Fire
In kitchens, all of the food for a particular course at a particular table are worked on concurrently in a "fire". Depending on the kitchen, you could also work groups of 3 or 4 tables together at the same time in waves 5 to 10 minutes at a time.
In a well functioning restaurant, entrees are going to be designed to be picked up in under 10 minutes. It could be that a lot of the cooking for that dish happens during prep time or when the item is ordered in. For example, think about steak frites served with both a red wine pan sauce (sauce bordelaise) and bernaise sauce. Both of the sauces are likely made in advance of service, hopefully day-of. When the steak is ordered-in. The sauté station will season the meat and get it cooking. Once the meat is cooked to temperature and resting, while the diners have had time for appetizers, the table will be fired. On fire, a plate will be laid out with bordelaise sauce, bernaise will be spooned into a ramekin, the fry station will drop fries, and sauté will warm up the steak, slice it, and plate it.
Appetizers and Desserts are typically designed to be fired quicker than entrées, usually 5 minutes or less, since items coming off of those stations are generally "order fire", that is, fired at the same time the order is placed.
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