Restaurant and food service refrigeration

What kills restaurant equipment

The condenser, more than anything else. Kitchen exhaust puts a fine film of grease into the air that binds to coil fins and does not blow off. It insulates the coil, raises head pressure, drives up run hours and electricity, and eventually kills the compressor, and the whole process is invisible unless somebody looks at the coil.

Second is doors. A line cooler on a busy service is opened more in one Saturday than a retail merchandiser is in a week. Gaskets compress, hinges drop, and the box runs continuously against an infiltration load nobody has noticed.

Boston kitchens have their own problems

Working in the North End means colonial street widths, almost no loading, and vehicle restrictions that have tightened in recent years around the outdoor dining programs. A technician who has not planned for that spends the first half hour of your emergency looking for somewhere to leave the van.

Cambridge squares mean resident permit parking and aggressive enforcement. Seaport means convention traffic and a tunnel that can add half an hour without warning. Chinatown means tight rear access and shared alleys. None of this is exotic. It is just the difference between someone who works here and someone who put your postcode into a map.

The inspection angle

Massachusetts requires TCS food held at 41°F or below under 105 CMR 590. Unit thermometers must be accurate to ±3°F and food probes to ±2°F, and they must be calibrated. A cooler that runs at 43°F is not just a product risk, it is a written violation waiting for the next visit.

• Prep table rails are the most commonly written-up refrigeration violation we see, and usually an airflow problem, not a broken machine
• A thermometer that has drifted reads compliant while the box is not
• “The display said 38” is not a temperature record. Logs are

What we work on in a kitchen

Walk-in coolers and freezers, reach-ins, undercounter units, sandwich and salad prep tables, ice machines, back bar coolers, glass chillers, blast chillers and the commercial air conditioning that keeps the front of house usable. True, Traulsen, Hoshizaki, Manitowoc, Turbo Air, Beverage-Air, Continental, Victory and Delfield among others.

Common questions

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