The other side of the dish

I’ve questioned myself on my role within the working pair. The good outcome of a dish doesn’t only depend on the hand of the chef or on the raw materials, but also on the setting that one can create in the dining room, on our attitude which must always adapt itself to the client’s personality, on the description of the dish and most of all on the empathy that you can create with the guest.

 Clients must be put at ease right from the moment when they cross the entrance of the restaurant and they need to be listened to, even when they’re not speaking: if we are good, we can satisfy their needs even before they are declared. It is necessary to get inside the client’s heart, because only then will they remember about us and our dishes. Very often we are tied to dynamics that do not depend on our work: the air conditioning is too cold, the guest didn’t find anywhere to park, a navigator led the opposite way, an excessively invasive wife, a child lacking in appetite, a careless or polemical husband, an agitated dog (I’ll stop here but I could write a second book on the dynamics that negatively influence the client).

Our work requires understanding, supporting and gradually moving the attention of the clients on the dish, so that they can enjoy a pleasant evening. This job needs to be conducted with empathy, humility and lots and lots of patience. These, however, are characteristics that often belong to women more than to men. I don’t believe it is by coincidence that very often, in restaurants like ours, it is a woman (be it the wife, sister, mother or partner of the chef) who takes care of the clients and intervenes in case of problems.

 Limits can often become strong points. I’ll mention an episode. On a Sunday, at lunchtime, a few years ago, not knowing where to leave my daughter, I brought her to the restaurant with me, something that happens very rarely. Unbeknown to us, that day there was a gastronomic critic among the guests. He was sitting a couple of tables from my daughter and observed her while she was alternating the cutlery with her electronic toy. Matilde was 6 and I was serving in the dining room together with Simone: he was taking care of the girl so I would be able to behave in the most free and professional way. He served her as a normal client so much so that the critic began to ask for the same dishes Matilde had requested.

Except she was eating some extra menu dishes, that were suitable to her taste. A fantastic article resulted from that, the most beautiful one, the one I have in my heart: my daughter is described as she’s eating with satisfaction and elegance, in a romantic and a little fictionalized setting, in which the author wondered who could that girl – behaving so well – be. «Perhaps the heir of one of the nearby villas», he wrote. Only at the end of the meal did the critic understand that it was our daughter, the chef’s and mine that is, and he wrote it in the article. He made me understand that as women we can be committed in more than a role at the same time, transforming our “limits” into our strong points.

See also
Weaker sex? Not at all by Sara Preceruti
Double effort by Iside De Cesare
Dear Santa Claus by Ana Roš
I am a cook by Antonia Klugmann
Talent has nothing to do with gender by Aurora Mazzucchelli
It’s not easy but it’s not impossible either by Loretta Fanella
We’re not angels of the hearth by Cristina Bowerman