Fire: the command from expo (or the chef) to begin cooking a dish. "Fire table 12 mains" = start cooking the entrees for table 12 now.
All day: the running total of a specific item across every active ticket on the rail. "Eight burgers all day, four med-rare, three medium, one well" = the line has eight burgers in flight; here's the temperature breakdown.
Together: they form the call-and-response system that keeps the line synchronized when the rail is full.
Why these two calls matter
Without "fire" calls, line cooks would either start every dish the moment its ticket arrives (resulting in cold food sitting under the heat lamp while other courses finish) or wait until the entire ticket fires (resulting in 25-minute ticket times on simple plates). The fire call lets expo time the kitchen so an entire table's plates land at the pass within 30 seconds of each other.
Without "all day" calls, each cook is tracking only the tickets in front of their station. The grill cook might know they have three steaks, the sauté cook knows they have two pastas — but nobody knows the kitchen total until expo calls "all day." Without that coordination, garnish runs out, side dishes get under-batched, and stations work at different paces.
How a typical service exchange runs
Expo reads a new ticket: "Ordering, table 8: two steaks med, one chicken, one salmon."
Cooks acknowledge: "Heard." (Confirms the ticket was received without interrupting the pace.)
Two minutes later, expo fires: "Fire table 8 mains."
Cooks confirm: "Heard."
Expo calls the running total to keep the line aware: "Five steaks all day, three medium, two med-well. Three salmon all day. Six chicken all day, two with no garlic."
When the table 8 plates are ready: "Pickup table 8!"
Variants worth knowing
- "On the fly" — a fired dish that needs to be re-fired immediately, usually because of a kitchen error or a guest sent it back. "On the fly steak med-rare table 8" = drop everything else and refire this now.
- "Heard" — kitchen acknowledgment that a ticket or call was received. Faster than "yes, chef" or "got it"; doesn't break the rhythm of multiple calls.
- "Pickup" — the call when a table's plates are ready at the pass for the runner.
- "Behind" — when a cook is moving behind another in tight quarters. Not a call about food; it's a safety call about not getting bumped.
Common operator mistakes
- Letting the calls fall away on slow nights. The system has to be in muscle memory by the time a busy night hits. Cooks who only call "fire" on Saturdays will fumble it under pressure.
- Expo not calling "all day" totals. Without the running totals, the line works in isolation and the kitchen can't catch a developing shortage until it 86's an item.
- Inconsistent vocabulary across shifts. Day shift uses "fire," night shift says "drop." Pick a vocabulary, train it, and hold the line.
Related concepts
- Mise en place — what makes "fire" possible without 5-minute prep delays
- In the weeds — the state where the call-and-response system breaks down
- 86 — what gets called when "all day" exceeds par