I recently interviewed a mâitre d’ in a London restaurant. Unlike many of his tribe who seem to be hired for looking imposing in a suit and sneering to a high degree of competence, this one had actually trained, at a catering college, several decades ago. Talk turned, as it often does, to the erosion of standards. “Of course,” he said, by way of emphasis, “when I trained we had Fuller’s Guéridon & Lamp Cookery as a set book.”
The guéridon was a cart that the waiter could wheel alongside the diner’s table to whip up, over a spirit lamp, simple recipes such as steak Diane, bananas Foster and crêpes Suzette designed to delight and impress.
It seems odd to us now. We expect our waiter to have a pleasing manner, discretion and an extrasensory perception of our possible needs 30 seconds ahead of real time. We want competent wine knowledge, if only to prevent us having to engage with the sommelier, and today, of course, it’s de rigueur for the waiter to be able to recite absurd menu descriptions, verbatim, without laughing out loud: “Chef has prepared a hand-reared, rare-breed lamb four ways – reading from your left – with a tobacco tar; an espuma of its own mucus, sous-vide for 18 months and beaten to a purée with a cricket bat.”