One of my friends in my teen years was the son of a restaurant family. Sometimes I visited him at the restaurant and informally helped in the kitchen to justify a sandwich from the menu. It had a similar setup to what you describe, and the stoneware crockery was absolutely hot straight out of the mysterious dishwashing cannister. Then, when there was a lull, we could go to the storage room basement area where there was a corner set up with a Nintendo. That was, of course, the real draw.