Written by Lisa Sewards in the Daily Mail, Friday, January 21,2011
We've watched trainee front-of-house staff mix up orders and not know what’s on the menu in BBC Two’s Michel Roux’s Service. Not forgetting the girl who offered a customer a glass of prosciutto rather than prosecco.
So is Michel’s quest to shake up the UK’s notoriously slapdash restaurant service failing? ‘We’re getting there,’ he says. ‘I can safely say the gaffes are getting fewer.’ Indeed, by the end of the series, six of his eight proteges have landed good service jobs and one has the confidence to go back to college.
Roux’s motley crew includes Brooke Arnold, 18, who’s worked for McDonald’s, Nikkita Palphreyman, 19, a single mum, and Niki Bedson, 22, a history graduate who was rejected for numerous jobs.
Arduous task: Michel Roux has a job on his hands teaching his eight trainees to be front of house staff
The oldest is 24-year-old James Marvin, who gave up his sales job because, ‘I hated lining my boss’s pockets’.
Then there’s former hairdresser Danielle Meenagh, 19, who admits: ‘Before Michel’s show I’d never drunk wine and had only heard of pinot noir.’
But the biggest surprise is 21-year-old Ashley Flay. ‘I left school at 14,’ he says. ‘Then spent my time getting drunk and being abusive, so that earned me an Asbo. What a waste of my life. Before the show, I’d never eaten in a place which had table service.’
All the trainees are being mentored by Roux and Fred Sirieix, who runs London restaurant Galvin at Windows. Roux says: ‘Slowly, the message is coming across to them that great service is as important as great food.
‘If the food I served at my restaurant [Michelin-starred Le Gavroche] was mediocre, but the service was brilliant, the customers would still keep coming back. But I’d never see them again if the service was rubbish, even though the food was brilliant.
‘That’s something that too few restaurants understand. I want to create a service culture, because there is a brilliant career to be had in restaurant service.
‘And the top front-of-house staff can earn as much as a top chef — well into six figures. And, like chefs, their skills can take them all over the world’.
His proteges are taken to chain restaurants, polo matches, country-house banquets, weddings and the best restaurants in Europe in order to learn front-of-house skills. Their attempts at acting as sommeliers and maitre d’s are hilarious - if embarrassing.
Don't mention the service: Classic comedy Fawlty Towers offered an example of how not to serve restaurant diners
But at the end of the eight episodes, he chooses two winners to take up placements at leading hotels and restaurants.
It’s an arduous task considering most of his trainees have only eaten in fast food joints and wine is a sophistication beyond their understanding.
‘Many didn’t even know the basic structure of a meal - starter, main course and dessert,’ says Roux. ‘They hadn’t even eaten things like anchovies, which they condemned as “hairy”. I never thought they’d make it.
‘The worst part of all was their disrespect for the whole culture of service. We went through all kinds of traumas, from them kicking diners out early, inventing table numbers to squeeze more customers in, quarrelling in front of the guests and flirting and exchanging numbers with diners.
‘There were also terrible moments when they mocked customers or commented on their dress sense. Nor did they all pull their weight.’
Cooking a crepe Suzette at a table proved a huge challenge for one contestant, as did carving a roast for another. And when one of the girls was assigned to serve Michel, she panicked - and the crucial meal timings were thrown out of sync.
Roux says: ‘Thank goodness it all clicks into place for the trainees by programme six and they start to take it seriously. They begin to realise that front-of-house service is a career that demands skill, passion and commitment.’
Trainee Danielle Meenagh says: ‘The first time I opened a bottle of wine, I was shaking and spilt it.
‘Now I’m learning all about wines. I just can’t believe how exciting and interesting it is. I look back at the beginning of the show and realise how ignorant I was about the world of service.’
And Ashley Flay says: ‘At first I couldn’t handle the pressure of being thrown in the deep end.
‘It was so stressful and I was about to quit until I realised what an amazing opportunity Michel had given me. He taught me to have confidence in myself.’
‘It’s not just restaurants that need to up their game,’ says Roux. ‘I walk an extra ten minutes to a newspaper shop where I’m served with eye contact and a smile rather than one where I am ignored.’
Michel Roux’s Service is on BBC2 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8pm.
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