Shocking Restaurant Secrets From a Restaurant Owner

For over twenty years our family was in the restaurant business. When you are a restaurant owner, your employees often come to you from other restaurants, sometimes bringing with them bad habits, or tales of how the other restaurants operate. The secrets the servers, cooks and bartenders share have made us laugh and cringe. The next time you visit a restaurant, one of the following practices might be going on.

Commercial dishwashers are a great place to wash dishes. The hot water and powerful detergent can sanitize a tray full of dishes in minutes. But, are commercial dishwashers really the best way to wash potatoes? Some cooks think it's acceptable.

Speaking of washing produce, do you normally wash your heads of lettuce before preparing a salad? I'm not talking about those triple washed packages of salad lettuce, I am referencing the heads of lettuce that occasionally have dirt tucked into their leaves. We always washed ours in iced water. But some restaurants, we learned, do not wash their lettuce at all.

We've been hearing stories in the news about the contamination lemon wedges can cause when added to iced tea, water or other beverages. The reason is the citrus rind, which is sometimes tainted with harmful bacteria before it ever reaches the restaurant. But, how about the bartender who recycles limes? This particular man retrieved the discarded limes, which had been used in previous cocktails, from the bar sink. The limes then garnished other drinks. When his manager caught him doing this, the bartender couldn't understand why his boss was upset. True story.

One cook we hired suggested his method of preparing eggs for breakfast. He assured us it was how all restaurants prepare eggs for scrambling. Throw eggs (including shells) into the large floor mixer, blend, and then strain out the shells. I kept thinking about those shells, and remembering where they came from. We never took his suggestion.

A number of servers and cooks told us of restaurants who commonly removed the unused bread from the customers' tables. The bread was then used to make croutons. When considering this practice, I kept envisioning a runny nosed, three year old child, playing with the bread, before replacing it in the basket. I never understood why a restaurant would recycle bread handled by customers. In our restaurant, we prepared homemade croutons. Where did we get the bread? Each day our bread man gave us free racks of the day old bread. It cost us nothing, was still in its packaging, and being a little dry made better croutons.

For me, the grossest reuse of a food product, that is taken when a customer's table is cleared, would have to be butter. One restaurant in particular would recycle the butter cups, when clearing the table. Butter was dumped into a vat in the kitchen, where it was reheated and reused to sauté fish and make sauce. The cooks I spoke to about the practice saw nothing wrong with the procedure, insisting the heat killed all the germs. Once again, I started thinking about that runny nosed kid. There is no way I would ever condone this practice in one of our restaurants, I don't care if the heat kills the germs or not.

But, maybe I'm wrong about butter being the grosses, there is another. In one restaurant, an elderly relative of the restaurant owner would scrape the rice from cleared dishes, into a pot, to be reserved again. The man saw no reason to waste perfectly good rice.

It is not only what restaurant employees do to the food that can be startling. Sometimes it is what employees or customers, do to each other.

One cook I knew, met his wife when they worked together at another restaurant. I believe one, if not both, were married to, or living with, others, when they first got together. Their clandestine sexual encounters included the walk-in refrigerator, at the restaurant they both worked in at the time. Although it was initially cold, they learned how to heat up the small room fairly quickly.

But my final restaurant expose beats them all. It is the true tale of the naked diners. The location was an upscale dinner house, an establishment which had three separate dining areas, and a small alcove, off of one of the dining rooms. During the mid-week, if business was slow, it was common for the restaurant to close off one dining room and the alcove. Which was the case, during this particular night.

I had a friend who was a server at this restaurant. I will call her Ann. Although, that is not her name. She was a very conservative lady, not one to stay after work for an end of shift drink, or party with her workmates. She was a religious woman, with two children at home.

On this particular evening, it was fairly slow. For some reason, Ann walked through the closed dining room, and past the closed alcove. To her surprise, there were two diners, a man and a woman, sitting at a table. She wasn't surprised that they were sitting in a closed section, she was surprised because they were totally nude.

Ann was not only shocked and appalled, she was surprised to discover they were being waited on by another server. And the server was aware of the nudity.

Ann didn't know what was going on, but she was outraged, and managed to track down the owner of the restaurant. It turned out this couple had a nude dinner fantasy, and after slipping the manager a few bucks, their wish was about to be fulfilled.

The owner had his own reality check, as such behavior can result in the loss of a restaurant's liquor license. The private nude party was interrupted and the customer was quite insulted. There was a bit of commotion, but it never made the local papers or the police beat.

It did become a source of comic relief, for those in the restaurant community. One person I knew would get a kick out of calling the restaurant, pretending to be making a reservation. When they asked her what section she wanted, smoking or non-smoking, she requested the nude section.