Vent: that food truck line in Portland made me rethink my plating speed

Last Saturday I was doing a pop-up with my crew and the line at the truck next to us stretched around the block. They were cranking out plates way faster than us, and their food looked just as good. I watched their lead guy and he was stacking ingredients in three moves, no garnish fuss, nothing fancy. It got me thinking about how much time I waste on tweezers and micro herbs at the station. Has anyone else sped up their plating without losing the wow factor? I need to cut 30 seconds per plate for service tonight.

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charles_lewis1411d ago

Last summer I watched this guy run a taco cart in Austin who had the whole operation down to like four seconds per order. He'd grab a tortilla, slop the meat, throw some onion and cilantro from a squeeze bottle, done. No tweezers anywhere. My buddy timed him just for fun and he was faster than the register could keep up. Anyway, that made me dump my micro greens entirely and switch to a mandoline for radish curls, saves me maybe 20 seconds a plate and honestly nobody's complained yet. You might find a bigger time sink in your prep than your plating too, like pre-portioning sauces in squeeze bottles instead of ladling from a pan.