If you think that the most exciting part of your meal is when your food arrives at your table, you are missing out. Take a look around you. The chef is yelling out dockets at horse-racing commentry pace, the bar boy is practising his moves – on the ladies as well as with empty Galliano bottles (either way both are amusing) and a waitress carrying stack of used plates has just walked into a glass wall. That would be me.
As a waitress I loved watching the mechanisms of a kitchen. I love the tension between the politics that stalls it and the sense of interdependence that drives it. A restaurant revolves around the mood of the chef, that being gauged by the sound of his bell. Who would have thought a bell could be so expressive an instrument. Lightly caressed, it could send a dozen waitresses gliding to the pass eagerly awaiting instruction (for ô3 short blacks and a flat white for the dishyö). A bell slammed signals urgency on the floor sending an oversupply of food runners to grasp at plates. Living life as a diner now, I still twitch at the sound of a bell hit with the back of a knife.
Chef attempts to harness our spontaneity within a framework of routine and discipline. But the more you strangle, the more it struggles. For those who relax just enough, the result is a beautifully chaotic dance of adaptation to circumstance. Each body in the galley carving out their own space around other moving bodies. Space is in a constant state of flux with everyone and everything vying for a sliver of it. Even garnishes contort themselves onto the plate in an amazing feat of ikebana.
Although you should be keenly observant, you should be careful not to deny yourself of magic. The waif thin biscotti inlaid with pistachios, like fossils in sandstone, that they served balanced on our sorbets, for me had always caused great wonder. That was until I discovered they were simply cut with a ham slicer. Call me a romantic but, I would have liked to imagine a knife wielding apprentice labouring downstairs with a hunk of biscotti slicing away at his fingertips. Some things are best left to the imagination.
And maybe good waitressing should be invisible which makes waitressing the job of professional voyeurs. To allow extra butter to appear magically beside your half eaten bread role without you noticing requires quick communication. The preferred language is the language of nuance. Often I could simply lift and eyebrow in the direction of the boy on the salads and he would know immediately what I needed- whether it be another ramekin of aioli for table seven or a quick rendezvous down in the storeroom after service. Similarly, I could always feel eyes on me, a quick glance, and I would return the favour. Gliding by the pass to pick up complementary desserts, slipping a warm raspberry and chocolate tart to his girlfriendÆs table. That should keep her distracted from the happenings beyond her fork. Better to keep it that way.
Written By: Jermaine Chau
