Behind The Swinging Doors: A Look Inside Restaurants' Kitchens

When you're out to dinner and the plate shows up in front of you, do you ever wonder how it got there? Are you ever curious about the hands that were mixing that sauce, or the eyes that designed the dish, or even what everyone on the restaurant staff does when the tables are empty? Well, we are. So The Daily Meal is going behind the scenes of your favorite restaurants, to see just what goes on in there during all hours of the day.

We'll be popping into all types of restaurant kitchens — large and small, slow and busy, high-class and low-brow. We want to see what goes on from the first chop of an onion on the prep table to the final wipe-down at the end of a long night. Through black and white photographs, we're going to capture the rhythm of the clanking pans and the hum of multiple voices rolled into one collective kitchen sound.

From the second an order is placed to when the dish gets delivered to the table, there are a number of players involved in the process. There's a method to the madness. And when there isn't madness, there's horseplay, or just a few minutes to breathe until the next rush. From the hectic commotion to an eerie feeling of calm, we'll be there to capture it all.

Click here to see inside our first kitchen, Measure, located in the lobby of the Langham Place, Fifth Avenue hotel in New York City.