When a particular item cooked in a restaurant kitchen is not fit to serve it may be said to have “died.” For example, a fried item like calamari is meant to be crispy on the outside and not soggy. If it waits too long after being cooked, it will become limp and soggy instead of crispy. It has “died.” So, now the calamari is, you guessed it, dead. If this applies to an entire plate of food, for whatever reason, then that plate is called a “dead plate.”
You may have also heard the phrase “dead in the window.” In restaurants where the plates are placed in a pass-through window for the servers to pick up, this phrase is used to mean that the plate sat too long in the window and so has become cold or otherwise unfit to serve. Dead in the Window might be used at restaurants that don’t use a window to refer to plates that sit too long. Dead in the window is more specific than “dead plate” since it refers to food that waited too long to be served.
There are a number of reasons that a plate of food can be called dead in a restaurant kitchen:
- The food has sat too long and become cold or otherwise not fit to serve.
- Something was overcooked, undercooked, or prepared incorrectly.
- There are appearance issues such as the plate being sloppy or unappealing; the food is not plated correctly.
- The wrong menu item was cooked and plated.
- The dish was sent back by a customer.
Of all the reasons above, it is most likely a plate will be designated “dead” if sits too long before being picked up and served to a customer. Even plates that sit under heat lamps can be unservable if they sit under the lamps too long since certain foods need to be served immediately. Examples are calamari, risotto, seafood, etc. On the other hand, some dishes may benefit from some downtime before serving, like lasagna.
Steaks must rested after cooking but the resting should be done before the steak is plated. Therefore, a steak is not an example of a dish that should be sitting and waiting on a plate. This could cause escaping juices to puddle on the plate (hopefully to a minimum) and any other items placed on the plate would certainly be “dead” before the steak is properly rested. So steaks are rested on a separate plate or a board before being plated and must then be served immediately.
