What "All Day" Really Means When Shouted in the Kitchen — The Lingo Explained

Communication is key in a restaurant kitchen to keep everything running smoothly and the food flowing. If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, especially in the kitchen, you know how chaotic things can get. It’s even worse when you’ve got a disgruntled table or a "Karen" adding more tension to the already high-pressure environment.

But to make sure everything runs as efficiently as possible, and everyone gets their food on time and at the right temperature, there’s specific kitchen lingo that servers and kitchen staff use. One of the most common phrases you might hear is "all day." If you’ve watched The Bear on FX, you’ve probably heard it often. But what does it really mean?

"All day" in restaurant kitchens refers to the total count of a specific menu item needed across all orders. For example, if you hear "four Spiral Croissants all day," it means the kitchen needs to prepare four Spiral Croissant dishes in total. Chefs often cook the same item at once if there’s a high demand, similar to how a burger joint might grill 10 burgers at a time.

This method allows them to monitor everything at once and ensure they all reach the right temperature, which is much more efficient than cooking one item at a time and tracking each individual cooking time.

Quora user Ryan Goodwin, who playfully identifies himself as a "former professional cook at a whole bunch of places," hinting at his extensive experience, offers a pretty insightful rundown of how things work in a restaurant kitchen. Not only is it interesting to know, but it also gives patrons a glimpse into what really goes down behind closed doors (or, in some cases, behind the counter).

For starters, Ryan explains that restaurant line cooks typically receive their orders in one of two ways: through a ticket machine at their station or by someone calling out the orders for the entire kitchen. Given the modern setup, the first option seems more ideal, as most servers today enter their orders into a computer, which then generates a ticket to be sent to the kitchen.

If orders are being called out to a cook, for instance, when there are multiple orders for steak tartare, the caller might say, "Five steak tartares all day," to ensure all meals are prepared. The same applies to servers, who may be waiting on multiple orders of the same dish. They can call out something like, "Chicken all day," to confirm how many chicken dishes are being prepared. If the count is off by one, and so are the plates received, they'll know the chef made an error.

Although "all day" in the kitchen typically refers to the total number of menu items needed across tickets, sources like ScreenRant suggest it might mean something different on The Bear. Instead, "all day" could indicate the number of items a restaurant has in stock for a single day. So, if a restaurant has 20 steaks "all day," it means they only have 20 steaks available and can satisfy only 20 steak orders for that day.