1.
Try
the food!
If there is one all encompassing
way on how to remember food, it’s to try it. When you eat, you are using your
all of your senses. Smell, taste, sight, and touch create an experience. In some
restaurants you will even ‘hear’ the sizzle of hot fajitas before they reach
the table. These senses help reinforce your memory much more than studying
written menu descriptions. They give an experience unique to each dish. Now,
some places it’s impossible to try everything but you need to start somewhere.
Most likely, what you try and what you like. What you like will be what you
sell, at least at first.
2.
Seeing
food helps you remember the ingredients.
Some of us are visual learners and others
are not. In a restaurant, I believe that everyone has some visual learning.
Each shift, you will likely be running food to your table or someone else’s.
Look at the plate you’re holding. What ingredients can you see? Was the dish
prepared normally or modified by the guest? Most restaurants have at least one
training day devoted to food running or ‘watching.’ This means literally
standing next to the kitchen and naming food as it comes out during lunch or
dinner service. The other day I was quizzing a new server on the nachos but she
was having trouble remembering the ingredients. No matter how many times I
repeated them or she reread them back to me, it would not stick. As she
stumbled once again I stopped her short and held out my hands as if I was
holding the dish. “Here!” I exclaimed, “I’m holding a plate of nachos. What’s
on them?” She rattled off the chips, cheese, beans, sour cream etc. without a
stutter. I was a little surprised but it taught me how effective a visual can
be where words are not.
3. Don’t memorize it. Sell it!
Explain an item to someone else. One of the
best ways I know of how to learn something is to teach it to someone else. You
may think you know all the ingredients in Eggs Benedict (still using the diner
example). Sell me on it. Tell me about the English muffin base, over easy eggs,
salty cured ham, and velvety hollandaise sauce. Visualize it in your head as
you recount each ingredient. Sell the dish. Ask a coworker to help quiz you on
a dish or section of the menu. Most of the time, your greatest resource will be
coworkers. The more you master telling others, the greater your salesmanship
will become. With salesmanship comes money in your pocket
4. Take a look at the kitchen’s prep line.
The kitchen only has access to so many ingredients.
This is one of the most valuable insights I’ve learned working in restaurants.
Although the menu may look like everything and the kitchen sink is involved,
it’s not. The kitchen staff begins their shift hours before the regular servers
do. This is because they need to prep
(short for prepare) the line (kitchen
line) with pre-made food they will use throughout the day. This food is then
stored in drawer or containers that are easy to draw from during a busy
service. When looking at a menu, you may notice a dish comes with black beans,
corn, and tomatoes. Three ingredients to memorize. BUT if you look at the prep
line, you’ll see they are pulling all three from one container holding, for
example, black bean salsa. This allows more organization for the ingredients in
your head. The more you know about what your kitchen’s resources are, the
better you’ll be able to meet guests needs and answer their questions.
5.
Look
for differences, not similarities
Although there are a lot of
similarities among plates of food, these don’t help you remember anything. Instead,
look for the subtle differences to memorize similar items. Burgers are a great
example of this. A lot of restaurants with burgers offer 5-10 different ones. Sometimes
the only difference is the sauce or a topping. Other times, it’s a completely
different patty like turkey or veggie burgers. You can also count the
ingredients in each one so when you repeat them back you’ll know if your off by
one or two. The point is to separate each one in your head to make it easier to
describe to guests later. Don’t like beef? We have a flavorful turkey burger or
fresh veggie burger depending on your tastes. You like bacon? We have two
burgers that come with it already or you can add it to any of them for just a
$1.
