Having been in the and service and hospitality industry for well over 30 years, I have few illusions left. Yes, at times it can be exciting and glamorous, but for much of the time cooking for a living can be a long, hard slog.
Apart from very brief spells in restaurants I have mostly chosen to work privately. The advantage of this is that unlike your average pub or restaurant chef I do not have to be at the mercy of the fickle public or a slave to producing the same old menu, day in, day out, because ‘that is what people want’.
Cooking for private individuals can be a double-edged sword. Get great people to work for and it is a dream job. I have also had the pleasure, and the privilege, of cooking for many famous household names, most of whom have been gracious and appreciative of my efforts, and for which I have largely been well rewarded. By contrast, I have worked for some real horrors, thankfully for only short periods. Sadly, it is the horrors that stick in one’s mind.
I lasted just 12 weeks with one very wealthy international industrialist, who took me out to work in Palm Springs illegally, sent a memo out to all staff to say that I was never to be referred to by my first name, just called ‘cook’. His very unhappy wife, no doubt due to his many peccadillos, would ‘interview’ me every morning from her bedside about the day’s menus.
The most expensive meal I ever had to cook was an entire side of veal, costing over £300 (this was 30 years ago!) for a famous film star who was coming to dinner. Each evening I was required to stand to attention in front of the dinner table as they bid me ‘Goodnight cook’. Needless to say, they did not take my resignation very kindly, sending round the ‘heavies’ to confiscate my passport, which I refused to allow them to take possession of. What fun and games.
There is often a failure by those in the service industry to appreciate that ‘service’ is what you actually do for something, whilst ‘hospitality’ is how you perform the task.
Whilst in tough financial times it may not always be possible to continue to provide the level of service one would wish, the attitude with which one carries out the task costs nothing. This I something I constantly work on with the hotels and restaurants I work with. If staff are happy in their jobs, well trained and respected, with the appropriate level of authority to make decisions, then everyone benefits. There is nothing more demoralising than constantly having to deal with complaints. Apart from anything else, the time and energy spent on doing so could be much better used in providing the right level of service to start with.
Those on the receiving end of service also have a part to play in how they choose to behave; by being on time for meals and treating those serving them with respect. I am certainly not above complaining but find that in getting my own way as a customer I get much better results, a better table, a last-minute reservation or a special treat, by engaging with those waiting on me.
This brings me nicely to my reason for raising this issue. I spent last week down in Helford cooking for a party of 14, 7 adults and 7 children. I had not met them before, but they turned to be the guests from heaven, undemanding, not one fussy eater among them, and on time for meals. As a result, I wanted to go out of my way to please them, and certainly did not mind getting up at 6am to get their breakfast on the day of departure; purely because they had not expected me to.
Hospitality really is a 2-way street, and I find that giving your all to the task in hand reaps rewards both in terms of pleasing your masters, pride in a job well done, and often financially as well.
I word of caution though, it never, ever, pays to upset the person who is preparing your food. Those are tales for another time!
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