Every professional kitchen has a pass, or some form of it. Sometimes, it’s referred to as the window, because in such situations, that’s basically what it is: an open window that, from the perspective of the kitchen, is the only glimpse into the outside world and it’s where finished food is given or “put up” to the front of house to take to the appropriate table or customer.
You might not realize it, but every kitchen’s window or pass (as in, it’s where the food is passed from the kitchen to the dining room) has someone who’s responsible for making sure the right things are getting put up together, and that those things are given to the correct person or table. It might be the cook who mans the line station closest to the window. Or it might be a food-runner who just looks at what’s being put in the window and compares it with the tickets that are expected up next to determine which table is being presented. Often, there’s an expediter on the pick-up side, who either ask or tells the kitchen what to put up next.
Regardless of the form the pass takes or what person(s) is/are managing it, it represents a lynchpin to the restaurant’s smooth operation, and I feel it needs to be explored.
Particularly in restaurants where meals are coursed — usually regarded as “fine dining” restaurants — the pass is like the captain’s chair or the “bridge” of a large ship. This is where all the commands are given that dictate what, when, and how everything is meant to happen in the kitchen and, by extension, in the restaurant. And just like the bridge determines if a ship will be piloted to a smooth sail or crashed to sink, so a dinner service goes by way of the pass.
While sometimes taking the form of a literal window, usually in fine dining kitchens, the pass is a counter, table, or kitchen island, whereupon the food is presented for inspection before being sent. In such cases, there’s always someone managing it, usually as their sole responsibility, and that person is called the expediter (or “expo” for short). Because of what is required of that person, it’s often the chef or sous chef. But what is required to work the pass? What are the duties and challenges a person faces when manning the pass?
The expediter is primarily in charge of “calling” tickets (though this responsibility is sometimes shared with the chef): Whenever a ticket comes in for a new order, the expediter will call out what is on that ticket to the kitchen, including any unique information or special instruction associated with that ticket. That call will almost always be met with a callback. Once each new ticket is called, it will be put on the rail.
While the rail is usually an actual metal strip that holds the order tickets of tables who have yet to receive all their ordered food, the term “rail” is often used metaphorically to refer to all the tables still waiting on food. “What’s your rail look like?” is a common way the chef might ask an expediter how many tables they’re waiting to send.
The expediter needs to have complete control over their rail (whilst always trying to clear it). This means understanding the course each table is on, how much time their next orders take to fire, how much a particular station is getting hit, and knowing how to appropriately stagger or space out orders to best ensure a smoothly operating service across the kitchen and by extension, throughout the restaurant.
There is almost always a heating element to the pass. Usually, it’s a heat lamp (heat from above) of some model or other, and sometimes the surface of the pass itself will be heated (heat from below). I worked at a particular restaurant that had an open kitchen (meaning much of the kitchen was plainly visible to much of the dining room), and we had beautiful heat lamps that came down from the ceiling on retractable coils (they were kept dark during prep, but I remember when the heat lamps came on, it was like the flashing lights two minutes before curtain: show’s about to start!).
Heating lamps are effective at keeping food warm for a short period of time before the rest of the table’s plates are put up, or until a food runner can take them. But anyone working expo has a clock that starts in their head the moment a plate is put up, and if that clock gets to 30 seconds before the plate is gone, they will start to get anxious. If that clock gets to 60 seconds, yelling is going to start, either blaming the support staff (“Hey can I get some fucking hands, to run this food please?!”) or the kitchen (“Why the fuck are we putting up partial tables? Can we not put up a complete table one goddamned time tonight?!”). Because after a minute under a heat lamp, vegetables can dry out, sauces can crust up and meats can overcook. This is what you’ll frequently hear bemoaned as a plate “dying under the lamp”.
Expo also has the responsibility of coordinating pick-ups. When an order ticket comes in, the items on it will sometimes be meant to be fired/cooked immediately and served as soon as it’s ready (frequently called as an “order-fire” ticket). More frequently the case in fine dining models is a ticket coming in for a table’s entire meal, broken into courses. The expediter will call the whole ticket when it comes in so the kitchen knows what to prepare for pick-up. But it will ultimately be expo’s responsibility to actually call for (or “pick up”) each course as the server requests. Such requests usually take the form of a “fire” ticket that will come in for a given table that simply says “course 3” or just “pickup” (all tickets from the printer have the table number on them already), or an in-person verbal request from the server (“fire table twelve!”).
It’s up to expo to consolidate communication and coordinate with each station to ensure that they are all able to fulfill their obligation to a given course at the same time.
If requesting course three be picked up in five minutes on table twelve, expo might call out to a particular station, “can we go third on table twelve in five!?”
This might be met with one cook or station replying “I need seven!” or even “I need ten!” (which would surely spark a less than positive visit from the chef). But normally there would be a “yes chef!”, to which expo would reply,
“Thank you. Picking up twelve in five!”
Then expo writes what the time will be in five minutes on that ticket. And once the kitchen clock reads that time, those plates will be expected at the pass.
Expediting a service that’s even remotely busy requires coordinating multiple pick-up times staggered the appropriate time apart, depending on constraints and demands they need to likewise be aware of.
Let’s say in the above example, a seven minute pick-up time is granted. If that pickup is called for at 7:37, then it will be picked up seven minutes later at 7:44. But let’s say one minute later, another “fire” ticket comes in for a different table. You know you need to allow at least five minutes for the kitchen to pick up and it takes two minutes for runners to deliver a table (which may or may not require them to give a description of the dish they are delivering), and return to the pass for another table. Now it’s 7:38, so you might try to push:
“Pickup on twenty four! Can I go five on twenty four?”
“Yes chef!”
“Thank you. Twenty four at forty three!”
You’re now picking up one table just one minute before another. So maybe then you turn to your runners and say “runners, hurry up on twenty four because I need you right back for twelve” or you could even summon a floor manager or sommelier and say “we’re about to roll twelve into twenty four and I’ll need extra hands in six”.
Speaking of which, staggering tickets not only requires awareness of things going on in the kitchen, but also a conscious understanding of how many guests are at a given table. Simple logistics indicate it will take at least somewhat longer to pick up and run food to a table of eight than for a table of two. In the above example, even if the second table was for any more than six, and the first table was a 2-top, extra time is needed for the cooks to finish and plate that many plates for the larger table. In such a case, a good expediter would simply let the server of the 2-top know their table will be a touch later than they may be expecting because of the pickup on the larger table right in front of them — but that’s how it’s going to be.
Another part of navigating this puzzle is knowing how many food runners you’ll have available to run a table when it’s order is complete, and how long it will take for said runners to appropriately deliver a table’s food and return to the pass: it doesn’t matter if all of one table’s food is in the pass if there aren’t adequate hands to run it to the table!
If you’re ever in a restaurant (or watching a kitchen movie/show) and hear someone yelling “Hands! Can I get hands, please!”, the expediter is summoning food-runners, servers, or anyone else who is available to come and take food from the pass to a table. Upon runners presenting themselves, the expediter will tell them plates, and the table and position numbers (every restaurant assigns their tables, and the seats at each table, a number for this very purpose) to which each plate is meant to be delivered.
And throughout service, so goes the pass. Every table, every ticket, every time.
Calling a service is something some are just better suited for than others. I’ve worked with some great chefs who knew they had better expediters than themselves working at their pass, and would simply let them do that job and they’d supervise the pass as an overseer or inspector, rather than insert themselves as an inferior expediter.
The pass is also home to the last pair of eyes a plate will have on it before going to the dining room. This is one of the main reasons why the chef tends to be at the pass, even if they are not actually expediting. If the chef isn’t present, then usually the person the chef trusts most, after him/herself will be (usually, but not always the Sous Chef). At the pass, if a plate needs extra wiping around the rim to achieve a clean edge, that’s fine — unless a station or a cook is consistently putting up dirty edges (“Hey sauté! Can we keep our fucking edges clean please!?”). But if a plate is missing a component or is visibly incorrect (too much beet powder, broken sauce, not a good enough crust on the scallop, missing a garnish, etc.), it will be sent back to the station that presented it to be corrected.
Working the pass consists of developing plans and accurately (and appropriately) communicating them. Sometimes this requires not asking but telling people how something’s going to go, and things can get tense. I think my ability to speak steadily, firmly and respectfully to those around me in any situation has made me a good expediter in the past.
I personally love working expo — but then again, I have a particular brand of ADD where I thrive giving attention to multiple things simultaneously. I also love solving problems and doing puzzles, and working the pass is like solving a constantly mutating multivariable logistics problem, with new variables being unrelentingly introduced and subsequently solved and discarded. Every time a dish needs to be re-fired (Is there another table picking up soon that has that same dish that I can borrow from to complete this table?), or a pickup needs to be paused because a guest at that table went to the restroom (Is there a different table I can pick up before that guest returns?), that becomes a problem the expediter needs to solve immediately — no, not soon, immediately.
In a restaurant, the pass is the mesh-point between the kitchen and the dining room; where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. To a server or food-runner, it can be a source of anxiety, looking at an empty pass as they await a particular table’s food to magically appear from the mysterious inferno behind a hot line. To cooks, it’s an alter upon which we submit our creations to the world (and to the chef) in hopes of approval, acceptance and satisfaction — so we can move on to the next one and do it again. And to an expediter, it’s their perfectly pristine work-space that they will constantly try to clear, fighting a battle against the ticket printer that only ends when the floor manager pokes their head into the kitchen at the end of the night to yell, “all in!” (the call that indicates all seated guests have ordered all the food they’re going to, and the doors have been closed to new diners). Until then, the expediter will keep the surface of their pass as clean and clear as they can, and try to get every ordered dish through it as efficiently, perfectly and… expeditiously as possible.
Salt and Love 