THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9701300035
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY M.F. ONDERDONK, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: 134 lines
ONE OF MY favorite memories is of an evening at a famous New Orleans dining house, modestly appointed but elegant. The waiter appeared at our table the moment we were seated. When asked for a cocktail suggestion, he unhesitatingly recommended a sazerac. He told us it had absinthe in it and when we expressed disbelief, he produced the bottle. (A licorice-flavored liqueur, it is called ``herbsinthe'' - true absinthe is made from wormwood and is illegal because it destroys the brain.)
He got the chef to make a special dish, not on the menu. He presented a complimentary platter of puffed potatoes. He poured flaming cafe brulot. He shyly cracked a couple of jokes. And he sent us away with postcards, souvenir menus, and the inner glow that comes of having dined not only well, but wisely. That night at Gallatoire's was richly endowed with the triumvirate of fine dining - food, atmosphere, service. But it was being treated like a king that I will always remember.
Alas, I remember too an evening at a local restaurant. It's a recollection mercifully more vague, though spiked with gaffes. The lagging attention. The missing bread. The entree that came too late. The one that didn't come at all. The hunger. The frustration. The relief upon escaping.
Into which restaurant does my memory wander more often? More to the point, where would I like most to return?
``If you've got good service and bad food, the customers will probably come back,'' predicts Jerry Bryan, chef and owner of Coastal Grill. ``If you've got bad service and great food, nine out of 10 people won't return.
``If you've got great service and great food, then you've hit a home run.''
A guy who takes a great deal of pride in his menu of classical contemporary cuisine, Bryan isn't about to leave that little matter of service to chance. His training as a chef was rigorous. He is a veteran of some of the foremost restaurants on the New York scene. For good measure, he's a former Marine. No way a staffer at Coastal is heading out onto the floor without a thorough indoctrination on treating the customers well.
Training begins with instruction on how to approach the table, take orders and recognize important customers, whose checks are identified with three important little letters - V.I.P. Not that knowing names is a two-way proposition.
No ``Hello, I'm Misty and I'll be your server tonight'' at Coastal Grill, thanks very much.
``If I go into a restaurant, I don't want to know the server's name,'' Bryan says. ``I'm interested in the party I'm with.''
Trainees then do stints in the kitchen and behind the bar. As a final exam, they get to wait on the rest of the staff, who ask for wine suggestions and pose trick questions. And that, of course, is just where service begins at Coastal Grill.
``The wait staff thinks I'm the biggest ogre in the world because I'm always nagging them,'' Bryan says. ``I stress that they have to know the product and that they must exude confidence.''
Training at Antiquities appears to be even more demanding than at Coastal, ranging from napkin folding and wine tasting to table-side preparation. The stint in the kitchen alone is a couple of weeks, according to maitre d' Earl Branche.
``They've got to know the stress of that kitchen when they're out there on the floor,'' he says.
When reviewing employment applications, Branche views experience in certain milieus as, frankly, a liability. ``Sometimes it's easier to train them your way if they've never worked in a restaurant at all than if they've worked in somewhere like (a popular chain Mexican restaurant) where things are more (pause) haphazard.''
While Branche's approach to training involves a considerable investment of his time, it's not one he has to make all that often. The most junior server at Antiquities has been there three years. ``It's always been that way because the restaurant is so small,'' Branche observes.
Such low turnover - very unusual in the American restaurant industry - approaches the oft-vaunted European model of service as a true vocation.
Stateside, a long-time career waiting tables remains mostly a contradiction in terms. Those who take it up tend to do so en route (they hope) to elsewhere.
The role of waiter is one played notoriously often - sometimes even well - by aspiring actors. Students, writers, and free spirits in need of cash have a way of rolling onto the restaurant scene, along with the occasional ne'er do well.
``Good restaurant service takes constant training and mentoring,'' says Susan Batten, a chef/instructor for Johnson & Wales. ``A restaurateur cannot just take it for granted that a wait staffer knows what they're doing.'' In the field, she suggests that mentoring - i.e., experienced staffers showing neophytes the lay of the house - should be used more. In the classroom, she teaches a nine-day course covering fundamentals of American service, as well as an advanced course in French table-side cookery. If God is, as some say, in the details, those details are legion, from the ``solids from the left, liquids from the right'' rule of thumb, to using a salad plate or folded napkin as a splash guard when pouring water, to turning the coffee cup so the handle is set at 4 o'clock.
Fundamentally, says Batten, ``We try to see service from a management viewpoint, in terms of the relationship between the front and back of the house. That's where a lot of things fall apart,'' she points out. Rivalries between kitchen and dining room can devolve into ``us vs. them.''
In the matter of training, waiter Philip Johnson is not so sanguine as others in his industry. ``There's such a wide variety of people who work the job, mass training might be meaningful for some,'' he allows. ``But with others, it might go right over their heads.'' As for mentoring, ``You can't duplicate a little one of yourself.''
Any number of restaurateurs would like to duplicate a whole staff of Philip Johnsons. He is living proof that there exist wait staffers with polish, dedication and - this is important - a keen memory for faces and the names that go with them.
Such staffers can go beyond having a meaningful career, and actually inspire followings, the way musicians do, or artists, or (yes) chefs. There are, in fact, customers who go to Bobbywood because that is where Philip Johnson happens to be waiting tables.
An inverted career track led him to this renown. Having picked up everything he could ever possibly need to know in the way of ``liquids from the right, solids from the left'' at the King's Arms Tavern in Williamsburg, where he worked while a student at William & Mary, he went on to teach English for many years. He resumed waiting tables part-time in the mid-'70s. So well did it suit him, that in 1980 he permanently left teaching.
``It's a challenge each time you face a table,'' he says. ``Each table is different. You have to take charge - in a way.''
Restaurant professionals and frequent diners are often heard to lament that service is not salaried here as in Europe. But the front-line report is that, for a good wait staffer in a good restaurant, compensation is likely to be good, too. ``Everybody is in it for the money,'' Johnson admits. He estimates that 80 percent of customers tip adequately. Attitudes, though, can be another matter. ``Some people assume that because you wait tables you're stupid and can't get another job.
``And in some restaurants that may be true.''
The challenges inspire him to metaphor. ``You have to be a nursemaid, a mother, a father. Some people are happy if you're formal and stiff. Other people want you to be a buddy.'' The single most important factor, he says, is ``sensitivity to expectations.
``Some of these things are very difficult to teach. Some people are more sensitive than others. That's a fact.''
And if there's one piece of professional advice he can pull out of his apron pocket it is this. ``You keep smiling all the time,'' he says.
``You do have to keep smiling.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing by SAM HUNDLEY, The Virginian-Pilot