Here's Why Chefs Are So Particular About Kitchen Tape and Sharpies

Professional restaurant kitchens are chaos. Beautiful chaos, but chaos nonetheless. Even in the calmest of circumstances — those dinner services that drift like clouds barely hanging onto a light breeze — there is still unseen turmoil lurking beneath.

The goal is to control that chaos as deliberately and systematically as possible, proactively creating solutions to temper the inherent madness of an environment where a thousand things can go wrong at any second. We are talking about hot, wet, slippery rooms with live fire, and sharp things, where a group of dynamic personalities attempts to execute complicated feats in a compressed amount of time, dictated by someone on the other side of the wall with their own set of expectations. Sound fun? Great. Throw on an apron. 

Like seasoned culinary professionals, I have been freshly reminded of (and possibly traumatized by) this dynamic by watching the new season of Hulu’s streaming smash hit, The Bear. The antidote: kitchen tape and a brand new Sharpie.

With five award-winning restaurants under his belt, Matheson understands building successful kitchen culture around organization, knowledge that he used to create the true-to-life details in The Bear. He believes in the need for kitchen organization so much that he got biblical in our conversation saying, “The tape giveth and taketh away.” 

Why is kitchen tape so important?

Consider the daily ritual of preparing for a restaurant service period akin to that of a Broadway show. There’s strategy, planning, rehearsals, timing, and preparation leading up to the moment the curtain goes up and there are guests to feed, entertain, and delight. It is our role as restaurateurs to create consistently extraordinary experiences day in and day out, regardless of what is going on behind the scenes. These paying customers have entrusted their hard-earned cash and precious personal time to us, after all. 

This explains our collective fixation on structure, systems, organization, and preparedness. For  professional kitchen teams, a core organizational framework for any given day or evening helps provide stability — and ultimately limits the opportunity for mistakes or lapses in judgment. Such a framework helps us set tangible goals and informs the daily routine like a GPS on an unpredictable road trip. Who knows what the weather will bring, but at least you’ve got a map to help you make the best decisions in the moment. They're critical controls in an uncontrollable environment. 

Proper labeling of foodstuffs is a critical control point in any professional kitchen. How old is that lettuce? When was that sauce made? As cooks, we cannot rely solely on our five senses to determine the quality of our ingredients. Proper labeling ensures that we don't just understand our food and ingredients better, but serves as communication between cooks, who may be two ships passing in the night as ingredients and mise en place move from one shift to another.

What is FIFO?

If you work in any professional kitchen, you will inevitably be introduced to the term “FIFO,” or "first in, first out," which means use the oldest food first. This rotation of product is essential to ensure we are serving our guests the freshest, safest, and most delicious food possible on any given day. 

Claudette Zepeda, a San Diego-based chef and culinary entrepreneur, known for her bold and fearless approach to regional Mexican cuisine, underscores the importance of this practice.“We all preach the FIFO rule, but in the thick of it there are moments where it can slip, and nothing throws a wrench in a busy service like thinking that you have a back-up sauce in the walk-in only to open up a stinky-ass, undated deli container," she says. "Chefs like me somehow always get asked to taste it because it smells OK to everyone else.” Proper labeling of mise en place helps prevent this insult to the senses.

Why are chefs so particular about labeling?

In my restaurants we used to say, “Know your food. Know yourself.” In other words, if we are communicating appropriately about our food and ingredients with one another, then the ingredients will tell us what is required of us and will dictate how we approach our job.

Kitchen tape and Sharpies are the requisite materials for labeling in professional kitchens. Full stop. No ball point pens, no tan-colored masking tape of the childhood classroom variety. Crisp, clingy, brightly colored, low-residue painter’s tape that is plentiful and available on every prep table, paired with fresh, saturated, keen-peaked Sharpies is the only way to stave off chaos. 

Beyond that, it gets weird. Each chef or kitchen manager has their own idiosyncrasies regarding how these tools are used. These might include the way the date is written (a spelled-out month vs. its numerical representation, for example), whether or not cooks are to put their initials on the label (this is a big one for me, so the team knows whose eyes to look in when we have a question regarding technique or recipe), and even cutting the tape as opposed to tearing it. Yes, many chefs insist on cutting the tape with either scissors or a chef’s knife so that the edges of the label are angular and acute. 

“Excellence is cumulative, cultivated, and collective,” says Evan Funke, executive chef and owner of Felix Trattoria in Venice, California. “This is defined by doing the smallest of tasks with intention and attention. Cutting tape is one of those small tasks that inform a particular mindset within a team. If you take the time to cut clean edges on the labels of your mise, it simply shows you care about the details.”

Kitchen tape non-negotiables, according to chefs

“Crisp lines, block lettering placed two fingers from the lip of the container. Item name, date, and initials all written with a Sharpie that is actually sharp," Funke says. "Every cook is responsible for the mise on their station, whether they made it or not. They should know what’s in it, who made it, when it was made, etc. You get all of that information via the tape.” 

Most important? “The ultimate disrespect to your brothers and sisters in the dish station is to leave the tape on a container. Always remove it before it goes to the dish sink,” he says. Yes, chef!

Also mission-critical is knowing how much tape to use for which sized container, the art of laying down long strips on the table for rapidly labeling a large batch of prepared food containers, and dog-earing the corner so that the aforementioned tape removal is easy. These are all nuances that are very personal for many —and may be what keep a restaurant in business. 

“Improper labeling is a food safety hazard and one that we take very seriously in the kitchen,” says Chopped champion and celebrated Boston chef Tatiana Rosana, who is firmly in the tape-cutting camp. “It's about respect for your kitchen and yourself.” 

But perfect tape trimming isn’t the key concern for everyone. As Top Chef star Brittany Anderson of Metzger Bar & Butchery, Brenner Pass, Black Lodge and Leni, near Richmond, Virginia, told me, “I don’t care if your tape is cut with scissors, out of a dispenser, or ripped by hand. As long as we know what it is, and the date it was made, then I’m happy. When people don’t label, it can be disastrous." At a recent consulting project, for example, Anderson says she saw about 20 pounds of roast beef being tossed in the trash because it wasn’t labeled and the cooks moved onto using new product. "This stuff just sat there with everyone wondering why for weeks," she said. "That’s a lot of money to be wasting because someone didn’t write on some kitchen tape.” 

Matthew Jennings' rules for kitchen tape

The pressures of professional kitchen life are imposed by both external and internal forces. Sometimes these pressures are due to rapidly changing variables on a dining room floor, and sometimes they are self-imposed by career professionals who demand the best of themselves and their teams. 

I'm talking about prep lists, order guides, station sheets, checklists, inventory management, and other standard operating procedures, as well as tools of the trade. A chef never operates an establishment without kitchen tape and the almighty Sharpie. 

In any industry, as leaders we hope to instill a sense of pride in those we mentor and coach.. Giving a crap makes us better cooks and ultimately, I'd argue, better humans. This mentality cascades down into all we do and has an effect on the quality of food we sell and the quality of experience our guests have. It is actually that simple.

Tape color 

What’s your color? I am a blue guy at heart, but can live with green. Some chefs find my choice controversial (they say it’s too low contrast and more difficult to be seen from far away). But I’ll stick to my guns, here. It’s just what I know, and what I’m comfortable with. Plus I love a blue and black combo as it feels stylish and sophisticated. 

Whatever you do, no white or "plain" masking tape, as it won’t properly adhere to your containers, leaves a residue, and just looks straight up sloppy. You also need to make sure it is one inch wide at a maximum. 

Sharpies

I am a fine point, retractable kind of guy. I dislike having to keep tabs on where my Sharpie caps are because they can fall off the pen, into the food, or get lost on the floor. I’m team retractable for life. 

If you use anything besides this, you will be lovingly chided. If you don’t have your own Sharpie and ask for mine, be prepared for my wrath. Consider a fresh Sharpie part of your uniform. They are just as important as wearing your side towels properly, and having a clean apron and a small notebook for prep lists and recipes. Don’t come to work with a blunt nose, dried-out, barely usable marker either. I will throw it in the trash. And no extra-fine points ever. 

Cut it out

Depending on how much of a stickler you are, you have a few options for ensuring your tape is perfect. A weighted dispenser will do the trick, but the Joyce Chen scissors will garner a higher level of respect and a nod from your chef — if that kind of thing matters to you.