][1]Every time that I’ve interviewed a chef or restaurant owner for the blog’s Chewing the fat series, I’ve always asked if they have any printable slang that they can pass on. With the exception of Carina Contini, who calls rival restaurant spies who eat in her restaurants 007s, the results have not been great. The question has usually been met with a puzzled shrug or a smirk and the admission that, by its very defintion, most kitchen slang is far from printable.
However, I did stumble on this list of slang from a worker in an American diner. I have no idea how widespread the use of these terms are or if they are completely made up by the contributor but they made me laugh. ‘One cow, make it cry’ seemed a neat way of ordering a hamburger with onions.