Family Meal – For Restaurant Families
Family meal. It’s the time of night when the entire restaurant staff (front and back of the house) sits down to eat at the end of the day. I’ve always thought of it as a special time just to chill, make friends and just talk about food with people who are interested in food. It may seem that a lot of people these days are interested in the topic, but there’s I feel as thought there’s an underlying passion with cooks & chefs. They’re in it for the love I suppose… and I like that.
What I find most exciting (and kinda frustrating) about family meal is the fact that there are no rules when it comes to family meal. When working in a specialized establishment – breakfast, Vietnamese, fine dining, hot dog stand – it’s hard trying to make something that isn’t exactly on the menu… mainly because the staff may be tired of it. For example, you wouldn’t normally be able to make lasagna in a Vietnamese restaurant (no ricotta), tuna salad sammiches (no tuna) in a breakfast joint or anything BUT HOTDOGS in a hot dog stand (no anything lol). There’s always a missing essential ingredient. That’s where the fun comes in.
In the conceptual phase (ZOMG WHATTAMIGONNAMAKE), the mind starts thinking about all the commonalities that restaurants have: bread, eggs, flour, salt, sugar, potatoes. There, you could make a number of albeit simplified things: French Toast, mashed potatoes, an Italian strata, croquettes, latkes, and home fries. Add meat and frozen peas to that basic set and you could have shepard’s pie! Add salmon and you could have salmon cakes! Don’t even get me started if the head chef / kitchen manager had the foresight to have some pasta laying around in case you needed it. You get the point. It’s fun, and hopefully… it tastes good enough to eat!
YAY FAMILY MEAL! 
~Spec
