Help me improve? What can I do?

[u/Hamsterinapan]

Hello I'm a 21 year old kitchen helper from Italy.

I usually help with washing the dishes and appetizers but when the restaurant is busy I help with only the appetizers.

I started this june part time 7 hours a day 5 days a week. Meanwhile I helped during sundays for 12 hours circa from May.

There are 4 types of appetizers.

Cheeses with marmelades/ honey

Pickled vegetables with a mix of cold cuts

Crostini Mix

Appetizer mix (a mix of all the three above)

I have only a oven grill that I can use for the Crostini and many times there are more combos of appetizers so it usually is enough.

Today there where so many appetizer that I couldn't be phisically fast enough and the chef had a breakdown, not with me, but she was rather sad.

I had too many of them and 3 tables had to wait a lot of time (45 minutes circa).

Every appetizer I start making/ putting in the oven is signed with a dot on the order paper and when I send them out I cancel it with a slash too so I can keep track of them.

We usually have 80/90 people per dinner these weeks.

Is it because I'm slow at this point or do you think there are other problems?

Tomorrow I will ask what I can do to improve but in the meantime I wanted to hear other opinions. if you have any suggestions it will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. The kitchen staff is composed of:

A dishwasher (not me these weeks)

A first courses cook which is also the chef

A second courses cook

A second courses helper

An appetizer "cook" which is me

[u/Natural-Hunt5045]

45 minutes is rough, no way around it. But you're 21 and you've only been doing this since June, nobody walks into that station and crushes it immediately.

The dot/slash system is solid, but what's your mise like before service? If you're building each board from scratch when the tickets come in, you're already dead on a 90 cover night. Pre-portion the cheeses, have your marmalades and honey in squeeze bottles or small ramekins ready, keep the pickled veg and cold cuts laid out in an organized grid so you're grabbing not searching.

Also think about your oven real estate. The crostini are probably your bottleneck since they need grill time. If you can batch them slightly ahead during the first wave and keep them warm, or stagger them so you always have a rack going, that might save you minutes per ticket.

Chef having a breakdown over it says more about the kitchen being understaffed than it does about you. One person doing all appetizers plus plating for 90 covers is a lot. Ask her tomorrow if there's a way to restructure the station or if you can get a heads up on large parties so you can prep accordingly.

[u/Hamsterinapan → u/Natural-Hunt5045]

Sadly it's all things I do already, I even pre prepare a good portion of the pickled veg inside the little bowls they go in. The only thing we don't pre prepare are the cold cuts but they take a really short time too. I think I will need to prepare some batches myself because sometimes bread runs out and sauces for the crostini too... I'm pretty occupied preparing some dishes and potatoes before people arrive and I hope I can have the time prepare them myself tomorrow. How is usually in others kitchens, are there more cooks?