Teams lose on averages, but you get nominated for raw, burnt, incomplete, or late plates. Every dish is the ticket on your HUD. Do not invent a route.
Read the ticket first
- Note Pantry items versus Fridge items.
- Count Chop steps.
- See whether the dish needs Mix, Blend, Oven, Boil, or Fry.
- In dinner service, finish one plate's irreversible cooks before you start three heats you cannot watch.
Pre-service is usually one dish, and speed can beat perfect garnish. Dinner service punishes quality harder because several customers stack onto the team average.
Station order
Pantry. Take only the highlighted dry goods and leave. Call the door if you are blocking it.
Fridge. Take the highlighted proteins, dairy, and produce, then close the prompt so the next chef is not stuck. If two people need the same shelf, stagger by a second.
Chop. Load one ingredient, then drive the meter with an up-and-down mouse stroke on PC or the matching drag on mobile. An unfinished chop tanks accuracy. Finish the stroke before you walk away. Input details are on Controls.
Mix. Follow the on-screen motion. A short mix fails the same way a short chop does. You can mix while a protein is already on heat only if you can still see that meter.
Oven, Boil, and Fry. These use a progress meter. Community timing puts the quality window near the halfway region, not at a full bar. Too early is raw. Too late is burnt. Start the longest heat first, chop or mix during the wait, and come back before the bar overshoots. Time Machine compresses that window, so only buy it if you can still read the faster bar.
Blend. Treat it like Mix with a stricter finish. A forgotten blend is an incomplete ticket even if the protein looks right.
Assemble. Open it when the components exist. A missing icon, including a sauce the ticket still shows, means you are not ready to plate.
Serve. Carry the dish to the pass. That stamp is what enters the team average. Then look at the next ticket.
Multitask without charcoal
- Collect Pantry and Fridge items for the current ticket.
- Start the longest cook.
- Chop and mix while that meter climbs.
- Pull on the quality window, assemble, and serve.
- Only then commit to the next irreversible heat.
Five clean mid pulls beat two perfect plates and three ashes. If a plate is sent back, reset the ticket and slow the pull. Do not answer a burn with a sabotage menu.
Fires and disabled stations change the path, not the meter rule. Pull anything already in the window, clear or reroute, then resume. See Fire Outbreaks.
Shared kitchen habits
Call the fryer. Rotate boards. Do not camp Assemble. If you are safe on score, help a teammate whose ticket is blocking the average. Your personal highlight plate still loses when the color average collapses.