So I was telling you some stories about how screwed up kitchens are in many hotels because many kitchen designers that hotels employ have never worked in a kitchen. Just one of those things in life that doesn't make sense. Kind of like why some of my hair fell out-doesn't make sense:)
I will take you back to the hotel I worked at in India for some more funny moments.
I remember the first time my boss gave me a tour through the kitchens as the hotel was still not fully completed. We walked through the room service kitchen and this thing was, I kid you not, the same size as your average kitchen you would find in a house and this kitchen was to service 700 rooms. OK, there were more burners and other equipment to cook on but when I asked my boss where the rest of the kitchen was he said "this is it." I wasn't fully surprised because I had been in the business long enough to know that most kitchens are just screwed from the start.
This is a classic example of what happens when you have some designer who has never worked in a kitchen design one-there were no tandoors in the plan. They had woks instead. Hello! This is India, there is a tendency to use tandoors for their cuisine. That is like opening a steakhouse and not putting a grill in the kitchen.
What we ended up having to do was create a room service menu with a number of dishes from each of the four restaurants in the hotel because that tiny room service kitchen couldn't handle everything. Sometimes guests would order things from each kitchen so the poor room service server would have to run around to each restaurant getting a dish here, a dish there to put the order together. By the time the server even got to run the food to the room, the food could realistically be sitting for ten minutes. What a pain in the ass! I have heard that these kitchen designers often copy and paste designs from kitchen to kitchen and I wouldn't be surprised.
One of the funniest things was in one of the other kitchens. All of the kitchens had floor grates which makes scrubbing the floors easier. Simply douse the floor with soapy water and use a squeegee to push the water into the floor grate and all you need is a dry mop to follow and you are done. Well, that is all fine and good except for one problem; the floor slanted up towards the grate! When I first saw this I was in disbelief. It was stupid to the point of funny. The dishwashers had to work even harder to clean the floor because as they would push the water up to the grate some would fall back. That is like teasing; you put something there to make someone's life easier but add a twist to make it work against them. Someone in the corporate office had a great sense of humor.
I had one dude tell me that in a hotel he worked the back corridors had floors in some sections with too steep of an incline so whenever you push a room service trolley with a full place setting, glasses and other utensils would fall off.
Til next time
Curt
I will take you back to the hotel I worked at in India for some more funny moments.
I remember the first time my boss gave me a tour through the kitchens as the hotel was still not fully completed. We walked through the room service kitchen and this thing was, I kid you not, the same size as your average kitchen you would find in a house and this kitchen was to service 700 rooms. OK, there were more burners and other equipment to cook on but when I asked my boss where the rest of the kitchen was he said "this is it." I wasn't fully surprised because I had been in the business long enough to know that most kitchens are just screwed from the start.
This is a classic example of what happens when you have some designer who has never worked in a kitchen design one-there were no tandoors in the plan. They had woks instead. Hello! This is India, there is a tendency to use tandoors for their cuisine. That is like opening a steakhouse and not putting a grill in the kitchen.
What we ended up having to do was create a room service menu with a number of dishes from each of the four restaurants in the hotel because that tiny room service kitchen couldn't handle everything. Sometimes guests would order things from each kitchen so the poor room service server would have to run around to each restaurant getting a dish here, a dish there to put the order together. By the time the server even got to run the food to the room, the food could realistically be sitting for ten minutes. What a pain in the ass! I have heard that these kitchen designers often copy and paste designs from kitchen to kitchen and I wouldn't be surprised.
One of the funniest things was in one of the other kitchens. All of the kitchens had floor grates which makes scrubbing the floors easier. Simply douse the floor with soapy water and use a squeegee to push the water into the floor grate and all you need is a dry mop to follow and you are done. Well, that is all fine and good except for one problem; the floor slanted up towards the grate! When I first saw this I was in disbelief. It was stupid to the point of funny. The dishwashers had to work even harder to clean the floor because as they would push the water up to the grate some would fall back. That is like teasing; you put something there to make someone's life easier but add a twist to make it work against them. Someone in the corporate office had a great sense of humor.
I had one dude tell me that in a hotel he worked the back corridors had floors in some sections with too steep of an incline so whenever you push a room service trolley with a full place setting, glasses and other utensils would fall off.
Til next time
Curt
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