…a waitress who had a giant spot with a head the colour of a pale yellow egg yolk. The only question was on which of us was it to burst.
‘Too much service in my opinion is practically worse than none. You don’t have any opportunity to enjoy the company of the people who you are with.’
The words of Michelle Garnaut, the former Melbourne restaurateur who launched M on the Fringe in Hong Kong in 1989 and M on the Bund in Shanghai in 1999. (She hopes to have the 400-seater Capital M in Beijing open for the 2008 Olympics, building works around her permitting.)
I recently interviewed her for the business magazine In The Black together with Luke Stringer from Oyster Little Bourke St. Garnaut’s words haunted me as I was over serviced at The Flower Drum recently and nearly knocked a waiters glasses off as he topped up my water for the fifth time in as many minutes.
‘Good service — you don’t even know its there,’ says Garnaut. ‘It’s about anticipation. It’s not about the waiter. It’s not about the person servicing you.’
Booking a restaurant table is a contract for service. What a diner expects in a fine dining restaurant is very different from the medium or bottom end of the scale.
‘If you go to McDonald’s, service is not part of the deal. You can expect that the people serving you when you are in a queue are polite and efficient. That is as much as you can expect,’ says Garnaut.
The story was part of a series called In The Trenches which bring out the management lessons from different industries. The first one I wrote back in 1995 was about what we can learn from the pressure cooker of the restaurant kitchen. I’m currently going through the entire UK and US Kitchen Nightmares series to update this story with more fucking words from the genius management guru himself, Gordon Ramsay.
One aspect that has come to mind since that story is personal presentation and hygene after Gordon Ramsay told someone they had bad fucking breath.
If you are front of house you can’t afford to have BO, bad breath or sprinkle dandruff, as it were Parmesan cheese, on food (or guests for that matter).
But at a time when every waiter or waitress in all these new restaurant opening seems to be 12 years old, what about spots?
Is a spotty waiter appropriate?
It’s not fair to single out individuals but recently in a very expensive two hat restaurant a waitress had a giant spot with a head the colour of a pale yellow egg yolk. The only question was on which of us was it to burst. oh, and she had a bit of attitude.
I think when you are paying two hats prices you don’t expect to see spots, blackheads, chronic skin conditions, weeping sores or, dare I say, deformities.
There again in McDonald’s you’d be surprised not to see staff without spots or blackheads.
Should wait staff be stood down when they have spots?
Food fascist
What makes a successful restaurant? from Michael Bauer on SFGate.
What level of disability are you prepared to tolerate in restaurant service? Would Heather Mills be steady enough on her single natural foot not to spill gravy?
What about long hair and beards?
What about lepers in the kitchen?
Has anybody else noticed how young staff are now at all the new Crown restaurants, saying nothing of St Jude’s Cellars?
Where do we draw the line? Some people hold their knives and forks like apes – should they be thrown out of restaurants as all animals, save small dogs, should?
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