# Kitchen Cleanseliness



## heavymetal chef (Jul 31, 2006)

So yesterday I went to the Ritz in downtown dc for a chocolate demo by some guy (he was good by the way). Well when I walked into their pastry kitchen i was shocked.....it was spotless and organized. They had all their mixing bowls, floors and equiptment was 100% clean, there were no speed racks cluttering work area and no trash cans in their way. The team that was there seemed to work together perfectly...it was how a ritz kitchen should be. Now let me compare their kitchen to ours (ritz in tysons corner, va). Their kitchen has a very simple flow (starting from the back and working toward the front).....cooler and freezer is in the back, then there is the sheeter on the left and ovens and proofer on the right. Tables are all down the middle with 1 speed rack on each side of the table. They had some ingredients on the walls on the right and the left a dish pit. Then on the left they had a spray station and then the kitchen ends. They then have a sugar and chcolate room. When you are heading out of the kitchen they have dry storage and a small storage room after the chefs room (on the right of the hallway). Now our kitchen (starting from the hall and working in).....The hallway has some dishes and garde manger and us both use and then it is pastrys dry storage in that hall (which is massive). The storage has somewhat organization, dry goods like crushed nuts, streusel, meringues, etc in plastic 3 qt containers....then we have tart and canolli shells. Then nuts and canned goods then chocolate and the you come up to the chefs desk (he doesn't have a seperate room). Then you get into a big kitchen where it is shaped like a "L" were the bottom part is fatter and the vertical part is smaller ( |-----------|
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Looks like that. The entrance is at the bottom part so is a cooler and a freezer and the scale. Then there is a hobart mixer and a pair of tables vertical in the middle. To the right of that table is 2 marbles against the wall that is vertical and further up from the 2 middles tables is 2 tables for tea and steakhouse that are horizontal then to the left of those tables is the dish pit against the wall and to the right is a table against the wall and behind it is the sheeter. We keep our small and medium mixers on the table to the back right and the microwave too. The sheeter is rarely cleaned and the drain back there is clogged so it smells of rotten flour back there. The equipment is never cleaned properly. we have about 7 racks in the kitchen at once 3 at the entrance 3 next to the tea and steakhouse tables and one next to the middle tables. The trash can is to the left of the middle tables were the stove and ovens are (4 deck and 2 convection). The other trash can is to the right of the dish pit in front of a door that leads to were we keep wedding cake things, silpats, alcohol and dryn candies (pate a fruit, marshmellows, nougat, etc) and another crescor for ridged molds. BTW it is a stair well! The ice cream machine and blast freezer are against the wall to the right of the vertical table in the back. Our deck ovens need to be calibrated, the blast freezer is always at 0 degrees C and the convection oven always has something wrong with it. We have fruit flkies bc people dont wrap their food before they leave (sometimes but it should never happen). We have a produce and dairy cooler next to the elevators outside of the kitchen and on the 1st floor we have a freezer. 


WOOOO! Now the people there do not clean up after themselves (mainly the late night bakers and some morning employees). I constatly cledan to come in the next day having it look like hiroshima in WWII. Our kitchen has a hard time working as a team and I feel I am the liason to everybody. The sous chef is a joke and the executive chef got in not too long ago and he iis still trying to fix it up (from all the menus like club, tea, banquets, steakhouse, brunch, IRD and also getting new equpitment and plates and trying to clean it but at the smae time he has too look over the sous shoulder like he is a child because the sous is lack for a better word a F*** up). It comes down to this.......I am stresses about the quality of the work and work environment and chef is too.....sometimes i feel like the asous chef. I know we do a lot of banquets (seeing 50% of the hotels revenue is food and beverage). I dont know what toi do I sometimes feel like I am working with kids that cant clean, keep quality and work together. I get along with everyone but everyone else doesn't know how to handle things about one another. Someone please help with advice.


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## heavymetal chef (Jul 31, 2006)

the diagram is obviously messed up


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## m brown (May 29, 1999)

Thanks for sharing! 
Sounds like it's a place you'd like to be. Keep your standards high. 
You won't be a line cook forever, keeping your standards high and keeping the kitchen moving in the right direction will get you brownie points and impress the chef. It may take a while!
Always nice to hear professionalizm is still alive and well and attainable!

I have to share with you a secret, as a professional in any situation, there is lots of babysitting,organizing,delegating,hard work, it never gets easier and if it does, something must be wrong somewhere else!


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## jessiquina (Nov 4, 2005)

my kitchen is a lot like yours.. it really sucks that adults cant keep their work areas clean, and clean as they go. i hate going in on my mondays and cleaning up and organizing our pastry shelves and cleaning up after the skatterbrained "pastry chef" . she even leaves our mixers a mess. and wont clean off our silpats!!!! arghh!!! im mad again. .. i just keep thinking that things will be different when i own my own bakery... but in reality, it wont be. 


oh, and maybe they just cleaned their kitchen really well to impress ppl comming for the chocolate class..


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## chefraz (May 10, 2007)

you dont have stewards to help kep the place clean? is there a union down there.? in vegas every shift we have at least one steward to do all the clean -up. prolly the same at the Ritz you went to ask about it. all our staff helps to keep it clean and tidy. because if not the health dept. closes us down.


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## heavymetal chef (Jul 31, 2006)

stewarting is a joke and i dont thhink i can work for a union


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## brooke (Jun 25, 2007)

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## jigz369 (Apr 20, 2007)

With 25 years in kitchens, I have seen my share of perfection and filth. I am proud to say that in the kitchens I have been either exec chef or sous in, I have become a health inspectors training ground for how kitchens should be kept clean. As the old saying goes, "cleanliness is next to godliness". Nothing is more true in a kitchen.


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## aguynamedrobert (Oct 26, 2006)

If a professional kitchen is dirty it just shows laziness. I highly respect chefs and crews that keep and perfectly clean kitchen because that is the part that many people just brush aside and decide not to do their job to the best of their ability....

Robert
Chocolate Guild :: The Chocolate Connoisseur's Home Base


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