Plating Efficiency and Why it Matters

Plating Speed Matters

I want to share an lesson this week that I had to learn the hard way almost 10 years ago.

I was staging at this restaurant called Oceana in New York City. After about 4 hours of prepping in the external kitchen, I had the opportunity to join the Garde Manger station to do some plating for service.

Standing there and watching the Chef de Partie give me a demo made it seem pretty straightforward: take some half-moon slices of cucumber and arrange them on some sliced tuna, and dot it with a purée of some kind (don't mind my lack of memory on what it was made of, it's not important to the story).

He confirmed with me that I understood what this plate-up entailed, and left me on my own while he got setup on other aspects of his station.

All of a sudden, I heard a new voice from over my shoulder, noticing that the sous chef was now watching me do this plate up.

I had devised a method of plating that felt productive: slice the cucumber, put it on a tray, move it over to the tuna, place it on the tuna, move the tuna to the tray, place it on the serving vessel, dot the purée. After watching just one of these workflows happen, I was quickly disciplined.

Inefficient Touches

"Why are you touching it twice?" the sous chef asked me.

He showed me a pared down process that I used across the entire rest of my career. Touch each component once, plating everything up at the same time, and move it to the plating vessel in one swift move.

How often do we end up turning a 2-step move into 3 or 4? It doesn't seem like a lot to "just have one extra step" but when you map it out over a year, you're adding 50% more work to your process when you have 3 steps vs 2.

After that moment, I would consistently see it happening back in culinary school.

Fellow students would handle the same piece of mise en place multiple times before putting it where it needs to go, wasting valuable seconds during service. The root of these problems can often stem from frantic mindsets, disorganized environments, or just lack of asking the hard question of "is there a better way?".

Always Be Evaluating

That's why it's so important to constantly evaluate our processes and "touches" when performing frequently-done tasks. By asking ourselves if there's a way to shave off a step or consolidate multiple steps into one, we can become more efficient and effective in the kitchen. Next time you find yourself performing a frequently-done task, take a moment to ask yourself if there's a more efficient way to do it. You may be surprised at how much time and effort you can save.