kitchen can do it in Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Bengali and
English. Like all great performances, it's about timing, tone and delivery
—kind of like cooking.
There are also the terms of the trade, the jargon. Every trade has one.
You already know some of our terms. "86" is the best known. A dish is
86'ed when there's no more. But you can use the term for someone who's
just been fired, or about to be fired, or for a bar customer who's no
longer welcome.
One doesn't refer to a table of six or a table of eight; it's a six-top or an
eight-top. Two customers at a table are simply a deuce. Weeded means
"in the weeds", "behind", "in the shit" or "dans la merde"—a close cousin
and possible outcome of being "slammed", "buried" or "hit".
A waitron or waitron unit is an old-school '70s, term-gender non-
specific-for floor personnel, who are also, at staff mealtime, referred to
as the floor or the family or simply scum. And the meal itself becomes—
particularly if it's the usual trinity of chicken, pasta and salad—the shaft
meal or the gruel.
Then there's the equipment. Since the introduction of the Cuisinart, any
food processor can be referred to as the Queez; the square and oblong
metal sauce containers are six-pans or eight-pans depending on size, and
the long, shallow ones hotels. The cook's spoons with holes or slots are,
unsurprisingly, female, and the unslotted ones, male.
Meez is mise-en-place: your set up, your station prep, your assembled
ingredients and, to some extent, your state of mind. A la minute is made-
to-order from start to finish. Order!, when yelled at a cook means "Make
initial preparations" such as searing, half-cooking, setting up for
finishing. Fire! means "Finish cooking" and get ready for "pick up".
Food ready to be picked up is put in the window or en la ventana—also
called the pass, the slide or the shelf. The "slide" refers to the slotted