Kitchen Dude

When did it become acceptable for commercial food establishments to microwave food?

I know some snack shops and small end restaurants use microwaves to heat or cook customers food but it is usually done out of the view of the customer.

Traveling through Atlanta I ran across two places that openly used microwaves in front of their customers.  The first was at Big Apple’s Bagels.  I bought a breakfast bagel including eggs, bacon, and cheese.   The eggs were sitting in a paper cup on the counter; it looked like they were hot as they had just come out of the kitchen steaming, the employee put the bacon and cheese on top of the egg and microwaved it for about 1 minute.  The microwave was right on the counter next to the rack with all the bagels.

The second microwave experience was at a Nathan’s Hot Dog Cart by my departure gate.  They sold those jumbo pretzels; you know the ones that are covered in salt.  They had the pretzels in one of those display racks that is lighted and supposed to keep the pretzels warm as they rotate around, tempting the passersby.  This one must not have worked as anytime a customer ordered a pretzel they would put it in a microwave and heat it up for 30 seconds.

I really don’t care how food is cooked, but in both cases the food lost its appeal after I saw how they heated it up.  I guess I don’t associate the hot pretzel I buy from a food stand as the same thing I can buy in a store for 1/3 of the price and throw in my microwave; when I did, it lost its appeal. In both of the above cases they could have microwaved the product outside of the customers view and I never would have known.