We clean from the ceiling down

A deep clean covers the whole room

A deep clean starts at the ceiling and ends at the floor. We degrease the ceiling above the cooking line first, meaning the row of fryers and ranges under the hood. Then come the light covers and the outside of the hood. Walls get washed from the top down. The cooking line gets cleaned behind and underneath, where a daily wipe never reaches. The floor is last, because everything above it drips while we work.

We work in that order for a reason. Grease and rinse water run downhill, so a wall washed before the ceiling gets dirty again when the ceiling is done. A floor mopped first looks fine for an hour, then shows brown drip lines. Food contact surfaces, like prep tables and shelves, get cleaned after the overhead work is finished. Then they get a disinfectant cleaner before we start on the floor.

When the job is done right, you can run a clean paper towel along the top of the hood and it comes back white. The wall behind the fryers has no tacky film on it. The floor under the equipment is the same color as the floor in the aisle. Those are the places a quick clean skips. "Good communication left my hood spotless" is how Mark Moreno put it in a Google review.

• Ceiling above the cooking line degreased first
• Light covers and hood exterior wiped down
• Walls washed from the top down
• Gaps behind and under equipment cleaned out
• Floor scrubbed last, under the equipment too

Phoenix heat bakes grease onto surfaces

Grease in a Phoenix kitchen does not stay soft for long. The cooking line puts out heat all day, and in summer the room around it rarely cools off, even at night. That heat dries the thin film of grease on every surface into a hard, amber layer. It looks like varnish, and it will not come off with a wipe and a spray bottle.

Baked grease needs a degreaser left on long enough to soften it. Then we work it with a brush or a pad that will not scratch stainless steel. Skipping that wait is the usual mistake. The top layer comes off and the surface looks clean while it is wet, but a sticky film shows up again once it dries. Scraping harder to make up for it leaves scratches in the steel, and grease settles into those scratches faster the next time.

Two more things are local. Summer dust storms push fine desert dust in through back doors and rooftop air conditioners. That dust sticks to any grease it lands on and turns into a gritty paste on shelves and fan guards. Phoenix tap water is also very hard, so rinse water that dries on stainless steel leaves white mineral spots. We rinse and then dry steel by hand, so the finish still looks clean after the water is gone.

Block walls and drop ceilings hold grease

A lot of restaurant kitchens around Phoenix sit in concrete block buildings with stucco outside and flat roofs. Inside, the kitchen walls are often painted block. Block has a rough face full of tiny pits, and grease settles into every one of them. A wipe cleans the high points and leaves the pits dark. Painted block has to be scrubbed with a brush, then rinsed, so the degreaser gets down into the texture.

The other common wall covering is a white plastic panel with a pebbled face, fastened over the block so it is easier to wipe. The pebbles trap grease just like block does, so those panels get scrubbed too. Overhead, many of these kitchens have a drop ceiling: lay-in tiles sitting on a metal grid. The grid wipes clean. Tiles near the hood soak up grease and turn yellow, and we tell you which ones washed clean and which are soaked through.

The flat roof matters too, because that is where the kitchen exhaust fan sits. Any grease that gets past the filters ends up in the duct and the fan. A fan that never gets opened and cleaned leaks grease onto the roof, and grease breaks down the roofing under it. If the hood system is due as well, we can clean it along with the room, from the hood up to the fan. We also offer exhaust fan hinge kits, which let the fan tip open so it can be cleaned.

Every skipped step causes its own problem

Kitchen fires usually start at the cooking equipment. How far they spread depends on the grease above and around it. A film of grease on a hood or a ceiling will burn. A deep clean takes that fuel away from the places a flame reaches first. A closing crew cannot do this part. Nobody on the late shift climbs a ladder to degrease the ceiling over the fryers.

The gap behind and under the equipment causes the other big problem. Spilled food and grease collect back there in the dark, and that is what brings roaches and flies into a kitchen. We pull out what can be moved safely and clean the wall and floor behind it. That is slow work. Health inspectors know that gap well, and they often check it with a flashlight.

A disinfectant only works on a surface that is already clean. Sprayed over a film of grease, it sits on top of the grease and never reaches the germs underneath. So prep tables and shelves get degreased and rinsed first, and the disinfectant cleaner goes on after that. A kitchen that skips the first step smells like cleaner, but the surfaces are no cleaner than they were.