He’s exaggerating for effect. No one would read an article about how a kitchen is really just a boring workplace.

I’ve never known or heard of a restaurant reserving “used” table butter or bread to another table, though I’m pretty sure the practice does happen. You need only notice how many people lick the butter knife to know how wrong that is.

Bread taken from a table is usually thrown away, since at the end of the night restaurants usually have more unused bread leftover than they can turn into croutons or breadcrumbs.

https://www.bonappetit.com/columns/the-foodist/article/do-restaurants-reuse-bread-and-butter