Read first
Commis
What each part of this level asks and the order to take it, written for the cook standing at it. Read it before you drill: nothing here is graded or recorded.
Dishes
14 at this level
Fourteen dishes, nine from the Path's first three semesters and five Easy plates from further up, each met when it has been cooked and logged.
At Commis a dish is a single technique with a plate built around it. These are the course's opening semesters and the library's Easy plates: one technique, no wait, put up without notes. Fourteen dishes sit at this level, and most are a pan or a pot you will be handed in your first weeks. What they ask is repetition until your hands stop needing the recipe card.
Take the four from Knife & Fire Foundations first, and take The French Omelette before anything else, knowing it is the one Intermediate plate at this level: eight minutes, and the whole of heat control and seasoning in one pan. Then Ratatouille for the knife cuts and the sauté, Salade Niçoise for blanching and shocking, and Chicken Piccata last of the four, because it is the busiest of the four: a dredge, a hard sear, a deglaze and a reduction on a single pan.
Next come the two soups from Stocks, Soups & the Simmer. Miso Soup teaches dashi and soaking dried goods back to life: fifteen minutes, and the semester's lesson in restraint. Pasta e Fagioli teaches sweating aromatics soft and never browned, the base under most pots in a kitchen. Then the three from The Sauté Station & Pan Sauces: Shrimp Scampi repeats the sear and the deglaze from the piccata and adds the mount, cold butter swirled into the reduced wine off the heat; Chicken Teriyaki adds resting meat and slicing against the grain; and Garides Saganaki brings the flambé and the habit of keeping the cooking liquid. By the third of these, the semester's four moves should be in your hands: sear, deglaze, mount, plate.
The last five sit further up the Path but are Easy plates all the same. Crêpes and Panna Cotta from Pastry Fundamentals are your first precision work: the crêpe is batter and pan control, the panna cotta is a bare simmer held below the boil, a pass through a sieve and the wobble test for the set. The three from The Wok & High Heat, Pad Krapow Moo, Bulgogi and Rau Muong Xao Toi, ask for total mise before the flame goes on, because the cooking is over in minutes. Rau Muong Xao Toi is ten minutes of wok technique, so take it first of the three. Bulgogi is the most layered, with knife cuts, a marinade, rendered fat and a sear, so take it last.
Use the doors in the order they sit. Read the semester opens the Path of Study at the semester that teaches the first dish you have not yet cooked. Cook the next dish opens that recipe. The library at this level shows the recipe grid filtered to this level's difficulty, when you want to choose rather than follow. A dish is met when it has been cooked and logged, and that is the whole rule: a dish you have read is not met, and a dish you cooked but did not log is not met either. Log it the same shift.
Named here The French Omelette·Ratatouille·Salade Niçoise·Chicken Piccata·Miso Soup·Pasta e Fagioli·Shrimp Scampi·Chicken Teriyaki·Garides Saganaki·Crêpes·Panna Cotta·Pad Krapow Moo·Bulgogi·Rau Muong Xao Toi
Next Chef de Partie holds eighteen dishes, the station's work: Cacio e Pepe, Soupe à l'Oignon, Boeuf Bourguignon and Coq au Vin, Rosemary Focaccia and Crème Brûlée, Jerk Chicken and Cantonese Steamed Fish. They ask for an emulsion, a braise, a bread or a custard held to a standard, on the pan-sauce hands you built here.
Techniques
42 at this level
The techniques a station runs on all day: the cuts, salted water, the sweat, the sear, the simmer, and the pan you never wash before it has made its sauce.
Take the board first. Knife cuts sit on more recipes than almost anything else here, and the standard is uniformity, not speed: any three pieces should match. Then the pot. Salted water & the float test, blanching & shocking and the bare simmer are one lesson at two heats, the rolling boil and the shiver under it: water seasoned before anything goes in, an ice bath ready before the timer starts, a surface watched rather than set once. Skimming and keeping the cooking liquid come after: lift the foam, hold it below the boil, save the liquid.
The pan is one lesson with three heats. Sweating aromatics is low heat and no color. Sautéing & the shallow fry is a single layer kept moving, light color fast. Searing is the hard crust: a pan that never falls quiet and a piece that releases itself. A recipe that says cook the onions means one of the three; learn which before the rest of the pan. Deglazing & pan sauces, reducing a sauce and making a roux follow: the fond brown and not black, salt at the end because it concentrates, the roux taken to its stage and no further.
Roasting in a hot oven, the broiler and charring over open flame are dry heat from three directions: all around, from above, and straight against the surface. Each has its marks: the oven fully up to heat and air around every piece; the broiler lit first and somebody standing at it, because pale turns bitter in tens of seconds; nothing between flame and surface, no acrid edge. Griddle & plancha work and tortillas on the comal want full contact with dry metal. Resting meat & slicing against the grain closes the roast: off before the target, a dry board when you cut. The fryer is a chain in order: the coat before the fry, deep frying at temperature, draining fried food on a rack, salted within seconds.
Salt, cold, time and hands come next. Salting to draw the water out is salt on every face, somewhere for the water to go, and that water poured off before heat; brining & curing is full commitment, timed against weight and thickness, dried before anything crisps. Chilling to firm and the overnight rest are waiting done properly: cooled fast first, cold through, not cold at the rim. Shaping by hand, whipping a meringue and the wobble & the skewer belong to the bake: matched pieces with sealed seams, stiff peaks with a slight bow, a skewer tested at the true center. Caramelizing onions, brown butter, poaching eggs, trussing, flambé and sourdough starter carry no written standard.
Eight more carry their own marks. Soaking dried goods back to life is tested at the center of the largest piece; steaming is the lid left on over a rolling boil; straining & passing through a sieve and mashing & puréeing are judged on the tongue; dashi is pale gold and clear, kombu out before the first bubbles. Frying the paste until the oil splits, dry-pan toasting and egg wash & the baker's shine each have one signal: clear fat pooling at the edges, fragrance before color, a thin even coat with nothing pooled.
Met has one rule. A technique with a written standard is met when a cook on one of its recipes was graded met against that standard; one without a standard is met by any cook of one of its recipes. Open Read the techniques and work down the index in the order above, the last eight as their recipes come up. Open The next technique between services: the page of the first technique not yet met.
Named here Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias·Salted water & the float test·The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil·Blanching & shocking·Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth·Keeping the cooking liquid·Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned·Sautéing & the shallow fry·Searing: the hard crust·Deglazing & pan sauces·Reducing a sauce·Making a roux·Roasting in a hot oven·The broiler: heat from above·Charring over open flame·Griddle & plancha work·Tortillas on the comal·Resting meat & slicing against the grain·The coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter·Deep frying·Draining fried food: a rack, never paper·Salting to draw the water out·Brining & curing·Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder·The overnight rest: letting a dish marry·Shaping by hand·Whipping a meringue·The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake·Caramelizing onions·Brown butter·Poaching eggs·Trussing·Flambé·Sourdough starter·Soaking dried goods back to life·Steaming: basket, leaf and lid·Straining & passing through a sieve·Mashing & puréeing·Dashi·Frying the paste until the oil splits·Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts·Egg wash & the baker’s shine
Next Chef de Partie asks for the same pans and pots taken further: béchamel and hollandaise, beurre blanc and building an emulsion, braising and confit, rendering fat, kneading dough and proofing, sugar stages & caramel, and tempering a custard.
The Lexicon
266 at this level
The everyday words: what the ticket says, what the pan is doing and what is on your board, met by recall, never by a miss alone.
Commis holds 266 terms, the largest subsection on this page, and none of them is rare. This is the vocabulary a ticket and a prep list assume you have: the pan verbs, the produce you touch first, the everyday cuts, the tools on the rack and the words for why a plate tastes wrong. Do not read it front to back. Read it in the order the work meets you.
Take Mise en Place first, because everything else assumes it: read fully, prep completely, then light the burner. Knife Cuts: The Classical Ladder comes next, before anything hits a pan: it sizes the dice and the julienne and asks for uniformity before speed. Then the pan verbs. Sweat vs. Sauté vs. Sear sets the three apart by heat and intent, Deglaze & Fond says what the browned layer is for, and Searing & Pan Technique is leaving the protein alone until it releases. Poach, Simmer, Boil are three temperatures pretending to be one method; Blanch & Shock is how a green vegetable prepped at noon plates at eight. Then Roux, Slurry & Liaison for the thickeners, and Roasting, Baking & Carryover, which says pull the roast early and rest it.
Next, the things in your hands. Allium Family and Mirepoix, Trinity, Sofrito & Friends explain why nearly every dish opens with onion in fat, and the Vegetable Atlas, 61 entries and the biggest group here, names each one: Yellow Onion, Garlic, Carrot, Celery, Shallot and Leek. Read Starchy vs. Waxy Potatoes before Russet Potato, and Hearty vs. Tender Herbs before Thyme, Rosemary and Flat-leaf Parsley, because the family entry gives the rule and the single entry gives the reason, and now and then the exception. Learn the fruit, grain and pantry entries the menu uses, then fill in the rest between services.
The cuts run to 25 entries, the steer, the pig, the lamb, the bird and the fish case; start with Chuck, Brisket (Point vs. Flat), Ribeye / Prime Rib, Pork Belly, Ham & Hock, Lamb Primals and Chicken Anatomy for Cooks. The level asks for the reason behind each: Chuck wins at braising because its collagen melts into gelatin low, slow and wet, and it fights you fast. The tool rack is here too: The Chef's Knife (Western Profile), Sharpening: Whetstones, Burrs & the Truth About Honing (the rod realigns an edge, it does not sharpen one), Thermometers & the Instrument Cluster, Scales & Measuring by Weight and Cast Iron.
Finish with the three entries that turn cooking into judgment: Tasting & Seasoning Like a Chef, Salt & Perception and The Repair Table: Balancing a Dish. Flat and salty, the two faults under The Palate on this page, open the Repair Table, which gives each its levers in order of gentleness; the Palate primer walks those levers, so read the entry here for the whole chart and take the two faults there. Read the terms opens the Lexicon at this level; read one group, then go straight to Flashcards and Quiz, both over this level's terms. A term is met when you have recalled it met or close on the flashcard ladder, or in the quiz; a miss alone is never met.
Named here Mise en Place·Knife Cuts: The Classical Ladder·Sweat vs. Sauté vs. Sear·Deglaze & Fond·Searing & Pan Technique·Poach, Simmer, Boil·Blanch & Shock·Roux, Slurry & Liaison·Roasting, Baking & Carryover·Allium Family·Mirepoix, Trinity, Sofrito & Friends·Yellow Onion·Garlic·Carrot·Celery·Shallot·Leek·Starchy vs. Waxy Potatoes·Russet Potato·Hearty vs. Tender Herbs·Thyme·Rosemary·Flat-leaf Parsley·Chuck·Brisket (Point vs. Flat)·Ribeye / Prime Rib·Pork Belly·Ham & Hock·Lamb Primals·Chicken Anatomy for Cooks·The Chef's Knife (Western Profile)·Sharpening: Whetstones, Burrs & the Truth About Honing·Thermometers & the Instrument Cluster·Scales & Measuring by Weight·Cast Iron·Tasting & Seasoning Like a Chef·Salt & Perception·The Repair Table: Balancing a Dish
Next Chef de Partie asks for the same subject as a menu writes it: the cuts and grades (Flank, Skirt & Hanger, Marbling, Dry-Aging), the fish case (Round Fish vs. Flat Fish, Tuna Grades), Braising & Stewing, Emulsions and The Maillard Reaction, baking science from Gluten & Hydration on, and the spice rack from Cumin to Garam Masala.
The Floor Deck
110 at this level
The Floor Deck at Commis is the 110 menu words a guest will ask about tonight, taken by method first, then the cuts, the fish case and the larder.
These are the deck's first 110 cards, one to a menu word. Each card gives a gist, a why and a menu line, and most give the thing it is not. Read the line first, the way the word reaches you on the floor, then the not-this where the card has one: that is what a guest will confuse it with.
Take the twenty methods first; every other card leans on them. Boiled, Simmered and Poached are one ladder of heat in liquid, from a rolling bubble to none at all, and Steamed sits above the water, not in it. Seared, Sautéed, Fried and Grilled are the dry, hot, fast side, with Blackened and Chicken-Fried as two Southern turns in a skillet. Braised is the slow one, half in liquid under a lid; Roasted is the oven's dry heat, fast or slow. Brined, Cured and Pickled happen to food before or instead of cooking; Smoked either flavors it cold or cooks it low and slow. Learn each by the neighbor it is set against: Simmered is not Boiled, Seared is not Caramelized, Cured is not Smoked.
Bacon, Prosciutto, Pastrami, Corned Beef and Chorizo tie straight back to Brined, Cured and Smoked, so take them while those cards are fresh. Then the block: the steakhouse cuts run from Tenderloin, the softest and mildest, through New York Strip to Ribeye, the most marbled, and Porterhouse and T-Bone hold two of them on one bone. Brisket, Short Rib, Shank and Shoulder want hours of low heat, and braised Short Rib has no temperature to ask for. Pork Chop, Rack of Lamb and Duck Breast each say how the kitchen sends them. Salmon, Tuna, Swordfish and Halibut each carry a doneness note, Flounder, Snapper and Trout are the mild, lean fish, and Shrimp, Scallops, Oysters and Clams each carry a sizing or serving note.
The rest is the larder and the dessert menu, fastest by family: Parmesan, Ricotta, Feta and Blue Cheese; Grits, Risotto, Ravioli and Tortellini; Stock, Jus, Hollandaise, Vinaigrette and Pesto; Brioche, Sourdough, Puff Pastry and Tart. Sort the sweets by what holds them: Custard and Crème Brûlée by egg, Mousse by the whipped cream or whites folded in, Ice Cream, Sherbet and Sorbet by how much dairy is churned in. Then Jam against Compote by how far the fruit is cooked, Marmalade by its citrus peel, and Kimchi against a vinegar pickle, the sour grown rather than poured. Among the mushrooms, the pair is Truffle against Truffle Oil.
Save the nine menu words for last: Prix Fixe against Tasting Menu, À la Carte, Market Price, and the claims House-Made, Grass-Fed, Wild-Caught, Organic and Heirloom, each saying one narrow thing, not the wider thing a guest hears. Market Price has a job attached: know tonight's figure before service.
Take the doors in this order. Flip cards is where you read, one section at a time. Say it back is the one deck mode that counts as a round: recall before recognition. The written test is untimed and ends on what you missed with the right answers and no number: use it to find the section you skipped. The deck landing shows what is owed today. A card is met once it has been graded met or close in the deck's modes; a miss on its own is never met.
Named here Boiled·Simmered·Poached·Steamed·Seared·Sautéed·Fried·Grilled·Blackened·Chicken-Fried·Braised·Roasted·Brined·Cured·Pickled·Smoked·Caramelized·Tenderloin·New York Strip·Ribeye·Porterhouse and T-Bone·Brisket·Short Rib·Shank·Shoulder·Pork Chop·Rack of Lamb·Duck Breast·Salmon·Tuna·Swordfish·Halibut·Flounder·Snapper·Trout·Shrimp·Scallops·Oysters·Clams·Bacon·Prosciutto·Pastrami·Corned Beef·Chorizo·Parmesan·Ricotta·Feta·Blue Cheese·Grits·Risotto·Ravioli·Tortellini·Stock·Jus·Hollandaise·Vinaigrette·Pesto·Brioche·Sourdough·Puff Pastry·Tart·Custard·Crème Brûlée·Mousse·Ice Cream·Sherbet·Sorbet·Jam·Marmalade·Compote·Kimchi·Truffle·Truffle Oil·Prix Fixe·Tasting Menu·À la Carte·Market Price·House-Made·Grass-Fed·Wild-Caught·Organic·Heirloom
Next Chef de Partie takes the deck to the station: Confit, Sous Vide, Rendered and Pan-Roasted as methods; Pancetta, Coppa, Pâté, Rillettes and Terrine on the board; Hanger, Skirt, Flank and Flat Iron steaks at the block; Branzino, Skate and Monkfish in the case; and the sauces beside them, Béarnaise, Béchamel, Demi-Glace and Aioli.
The Plates
3 at this level
Three wall charts to read between services: the chicken, the spice rack and the mushroom case, each with the corrections the poster itself does not carry.
The Plates are the posters a kitchen pins up: a picture, a name under it, sometimes a line of description. At Commis you have three: Chicken Cuts, Culinary Spices and The World of Culinary Mushrooms. They are not a drill. Each has been transcribed, and each carries a short list of what it gets wrong, because a poster is printed once and never corrected, and a cook who trusts it blindly repeats its mistakes at the pass. All three name things you will meet in your first weeks, and what the corrections share is that a card can be wrong in its picture, its note or its name. Read the picture, read the words, then read the corrections, in that order.
Take Chicken Cuts first, because its twelve pieces are the ones you will be asked to portion, and its corrections are the kind you can check with your hands on a bird. The Neck card shows the wrong piece: trust the words, a chicken neck is a slender skin-on cylinder about a finger wide. The three thigh cards, Thigh, Bone-in Thigh and Boneless Thigh, are one cut sold two ways, not three cuts. And the Liver & Gizzard card gives one line to two organs that want opposite treatment: the liver sautéed fast, the gizzard braised or simmered.
Culinary Spices second: forty spices with five corrections, and three of them are these. The Green Pepper card shows green peppercorns, the unripe berry of the black pepper vine, so read it as Green Peppercorn. Plain paprika is sweet, fruity and mild, not smoky; only Spanish smoked paprika, pimenton de la Vera, tastes of smoke. And Sweet Basil is the same herb as the Basil card, one plant listed twice.
Leave The World of Culinary Mushrooms for last, because its eighteen mushrooms are the ones you will meet least often on a first station and three of its five corrections are about names more than handling. The cultivated enoki sold in shops is Flammulina filiformis, a close cousin of the European velvet shank rather than the same species. Most dried black wood ear a kitchen buys is Auricularia heimuer, named in 2014 and long sold under the name of the European jelly ear. And a lobster mushroom is a single lumpy red orange body with white flesh, because Hypomyces lactifluorum is a mold that grows over another mushroom.
The doors are two. Read the first plate opens one plate with its transcription. The wall lays out all twenty plates, each with its transcription and what it gets wrong; the three placed here are the ones to read now. Met here is the plainest in the level: the plates are read, never graded, and nothing about them is recorded. Read the three so you can name the piece under your knife, the spice in the unlabeled deli cup and the mushroom in the case, and so you know which card not to trust.
Named here Chicken Cuts·Culinary Spices·The World of Culinary Mushrooms
Next Chef de Partie hangs sixteen plates: Pork Cuts and Beef Cuts, the fish case in Pacific Fish, Atlantic Fish and Gulf Coast Fish Cuts & Flavor Profiles, five regions of vegetables and fruits from the Northwest to the Southeast, and The World's Great Cheeses.
The Palate
2 at this level
Two faults open the repair table at Commis, flat and salty, and each has three levers you pull in order, one at a time.
The palate at Commis asks two things of you. Name flat and salty, the two faults the repair table opens with, each on a plate, and take each of the six tastes on the ladder to rung 1. These two faults come first because a commis meets them every shift: the soup that tastes of nothing and the stock reduced too far that sends the guest to the water glass. Between them they teach the one habit this subsection rests on. Taste, name the fault, pull one lever, taste again.
Flat is the fault where every flavor is present and none of it arrives, the dish tasting like a photograph of itself. Its levers run in a fixed order and the order is the lesson. Salt is always first, because most flat dishes are unsalted dishes. If the plate is already salted, acid is the next lever, not more salt. If it is salted and bright and still flat, umami is the third and the check ends there.
Salty is the fault that reaches for the water glass before the second bite. Its levers are dilute, bulk it out and counter it. Dilute means unsalted liquid or more of the base. Bulk it out means starch or cream, volume the salt has to spread through. Counter it means acid and a touch of sugar, which bend the perception without removing any salt. The potato trick mostly just dilutes, so count it as the dilute lever.
Take flat first. The table opens with it, and its first lever is the same one that causes salty when pulled too hard. Learn to salt in pinches with a taste between each, and you will reach for salty's levers far less often. Then take salty, and read its levers as an order as well: dilute and bulk before you counter.
The two doors do the work. The repair table lists the faults with their levers, in order, so open it with a plate in front of you and walk flat and salty lever by lever until the plate tells you which one it wanted. Calibrate is the tasting ladder, each taste to this level's rung, which at Commis is rung 1 for salt, sweet, acid, bitter, umami and seasoned. Salt, acid and umami are also the three levers of flat, so the ladder and the table teach each other.
Met here has one rule. A fault is met when it has been named on a plate in the repair table, and a taste when its ladder is cleared to this level's rung.
Next Chef de Partie places sour and sweet on the palate, and asks the same of them: each named on a plate in the repair table, symptom first, then its levers in order.
Food Safety
6 at this level
Four things before you touch a station: the danger zone, the two-hour rule, cross-contamination and FIFO, read once and kept for good.
Food Safety at Commis is a short subsection and the one the whole kitchen assumes you already have. Six items sit here and they fold into four ideas: the danger zone, the two-hour rule, cross-contamination and FIFO. The only thing asked of you is that you read it and carry it to the line.
Take the danger zone first, because the rest hangs off it. The guide states it as a band, 4 to 60 C (40 to 140 F), where pathogens multiply, and then states the one rule the band produces: the two-hour rule governs everything left in it. The same clause goes on to the cooling law, with its figures, its shallow pans and its ice baths, but the cooling law is placed at Chef de Partie, so read it now as the shape of what comes next. Notice what the guide states and what it leaves out: the band and the two hours are stated; what a cook does with a pan that has crossed the two hours is not, and this primer does not supply it.
Cross-contamination is the second idea, and the guide gives it three lines and nothing more: raw below ready-to-eat in storage, color-coded boards, and hands and towels as vectors. Read that as two controls and the vectors they answer, not as a full procedure. The guide names color-coded boards without stating which color belongs to which product, and this primer leaves that gap where the guide left it. What you can act on today is the order of the walk-in shelf and the towel on your shoulder: the first puts raw below ready-to-eat, the second the guide names as a vector.
FIFO comes last of the four because it is a habit rather than a fact: first in, first out, and the guide's practical gloss is to label and date everything, with its own aside that masking tape and a Sharpie run more restaurants than any software. The same clause names HACCP as the systematized version, identify hazards, control critical points, document, and names a service-critical and legal-critical protocol beside it. Both are placed at Chef de Partie, so at Commis you take the tape and the pen and leave the system for later. The room's half of that protocol is not deferred, though: Service on this page already asks it of you, in What We Screened and What We Did Not, as the one question you never answer from the app. The clause closes on the line worth keeping: none of this is glamour; all of it is the license to do the glamorous parts.
The doors are plain. Read: the Food Safety page at this level's first slice, and then the whole page, so you have seen where the cooling law and HACCP sit before anyone at the pass mentions them. Met here means you have read it; there is no exercise and nothing is written down about you.
Named here The danger zone·The danger zone·The two-hour rule governs everything left in it·Cross-contamination·FIFO·None of this is glamour; all of it is the license to do the glamorous parts
Next Chef de Partie takes up what two of the Commis clauses already show you: the cooling law, its shallow pans and ice baths and never a stockpot straight into the walk-in; HACCP as the systematized version, identify hazards, control critical points, document; and the protocol the guide calls service-critical and legal-critical.
Service
9 at this level
Service at Commis is the words the room runs on, the screen you never answer from, the cut-off you can run and the bottle you can open and pour without ceremony.
Service at Commis is four modules in two pairs. The Room's Vocabulary and What We Screened and What We Did Not are about words: the ones the room runs on and the one question you never answer from the app. Responsible Service and the Law and The Bottle at the Table are about the drink in your hand: when to stop pouring, and the bottle you carry to the table.
Take The Room's Vocabulary first, because it is the first module and the first door opens on it. Its four terms are the pass and expediting, the brigade de cuisine, line slang, and service styles with front-of-house fluency. Its outcome is concrete: you act on "86 the halibut" without asking, you say "behind" without thinking, and you can name who is working the pass. The guide keeps menu format and service school as two separate axes, so state both for your room. Know what it does not teach: "dupe" is glossed in four words, and there is no fire or all-day sequencing anywhere, so reading a ticket is your room's lesson and not the track's.
What We Screened and What We Did Not is one term and one habit: you never answer a guest's question about what is in a dish from the app. The recipe screen is a text screen over the ingredient lines. It cannot see a shared fryer, a dusted board or a supplier's label, and a dish showing nothing means the screen found nothing, never that the dish is clear. The screen names what it checked and what it did not on every recipe, so the outcome is saying that in your own words to the guest who asks.
Responsible Service and the Law is one term from Cocktail & Bar, and its outcome is a cut-off you can run in order: slow the pace, water, food, then a clear kind no with a manager behind you. You check anyone who could plausibly be under 30, you know dram-shop liability makes the room civilly liable for a guest it overserved, and you can offer a good zero-proof or a spritz instead of a fourth negroni.
The Bottle at the Table has three terms: the sommelier's service ritual and floor fluency, wine faults, and decanting, temperature and glassware. The taste pour exists to check for faults and not preference. Corked smells of wet cardboard, oxidized of bruised apple, reduced of struck match, which may blow off if you wait. A corked bottle you replace graciously without arguing. Whites go out chilled, reds cool, just under room temperature. Present, open and pour without ceremony, and that is this module's outcome.
The doors on the level page are The first module, which opens The Room's Vocabulary; The track, all 27 modules; and the Drill, which runs the service drill over this level's modules with the whole track as the field. A module is met through its terms: every term of the module recalled met or close in the drill. The Commis test is untimed, runs across the subsections, and ends on what you missed with the right answers.
Named here The Room's Vocabulary·What We Screened and What We Did Not·Responsible Service and the Law·The Bottle at the Table
Next Chef de Partie turns Service toward the glass and the board: How a Wine Is Described, The Two Games and the Switches, The Whites You Will Pour, The Reds You Will Pour, Bubbles, Sherry and the Fortified End, Everything That Is Not Wine, then The Board: Formula and Families, and The Levant, South Asia and the Americas.