Current Events > I'm a professional chef recently promoted to Executive with his own kitchen. AMA

(+) Yeah! (+)

To cut out some background questions:

Been working for my current company for 12 years, being one of their founding staff. Originally it was just me and the two co-owners. We all used to work for a country club, the two (female) owners got tired of the Old Boys Network and essentially said "Fuck it, we'll start our own catering company. With Blackjack! And Hookers!... Yeah." So they did and brought me with them.

I have no culinary arts training. All my skills were developed in the trenches. Even a few years ago I might have said that someone with a Culinary Arts degree was more qualified but ever since getting promoted to management I've had to step my game up repeatedly and now can look back at some of the "professionally" trained chefs we had and realize why they didn't get the job I hold now. Education is no replacement for dedication and consistency. I can, and have, learned a lot of the skills they paid a 4 year university to learn. Their education can't mimic my dedication to my craft.

I don't work in a restaurant, I run the kitchen for a catering company that mostly does weddings. It is a completely different customer base with a vastly different methodology. There's a lot of overlap, and I could go run a corporate kitchen if I wanted to, but it absolutely is not 1:1 with running, say, an Applebee's.

"Have You Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?" or equivalent:

Yes.

Congratulations!!!

Do you cook extravagant meals for yourself in your home life?

I have very limited food business experience but I did work as the cook for a local Italian + pizza place for a while when I was young, I will never forget even that period of time because of how hectic it was and how busy the job was

That's very cool! I worked in a kitchen for a week and hated it and will never do it again, so I have an immense respect your dedication.

My question: someone wants a vegan option for their wedding and let's you decide what it is. What are you serving?

Do you have a signature dish that's so good it can induce an orgasm in the unwary?

Congrats!
White or wheat bread?

Despised posted...

Do you cook extravagant meals for yourself in your home life?

Absolutely not lmao. I live on fast food, microwave meals, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I do also eat a lot of meals at work, though, which tend to be pretty high tier.

TheLiarParadox posted...

My question: someone wants a vegan option for their wedding and let's you decide what it is. What are you serving?

A very common question, actually, and one I'm well versed to answer. My former exec chef had a daughter who was vegan so she knew a lot of different ways to make normal meals but the vegan version and I soaked that up over the years. We also, for awhile, did a lot of weddings for Seventh Day Adventists who are all vegan as part of their religious practices.

Most people just need 1 or 2 Vegan meals at most and for those I typically suggest doing a vegan stuffed portobello mushroom. Its a pretty hearty meal since it is like a 5 oz mushroom cap stuffed with vegan cheeses and herbs. Pretty good flavor, pretty decent texture as long as you like mushrooms. In my experience most vegans are grateful for meals that meet those two criteria since a lot of vegan food tends to be, frankly, blegh. That said, it isn't my favorite thing to offer, just the most common thing people order when people ask.

My favorite vegan option to offer is pasta primavera, essentially a pasta dish with marinara, mixed vegetables, and vegan parmesan. It is virtually indistinguishable from a regular pasta dish tbh.

The worst is when a client insists that their vegans get an approximation of their regular meal, like when they want me to do a vegan Chicken Alfredo so that it matches the rest of their guests normal ass chicken alfredo. I can make a vegan Chicken Alfredo but its... not even remotely comparable to the normal dish. You have to substitute almost every ingredient in the recipe except the pasta so what you end up with is Chicken Alfredo if you bought it off Ali Baba. It isn't bad per se so much a wrong.

A_Good_Boy posted...

Do you have a signature dish that's so good it can induce an orgasm in the unwary?

Two of them actually. The first is beef short rib in a bordelaise (red wine) sauce. First time my former exec made it for me my knees literally buckled. Very flavorful, rich dish that absolutely will catch someone off guard. The second is our house made lasgana. Its a pretty standard recipe but swaps the traditional marinara for a puttanesca sauce (literal translation Whore Sauce, look it up, the origin is hilarious but the short version it it is a spicy tomato sauce) and swaps the ricotta for a bechamel. It has sincerely ruined lasagna for me forever. I was working DoorDash to make some extra money last fall and picked up a Meat Lovers lasagna to deliver like 20 miles (great tip on it or it wouldn't have been worth my time). Smelled phenomenal, from one of the best local Italian joints. Decided to go there for lunch and get the lasagna a few days later. Took one bite and went "Fuck, I make way better than this at work". Frankly the best lasagna I've had outside of work doesn't hold up to the worst lasagna we've slung from our work kitchen.

Turbam posted...

Congrats!
White or wheat bread?

Bit of a bread snob at times. Most of the time I prefer dense brown breads. Multigrain wheat or rye.

... I keep a loaf of shitty white bread at my house at all times for grilled cheeses and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches >_>;

But can you Beat Bobby Flay

So how much do you hate cooking on your time off now?

What simple normie foods would you say are your favorites

Are you the blackjack? Or the hookers?

Waddlez posted...

But can you Beat Bobby Flay

Couldn't say. I've never watched food tv and am not familiar with Bobby's schtick. Making my typical menu? Probably. Doing something new? Almost certainly not. I am not a creative talent. I'm good at taking what I know how to do and then doing the best version of it I know how. My weakness is 100% coming up with new menu items and Google is my best friend when it pops up.

Crazyman93 posted...

So how much do you hate cooking on your time off now?

Hate is a strong word. Its complicated. I hate cooking for 1 person (IE myself) with an extreme passion. I'm used to cooking for 20+ people typically. I have the technical skills to adapt recipes to small portions but it feels super frustrating. Even cooking for my household of 3 (me, my brother, his GF) is not great.

4 seems to be the minimum where this stops happening. IDK if that's because it is the point where we have a guest or just that's where trying to divide recipes down into small portions stops being stupid. Hilariously while I hate to cook for just myself I don't mind cooking for like a small house party, assuming its on my day off.

... If I had to work that day, forget it. I'm not cooking shit other than like a frozen pizza. I already spent 8+ hours cooking, I do not have the spoons to come home and cook. It isn't off the table entirely but I'd need a DAMN good reason to come home and cook a real meal (good reasons in the past have included, for example, making a meal to impress my best friends new GF [succesfully] or Friendsgiving)

Do you secretly have a rat under your hat who guides you when you're cooking?

How accurate to reality is the Bear?

I have a serious Italian food weakness.

Im pretty sure you could bribe me to do anything with good lasagna.

fire_bolt posted...

To cut out some background questions:

Been working for my current company for 12 years, being one of their founding staff. Originally it was just me and the two co-owners. We all used to work for a country club, the two (female) owners got tired of the Old Boys Network and essentially said "Fuck it, we'll start our own catering company. With Blackjack! And Hookers!... Yeah." So they did and brought me with them.

I have no culinary arts training. All my skills were developed in the trenches. Even a few years ago I might have said that someone with a Culinary Arts degree was more qualified but ever since getting promoted to management I've had to step my game up repeatedly and now can look back at some of the "professionally" trained chefs we had and realize why they didn't get the job I hold now. Education is no replacement for dedication and consistency. I can, and have, learned a lot of the skills they paid a 4 year university to learn. Their education can't mimic my dedication to my craft.

I don't work in a restaurant, I run the kitchen for a catering company that mostly does weddings. It is a completely different customer base with a vastly different methodology. There's a lot of overlap, and I could go run a corporate kitchen if I wanted to, but it absolutely is not 1:1 with running, say, an Applebee's.

"Have You Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?" or equivalent:

Yes.

All good chefs learn most of what they know in the trenches. I did a very respectable catering course when I left school at the top institution for it in the country. The only reason they were good was because of the quality of places they could send you on placement. The actual course itself was absolute shit.

MartavisBryant posted...

Do you secretly have a rat under your hat who guides you when you're cooking?

The rat is somewhere else if you know what I'm saying ;)

Toonstrack posted...

How accurate to reality is the Bear?

I've only seen season 1 and half of season 2 but take out the bits like finding a ton of money in sauce cans and otherwise it is extremely accurate. I'd compare it to King Of The Hill for level of realism, with KOTH being like a 7/10 on the realism scale and The Bear being like a 9/10

divot1338 posted...

I have a serious Italian food weakness.

Im pretty sure you could bribe me to do anything with good lasagna.

We also do a pretty good alfredo and marinara

Glob posted...

All good chefs learn most of what they know in the trenches. I did a very respectable catering course when I left school at the top institution for it in the country. The only reason they were good was because of the quality of places they could send you on placement. The actual course itself was absolute shit.

Feel that. I've worked with and hired a lot of staff over the years, both professionally trained and not. From what I can tell going to college etc for culinary teaches you skills for cooking... but does fuck all for teaching you how to actually work in a restaurant. People with 4 years of actual cooking experience usually can work circles around kids fresh out of culinary. I will say that I prefer culinary trained peeps for expo, though, they make much neater plates lol

So have you finally decided to kick that smoking habit or are you going to see where it takes you?

BB_mofo posted...

So have you finally decided to kick that smoking habit or are you going to see where it takes you?

One of the few kitchen staff in the world who never took up smoking or drugs, actually

Thats awesome! Congratulations!

Do I have to ask a question to participate in this topic?

Congrats! Are you gonna start your own Hell's Kitchen and flip trays from other chefs and call their food trash? >_>

Sariana21 posted...

Thats awesome! Congratulations!

Do I have to ask a question to participate in this topic?

Nah

NeonPhoenix posted...

Congrats! Are you gonna start your own Hell's Kitchen and flip trays from other chefs and call their food trash? >_>

Nah, kitchens are already a stressful environment and its hard enough to keep staff. Being shitty to your employees is a great way to find yourself hiring and training a new pack of idiots

Do you do steak as well? If so, which do you prefer to cook the most? Sirloin or rib-eye?

Your food is mid at best is what I'm getting from the initial post

Kitchen Confidential warned everyone it would be this way. Tastes may change, but food service doesn't. The need for clear roles, coping mechanisms, a clean environment, and fresh ingredients.

If you wanted to spend a day meal prepping for the next few days, what would you make?

Humble_Novice posted...

Do you do steak as well? If so, which do you prefer to cook the most? Sirloin or rib-eye?

Before I got into catering I did grill cooking in corporate kitchens (think Outback, Texas Roadhouse, etc) so I make a pretty good steak. When you are making like 20 of them at a time every night for hours it becomes muscle memory lol. As far as which I prefer to cook, anything except filet mignon. And even that's not bad as long as some asshat doesn't want it medium-well or well done. Filets have the worst surface area to mass ratio of any cut of meat and trying to do one well done in the center of the steak without turning the outside to a charred mess is a PITA, plus it takes forever. Since we want all the food for a table to go out at the same time that means the rest of the table's food is gonna be delayed like 20+ minutes because one dude wanted a charcoal briquette for dinner.

To be clear, I don't mind doing other cuts to well done. If you do it right even a well done ribeye or w/e should still be pretty juicy and tender. Just gotta cook it on a lower heat for a longer time once you get it seared good.

SaikyoStyle posted...

If you wanted to spend a day meal prepping for the next few days, what would you make?

Like for myself at home? If I do something like meal prep I typically do a big batch of one meal and eat on it for a few days. Like make a good from scratch bolognese sauce and have pasta for a few days. Or I'll hack up a couple pounds of assorted veggies for salad toppings, grill a few chicken breasts, and cut up a few heads of romaine lettuce to have salads for a few days. I've never really bothered doing the kind of meal prep where you prep like 4-5 different meals, sounds like way way too much work.

That said, if I'm going to be cooking at home I typically don't prep ahead. I'll stop on my way home from work and buy fresh stuff to cook that day. I don't really buy a lot of groceries way ahead of time besides staples like rice, beans, sugar, etc. It costs a little more to not buy in bulk but I also don't have food just slowly going bad in the fridge and I can get whatever I'm in the mood for today rather than, say, wanting tex mex but knowing I've got a pork loin I need to use before it goes bad at home.

randy_123r posted...

Pancakes, waffles, or French toast?

French toast and it isn't even a contest. Waffles > pancakes, but needing a special piece of equipment for one dish isn't worth it imo

Can you make a quesadilla?

LordFarquad1312 posted...

Can you make a quesadilla?

Of course lol. At one point our company partnered with a local community college to run their on site cafe. We got to use their kitchen for our business, we did cook to order food for their kids and staff, and they took a cut of the sales. Quesadillas were one of our best sellers because they were HUGE (used 12 inch tortillas folded in half) and we had them priced pretty cheap (I wanna say it was like $7 for a quesadilla big enough for two people). At that time my job was running the day to day of the cafe which mostly meant holding down a register and bullshitting with the kiddos but I'd have to get on the line and cook sometimes too. Kinda miss it, it was extremely chill. I actually won an award for being the Most Supportive adult, voted on by the student council lol.

Congratulations!

fire_bolt posted...

The rat is somewhere else if you know what I'm saying ;)

I've only seen season 1 and half of season 2 but take out the bits like finding a ton of money in sauce cans and otherwise it is extremely accurate. I'd compare it to King Of The Hill for level of realism, with KOTH being like a 7/10 on the realism scale and The Bear being like a 9/10

Dang, you could type all this out but you could give me HANDS I NEED HANDS CHEF

congrats man! that sounds awesome.

fire_bolt posted...

The worst is when a client insists that their vegans get an approximation of their regular meal, like when they want me to do a vegan Chicken Alfredo so that it matches the rest of their guests normal ass chicken alfredo. I can make a vegan Chicken Alfredo but its... not even remotely comparable to the normal dish. You have to substitute almost every ingredient in the recipe except the pasta so what you end up with is Chicken Alfredo if you bought it off Ali Baba. It isn't bad per se so much a wrong.

lol damn this reminds me so much of my brother's vegan biscuits and "gravy", made with a can of mushroom soup instead of milk. omfg it was one of the worst things i've ever tasted in my entire life.

DoesntMatter posted...

lol damn this reminds me so much of my brother's vegan biscuits and "gravy", made with a can of mushroom soup instead of milk. omfg it was one of the worst things i've ever tasted in my entire life.

That sounds absolutely disgusting. This is the sort of thing that really gets under my skin, especially considering how many perfectly good vegan dishes there are out there that don't need a "meat substitute". Like for breakfast? Just make fucking pancakes ffs. Easy to make a vegan pancake batter (possibly with added whey protein powder to provide the protein you're cutting out from eggs/breakfast meats), maple syrup is naturally vegan, and you can make fruit syrups/compotes for topping extremely easily from all vegan ingredients. Honestly, if people were willing to embrace the concept of changing their meal structure it would be far more easy to have a conversation about going vegan. As long as the dichotomy is "Vegan food needs to mimic "real" food" vegan food is always going to come up short. Meanwhile, curry is amazing without needing to substitute a single thing to make it vegan ffs.

Congratulations!

What's your #1 tip to amateur home cooks?

Grats!

If you were to make a sausage, what would you put in it (ignoring spices)?

teep_ posted...

Congratulations!

What's your #1 tip to amateur home cooks?

Buy a good chef's knife or santoku knife and an actual whetstone to keep its edge. Not a steel rod, those don't sharpen knives they just re-align the edge if it gets off angle. You can use a chef's knife for almost any task in a kitchen. You don't need a bunch of specialty gadgets for slicing, dicing, or peeling.

Related: don't buy a knife block full of shitty knives. You generally only need a chef's knife, a paring knife, and a bread knife. Skip the block that had a dozen shitty knives in it and spend what the block would have cost on those 3.

ellis123 posted...

Grats!

If you were to make a sausage, what would you put in it (ignoring spices)?

No idea lol, only time I've ever ground meat was at this fancy Italian place while I was in college. We ground our own beef for bolognese

Asherlee10 posted...

Congrats Chef!

How do you feel about brown butter used in cookies?

If you use salted butter in cookies, would you still add salt to the recipe?

(I don't cook or bake, but my spouse was running experiments related to this yesterday)

So brown butter is butter that has been heated up carefully so it undergoes the Maillard Reaction. This is arguably the most important thing to understand in the entire concept of food science. The Maillard reaction is something that occurs around the 350 F temp range where proteins and carbs "cook", causing them to take on a more savory taste. Physically you can see this most easily with grilled foods, with the grill marks or sear marks of food being literal physical changes caused by the Maillard reaction.

I could go on about the Maillard reaction for hours (and the Leidenfrost Effect) but the short version RE: cookies is that using brown butter will give your cookies a depth of flavor that they otherwise would not posses. Brown butter is essentially butter that has undergone a caramelization effect, making it both sweeter and richer. Whether this makes a better cookie, arguably, is up to the consumer. I think I'd like them better, for what it is worth.

As for salted vs unsalted butter, I think most chefs would tell you they prefer unsalted butter. I want to control the salt content in my food directly, I don't want to add salt via my ingredients, I want to add salt to dishes as I feel they need salt. That said, for most household cooks it isn't gonna matter. My tip regarding salt for the average person is that if you're cooking something at it tastes salty you've over-salted it. Salt should be a flavor enhancer, never a dominant flavor on its own.

How long were you in the industry before you started at this company?

Do you agree that grill marks are just burnt meat and that an all over Maillard reaction is infinitely preferable? Fucking hate grill marks. Fuck whoever started that nonsense.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

How long were you in the industry before you started at this company?

I worked in kitchens about 3 years before the company founded, then worked with them in the summer and other places during college school years for another 2 years before going to work full time for the company. My total kitchen experience is now around 14 years.

PraetorXyn posted...

Do you agree that grill marks are just burnt meat and that an all over Maillard reaction is infinitely preferable? Fucking hate grill marks. Fuck whoever started that nonsense.

Lmao get the fuck out of here, nerd. It isn't burnt until you've got ash forming and it tastes like charcoal. I won't deny that bad grill cooks may not know the difference, but 10000% grilling is the easiest way to induce the Maillard reaction. Properly done grill marks should have zero char and 100% flavor, and I am sorry if that hasn't been your experience. Every other method of cooking struggles to consistently hit the temp benchmarks needed to induce the Maillard reaction, with only convection roasting even coming close. FYI, just a quick pro tip boiling *anything * cannot induce the Maillard reaction, it literally cannot get to a high enough temp since water boils at 212 F.

fire_bolt posted...

I don't work in a restaurant, I run the kitchen for a catering company that mostly does weddings.

What's the logistics of this? Do you work in one kitchen and make stuff that gets packaged up and brought to weddings? Do you work at a specific wedding venue? Do you get physically sent to various wedding venues to cook there?

fire_bolt posted...

I worked in kitchens about 3 years before the company founded, then worked with them in the summer and other places during college school years for another 2 years before going to work full time for the company. My total kitchen experience is now around 14 years.

Lmao get the fuck out of here, nerd. It isn't burnt until you've got ash forming and it tastes like charcoal. I won't deny that bad grill cooks may not know the difference, but 10000% grilling is the easiest way to induce the Maillard reaction. Properly done grill marks should have zero char and 100% flavor, and I am sorry if that hasn't been your experience. Every other method of cooking struggles to consistently hit the temp benchmarks needed to induce the Maillard reaction, with only convection roasting even coming close. FYI, just a quick pro tip boiling *anything * cannot induce the Maillard reaction, it literally cannot get to a high enough temp since water boils at 212 F.

I sear with a cold grate and a 500-600 degree fire (or at least thats what the analog dome thermometer says, its probably closer to 1000 at the coals). No marks, all over Maillard, but a torch or a hot enough pan or griddle will do well enough. Most grill marks are just burnt meat around diamonds of under-seared meat because people think that it being prettier is more important than it having a better crust.

kirbymuncher posted...

What's the logistics of this? Do you work in one kitchen and make stuff that gets packaged up and brought to weddings? Do you work at a specific wedding venue? Do you get physically sent to various wedding venues to cook there?

The former. It can be a logistics nightmare at times but I work with like 20 different venues some of which are up to 1 hour away from our shop. Some things with bad hold times, like shrimp, have to be cooked on site but most of our menu is designed to hold hot for transport.

PraetorXyn posted...

I sear with a cold grate and a 500-600 degree fire (or at least thats what the analog dome thermometer says, its probably closer to 1000 at the coals). No marks, all over Maillard, but a torch or a hot enough pan or griddle will do well enough. Most grill marks are just burnt meat around diamonds of under-seared meat because people think that it being prettier is more important than it having a better crust.

I'm not sure what is worse here, the strawman fallacy or the pointless elitism. Regardless, "most people" don't cook for a living. If you go out to eat and are getting steaks on a grill so long that the grill marks are actually burnt then either quit going to shitty restaurants or quit ordering well done steak. The process you're describing has no intrinsic improvement over traditional grilling except that it produces more seared meat, and that's a personal preference of yours which I respect.

That said, I do have a tip for you to try if you're interested. If you're doing a full sear like that, try doing a reverse sear with a sous vide steak. You can get an at-home sous vide kit pretty cheap on Amazon. Process is pretty simple. Set up your sous vide pot to your preferred steak temp (120 F for rare, going up by 5 F for every temp above rare) and while it is heating season and/or your steak, then vacuum seal it. Once the water is up to temp drop the vacuum sealed steak into the pot and let it go until it reaches your preferred temp internal. Afterwards, sear it as you described above. Sous vide cooking ensures that your meat is all cooked to your preferred level of done, not just the center, and then reverse searing gets the Maillard reaction crust that sous vide cannot produce on its own.

How do I fold mixtures I'm so bad at it

fire_bolt posted...

The former. It can be a logistics nightmare at times but I work with like 20 different venues some of which are up to 1 hour away from our shop. Some things with bad hold times, like shrimp, have to be cooked on site but most of our menu is designed to hold hot for transport.

I'm not sure what is worse here, the strawman fallacy or the pointless elitism. Regardless, "most people" don't cook for a living. If you go out to eat and are getting steaks on a grill so long that the grill marks are actually burnt then either quit going to shitty restaurants or quit ordering well done steak. The process you're describing has no intrinsic improvement over traditional grilling except that it produces more seared meat, and that's a personal preference of yours which I respect.

That said, I do have a tip for you to try if you're interested. If you're doing a full sear like that, try doing a reverse sear with a sous vide steak. You can get an at-home sous vide kit pretty cheap on Amazon. Process is pretty simple. Set up your sous vide pot to your preferred steak temp (120 F for rare, going up by 5 F for every temp above rare) and while it is heating season and/or your steak, then vacuum seal it. Once the water is up to temp drop the vacuum sealed steak into the pot and let it go until it reaches your preferred temp internal. Afterwards, sear it as you described above. Sous vide cooking ensures that your meat is all cooked to your preferred level of done, not just the center, and then reverse searing gets the Maillard reaction crust that sous vide cannot produce on its own.

Ive done it with some sirloins, since those are a fairly tough cut and I thought it might make them more tender (which it did). I always do a reverse sear. I just usually do what I call redneck spurs vide, where instead of the souls vide bath, I just cook them indirectly with a 225-250 degree fire (grate level, dome will usually be around 275-300) for about an hour, then sear.

If I sear with the Slow N Sear like I usually do, Ive found I need to stop cooking them at 110-115 as the sear adds 20-25 degrees. But if I sear with the Su-V gun, I cane take them all the way to doneness.

I typically shoot for 135 for ribeyes, and 129 or so for less fatty cuts like NY Strip.

Since weddings and events are typically on weekends, how does a week of work break down? Is the kitchen running every day? Normally a restaurant gets shipments once or twice a week depending on which supplier, how often do you get deliveries?

How do you deal with it when people at the event have specific dietary restrictions like food allergies? I'm sure ideally your company would be informed ahead of time but I'm guessing that's not always the case.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

Since weddings and events are typically on weekends, how does a week of work break down? Is the kitchen running every day? Normally a restaurant gets shipments once or twice a week depending on which supplier, how often do you get deliveries?

It really varies. There's more wedding thru the week than you might expect since, often, weekends are fully booked at venues close to year round. During our busiest months, May and October, I have events almost every day. Last October had me working 65 hour weeks, closing at like 11 PM and coming back at 4 AM, sometimes. The rest of the time its more like you'd expect. Kitchen is closed Sunday/Monday unless we have events those days randomly, trucks deliver Monday and Tuesday (two different vendors), prep starts on Tuesday for Thursday/Friday, and by Wednesday we're typically in full swing.

While we mostly do weddings we also do lots of other stuff. This Saturday one of the biggest colleges in my state has us catering a 200 person graduation party for their nursing students. That's gonna be a lot of fun. Corporate clients often needs us thru the week for lunches and stuff. We've got one client (a religious group) who holds their international branch meetings in the city I'm based out of and we do their catering. For that week they have us bringing in breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack for 5 days straight. Its a lot of work, especially if we have other stuff going on as well.

UnsteadyOwl posted...

How do you deal with it when people at the event have specific dietary restrictions like food allergies? I'm sure ideally your company would be informed ahead of time but I'm guessing that's not always the case.

My office worker team tries to nail all this down well in advance. There's a whole screening process we go thru with clients to try to prevent mishaps. If we know of an allergy then there's a number of things we can do to deal with it, the most common being to prep a number of dietary restricted meals that are kept apart from the rest of the food. These meals will be prepped in a sanitized kitchen using completely clean instruments to prevent any chance of cross contamination. Other times its more simple and we reasonably expect guests to self-police. For example, don't grab a shrimp cocktail appetizer from a server if you're allergic to shellfish. In general we work very hard to make sure everything is safe, and so far we've had zero mishaps to my knowledge. We consider allergy and dietary restrictions very seriously because, even if we took all the necessary steps, if someone was injured or God forbid died from our food it could literally kill the business. Reputation is HUGE in this industry and as my boss says "You're only as good as the last meal you served".