Ninety shanks, one combi, twenty minutes behind
A 90-cover wedding, main course away at 19:45. Menu: braised lamb shank with dauphinoise potato, glazed carrots and rosemary jus; plus 6 vegan mushroom wellingtons that need 200 °C for 25 minutes from raw and cannot be held more than about 20 minutes without the pastry going soft. Equipment: one 10-grid combi (one 1/1 GN pan per level), a 4-burner range, a hot-holding cabinet with 40 plate spaces, and a bain-marie. Three chefs including you. The lamb needs 3 hours at 150 °C in 6 GN pans; the dauphinoise needs 75 minutes at 160 °C in 6 GN pans; the wellingtons need 200 °C. The combi runs one programme at a time and takes about 12 minutes to move between temperature settings. Carrots are glazed on the range and the jus is finished on the range. Plating is 90 plates in a 12-minute window. At 18:50 the lamb is 20 minutes behind and the dauphinoise is still in the oven.
1. Build the timeline backwards from 19:45 and identify the real bottleneck.
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Backwards from 19:45: plating 19:33–19:45, so everything must be at the pass by 19:33. Jus finished and held at ≥63 °C by 19:20; carrots glazed in three batches 19:05–19:25 and held; dauphinoise out at 19:10 to firm up; lamb out at 19:05, rested covered for 15 minutes, then held; wellingtons in at 19:15 and out at 19:40.
Forwards from the constraint - the combi is the bottleneck, not the staff: 6 GN of lamb plus 6 GN of dauphinoise is 12 grids against 10 available, and they want different temperatures (150 vs 160 °C). So they cannot run together, and every temperature change burns about 12 minutes, 24 minutes for a round trip. The oven - not the cooking time, not the three chefs - is what decides the day.
Therefore one of the two must be cooked earlier and reheated. The choice is obvious once you say it: cook-chill the potato, never the protein. The shank needs a long, uninterrupted, low braise - pull it early and you get tough meat and no recovery at the pass. The dauphinoise is forgiving: cook it at 16:00, chill or hold it, then reheat at 180 °C for 12–15 minutes at 18:30.
Revised plan: dauphinoise 16:00–17:15, out and chilled; lamb in at 15:45 at 150 °C, out 18:45; ramp to 200 °C, wellingtons in 19:15. Staff: one on the pass and plating, one on the oven and vegetables, one on the range (jus, carrots) and the six vegan plates.
2. It is 18:50, the lamb is 20 minutes behind and the dauphinoise is still in. What is your recovery plan, and who do you tell?
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First, protect the lamb. A braise is time, not temperature - pulling it early gives tough shanks and there is no fix at the pass. Take it out at 19:25–19:30, not 19:05.
Free the oven immediately. Dauphinoise out now, covered, held at ≥63 °C (or blast-chilled if you cannot hold it safely). Do not start the wellingtons at 200 °C while the lamb is still in the combi - take the lamb out first, hold it covered, ramp the oven, then the wellingtons in. That puts the vegan plates at about 19:55, which is the number you plan around.
Communication, once and specific. Tell the front-of-house manager at 18:52, not 19:40: 'The lamb needs another fifteen minutes. We can serve at 20:00. Tell the couple now, and offer a drink top-up.' Give one message and do not revise it twice - the room finds out by watching the pass, and a revised time is worse than a late one.
The judgement call is delay versus quality. A 15-minute delay is recoverable and invisible after the first course; a tough shank is on every plate. Take the delay, and take it early enough that the front of house can own it rather than discover it.
Do not send the six vegan plates early to 'keep things moving' - they cannot be held, so they would arrive before everyone else's main and be stone cold by the time the couple are seated.
3. What are your hot-holding rules and limits for this service, and how do you make sure the six vegan plates are neither cross-contacted nor forgotten?
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Hot holding: hold at ≥63 °C, and treat quality as having its own clock. Dauphinoise is good for 30–40 minutes before it dries at the edges; a shank holds far better in its braising liquor, covered, than plated and naked under a lamp; the bain-marie is for holding and never for reheating; if you reheat, do it once, to ≥74 °C, and record it. The 40 plate spaces in the cabinet also mean you cannot hold all 90 - so you hold components in GN pans and plate in waves, not 90 finished plates.
The vegan plates:
- Separate shelf in the combi, top level, with a tray or foil barrier so no meat fat or jus drips down.
- Separate tongs, separate tray, separate hands at the pass - the most common failure is the same pair of tongs finishing the carrots with butter and then landing on the vegan plate. Glaze the vegan carrot portion from a batch taken before the butter goes in, or glaze in oil.
- No rosemary jus for those plates - a mushroom or vegetable jus, made and held separately.
- Check the pastry fat before the day, not at 19:40. If it is butter, it is not vegan; that is a purchasing check, and it is the kind of thing that gets discovered too late.
Anti-forgetting: six covers among ninety is exactly what disappears at 19:40. Write it on the pass rail, plate the vegan plates first, cover them, and hold no more than ten minutes. One named person owns them, and the runner announces them at the table.