Family Meal
Family meal is the staff meal cooked for the whole team before service, usually eaten together an hour or so before doors. It is normally made from what the kitchen already has on hand rather than from the menu, and in many restaurants it runs straight into the pre-shift briefing.
Family meal is one of the few moments in a restaurant when front of house and back of house are in the same room doing the same thing. Cooks and servers spend the whole night on opposite sides of the pass, and a shared meal beforehand is where most of the informal handover actually happens.
It is also a real cooking exercise. Family meal gets made from trim, surplus, and whatever came in overlooked, so it doubles as waste control and as the one place a cook can try something without a guest paying for it. More than a few dishes now on menus started there.
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