cooler is p much half unwrapped lol.

Then, at the end of the night, everything from the steam tables comes back to us and we flip pans & wrap. Tear a big ol vent hole in it and roll into the walk in. While everything is still hot. The ham balls and cod are all stacked on top of each other on those carts (vent holes be damned if you just slap a lid on it and stack while the food is at 130+°) Soup is all poured into 8" half pans and stacked on top of each other at the end of the night. Again, vent holes be damned lol.

Dating system is pretty much nonexistent; the buffet has two sides with pretty much the same food on each. So if one mac n cheese was dated 3 days ago, and 2 others were a different date as well...the film gets torn off to serve and by the time it all came back to us its impossible to tell which one was from 3 days ago. The fix? They just write today's date on everything and send it back to the walk in.

I don't know how the health inspection went, and I do feel bad for my coworkers getting caught in the crossfire. But this is for the GM who said "well no one has gotten sick yet, and this is how other restaurants do it too" and the complacent head chef.

Am I an a-hole?

I have been struggling with my career lately. The spark had been flickering. I’ve spent a lot of my career in management positions at high end- large volume restaurants and kept running into the same problems.

I came to a breaking point and decided to start over again in the world of fine dining as a Stagiaire in a restaurant chasing its third Michelin star.

It was hard. Taking orders from people half your age and humbly saying “Yes chef”- but honestly it’s the best thing I could have done and I feel inspired in my cooking again. I plan to repeat the experience again somewhere else next year- and would recommend this to any chef who feels “stuck” in their career.

I made this documentary if you’d like to know more.

https://youtu.be/Tr8KJ4EdN_g?si=DHnPW99Cey5ZNWKH

I’m the opening manager and the first thing I see when I walk in is this like wtf and how did the closing manger not see this before they left, we had to throw away almost $1000 worth of steaks, chicken, and seafood. Fuckin ridiculous. Thanks for letting me rant

I wish I could've recorded the long silence that happened between me and the server. Like does this lady understand smashburgers? I made it anyways to the best of my ability anyways. It felt so wrong.

They're always like what do you mean you're working on a holiday? And then they go out to eat on that holiday lol. It's like they think the people working in those restaurants and stores are NPC robots or something.

Yes, I shoved em all in one pan respectively.

Mine is tomatoes should be only eaten when in season or canned. These out of season “tomatoes” that are not local and instead shipped from across the globe and ripened using ethylene are tasteless and sad.

I’m trying to convince chef to just order avocados. I hate these.

His points

1.they are always ripe

2.longer life

3.thinks they are a labor saver

4.less injury risk 🤦🏻‍♀️

My retorts.

1.if you order correctly avos ripen, also have your produce guy give a fuck

2.opening these plastic fucks takes longer than a quick roll on the knife and pop out the pit

3.if you push the pit from the bottom it pops out, no need to hit with a knife, wear a cut glove, or just pay attention and don’t cut yourself

4.plastic is dumb

6.they taste bland

5.i just don’t like them

Thoughts anyone?

I’ll go first. There are a lot of good ones out there. But this one, specially for the start of my career, really sums it all up.

What movie or show is it for you?

I turned In my two week notice and got a phone call ten minutes later arguing with me about my reason for it. My reason was that the business isn’t ran professionally and isn‘t managed well, the owner called me ready to argue and push the blame onto me having a “personality issue” because I find the way she texts inappropriate for an employer and I don’t think that the employees should be given the excuses of her being a teacher, or that it’s a family business.

She constantly mentions these things like she’s a martyr and refers to herself as a “small business superwoman”. The shop isn’t managed at all and I really don’t care that it’s a family business because I’m still one of her paid employees, and I think that we should be addressed with some level of respect. After trying to argue with me, and basically saying that there shouldn’t be professionalism in a small business anyway I told her to fuck off with my two week notice, I’m not opening at 6am tomorrow.

I’m gonna cut my rant short to say that a big part of her failed management is that she texts weekly about employees not cleaning well enough, but has failed to address an ant infestation in the room where open ingredients are kept. I was given a “talk” about pouring out this exact caramel bottle and cleaning it because it’s a waste of product, the owners daughter told me she knowingly served people stuff with ants in it because they can’t afford to pour out full containers.

I’m reporting this to my local department of health and I wanted to share this because it bothers me a lot, customers have drank these things without knowing, and it‘s the responsibility of workers to report these things when owners and managers won’t take care of it. I’m also pretty young but I feel like I’ve grown up 10 years in the past couple of days dealing with this situation, if you’re in a more experienced position please consider taking younger and inexperienced people under your wing in a sense, Reddit discussions about other stuff with this situation is what convinced me to quit in the first place, I’m already so glad that I did. 💖

He is good and he wanted the hours, so nobody thought about it twice. Then an inspection came through on something unrelated and the inspector asked to see the rotas.

Under 18s cannot work past ten here and we had him on until half eleven most Fridays since June. The business took a fine and the chef took the blame, though it was a hole in the system and not something he decided. Nothing in our rota knew how old he was. He was a name on a line like everyone else.

His availability is capped now so the slot will not take him after ten. The bit that sits badly is that he lost about nine hours a week he wanted and we told him it was the law, which is true and also not the whole story. Have age rules caught anyone else out?