26 Unlucky Restaurant Workers Who Failed Miserably In The Kitchen (And Took My Schadenfreude To The NEXT Level)
Cooking in a professional kitchen is a wild ride that requires dedication, grit, and, most importantly, a sense of humor. When your livelihood depends on good soup and neat vegetables, the most serious and stressful mishaps can quickly become hilariously ridiculous. Here are 26 photos of kitchen snafus that’ll make you grateful you weren’t the one on shift:
And, to my fellow industry veterans, I dare you to look at each of these photos without wincing, shaking your head, or throwing your phone across the room.
1.In this scenario, crying over spilled milk might be okay.
2.I don't know if a dustpan will be the most helpful cleaning tool with this mess...
3.To the line cook who emptied 350°F fryer grease into a plastic bucket... I hope you like mopping!
4.I'm not sure this is what the chef meant when he said to "put your stamp on" the dessert plating.
5.Meticulously preparing something fresh and then seeing it spill all over the floor — we've all been there, and it's always heartbreaking.
6.I don't know how long a pot has to be on the stove before a hole is burnt through the bottom of the pot, but I do know it's TOO LONG.
7.Just because it's a little tilted doesn't mean it's unusable, does it?
8.This "clear lemon tart with caramel meringue" is maybe the first time I've found something with "caramel" in the title unappealing.
9.It's easy to get macarons wrong, but it's hard to get them this wrong.
10.I'm afraid to ask how many pounds of meat were lost to this forgotten roasting rack.
11.The only thing more infuriating than plastic wrap refusing to roll smoothly is when it partially tears off the roll — and no one bothers to fix it.
12.Whoever put these pans away has the organizational skills of a squirrel.
13.This is not what the recipe meant when it said: "reduce down."
14.Maybe it fell on a napkin???
15.There's nothing worse than finely mincing herbs for garnish only to have something wet fall into them.
16.The longer you look, the worse this photo gets.
17.I know blackened salmon is a thing, but incinerated salmon?
18.A quick tour of the kitchen: "Pots go here, tongs and sieves go there, and yep — containers of tortilla chips hang right next to the whisks. Makes total sense."
19.This tomato-based debacle is visceral and upsetting, but I'm obsessed with the guy on the flattop who is continuing to work like nothing's wrong.
20.Can a chef assume their cook knows how to slice hotdog buns "in half"? Apparently not.
21.One word: unsalvageable.
22.A watched pot never boils, but an unwatched dough will rise like nobody's business.
23.Yeah, I think the head-in-hands pose says it all. I’m mostly worried about the cook’s poor feet in those hole-y Crocs.
24.I think there may be a leak... let's not worry too much about it, though. I'm sure no one else has noticed.
25.I know some countries don’t refrigerate their eggs — but I’m pretty sure this precarious Jenga tower isn’t part of the French egg-storing method.
26.I don't know if I'm more alarmed by the destroyed cake on the floor or the state of that milkcrate, which looks like it has been there since the Reagan presidency.
What’s the most epic kitchen fail you’ve witnessed? Spill the tea (or the fryer grease) in the comments.