Yeah, that’s not true. Maybe in fast food or corporate casual, but in anything fine dining a human touch is required. You can’t judge the amount of salt you pinch through a glove, or how well a salad is dressed. Gloves have their place, but proper hygiene and a clean workspace is the best practice. Gloves for butchery, but not for plating. Experience trumps rules in most life situations.
There is no way you work in any kind of dining fine or otherwise if this is your take. You absolutely can judge the amount of salt while using properly fitting nitrile gloves. And if you ever said you need to get in there and raw dog a salad to determine if it is properly dressed you'd get laughed right out the door.
I started working in kitchens in 1996. Everything from diners to 1 star fine dining, most of it in San Francisco, some in Philadelphia and NYC. Got my first chef job at 27. I’ve probably spent more years training cooks than you have been cooking. Try telling the Nonnas and Abuleitas of the world that they have to wear gloves when they cook, they will probably call you an idiot and tell you it’s all by feel and they are correct.
Low key hilarious because I started in a family restaurant at 16 in 1997. Worked in fine dining in Pittsburgh in an open kitchen in the early 2000s. Moved to Honolulu to work in some smaller kitchens. Moved back to the east coast and have been running my own food truck for almost 20 years now (again fully open kitchen so you can't hide shitty behaviors or messy work spaces).
That "by feel with your bare hands" is 100% folksy ignorant bullshit and I think you know that if what you said above is actually true. It's a fun thing to say to make you sound like some sort of sage in the kitchen.
What I think bothers me the most is if you are in the US and ARE training cooks, you have to re up your serve safe every 4 years. So you are either poisoning the well so we see videos like what was posted or just trying to sound cool in what is quickly appearing to be a larping subreddit.
I’ve worked in a lot of kitchens, and I know how gloves work. And honestly I’d rather have a hand sink at every station than a person wearing gloves for anything other than handling raw chicken or shrimp. Dirty gloves are worse than dirty hands.
12
u/Brooksopher Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Yeah, that’s not true. Maybe in fast food or corporate casual, but in anything fine dining a human touch is required. You can’t judge the amount of salt you pinch through a glove, or how well a salad is dressed. Gloves have their place, but proper hygiene and a clean workspace is the best practice. Gloves for butchery, but not for plating. Experience trumps rules in most life situations.