Ten years in and I still catch myself stacking six tickets worth of garnish bowls at 4:45 like the dinner rush is gonna politely follow my plan. That mise line hits hard because it's really about ego, you prep for the night you want, not the night you get. My worst habit was wiping down my board after every single ticket, sounds harmless but on a packed Saturday it put me two tickets behind all night. Switched to a quick scrape and a full wipe only when I actually switch proteins, and my times dropped. Sarcasm aside, the salt and oil thing is stupid simple and somehow nobody teaches it.

The "lets it come up slow over low heat" part is the whole thing right there. If you rush that ramp up you lose the soft curds and might as well go back to a hot pan. What took me a while was learning to stir almost the whole time instead of letting them sit, because the second you stop moving them the bottom sets and you get that rubbery layer. Once I got the stir going I started pulling the pan off the heat way before they look done, since they keep cooking from the leftover heat. The one downside is timing, four minutes is a long time when you got other stuff going, so now I just do them last and let the plate wait on the eggs instead of the other way around.