Dear Academicians...

The Importance of Dining Room Service

DDear Academicians, let us pay more attention to the dining room service! For some time the delicate and complex balance between the kitchen and the dining room, or, if you will, between the chefs on one side and the waiters, “comis” and maître d’on the other, has been upset. Clearly, the former have been prevailing, perhaps excessively, with the result that we have forgotten not only the importance of the welcoming personnel and service but also that bad service in the dining room can spoil the best cuisine. With the advent of service in the “Russian fashion” and most of all within the framework of bourgeois gastronomic culture, dining room personnel has evolved beyond the waiter, who simply carries the dishes, into a complex and diversified series of activities, some of them quite specialized, to such an extent that one can distinguish fifteen well defined roles. In other times, service comprised the chef trancheur, the descendant of the Renaissance scalco, capable of cutting meats perfectly for the most difficult preparations, or filleting a fish in front of the client, or the maître à la lampe who put on the show of preparing flambé dishes in the dining room. Such experiences and activities have converged, at best, in just one person or, in the worst case, they have disappeared altogether, surviving only in some exceptional restaurants or on cruise ships. We tend to forget about them, and in large part restaurant clients do not realize the cultural void that now pervades the dining room. Academicians should be well aware that within the “civilization of the table” dining room service must have a role that balances out that of the kitchen. In Italy, there are over four million people employed in the serving business: waiters, “comis”, maître d’s. However, the majority of the jobs are of a lesser importance. Even worse, a large part of the workforce is made up by foreigners, often poorly qualified and at times illegally employed and inadequately paid. True, one can accept limited skills for bringing a pizza to the table or serving fast food, especially when the server is working on Sundays or evenings to make extra money. However, the same cannot be said for a restaurant or even a trattoria that strives to offer quality service. Employing unskilled servers in the dining room may be a way to save on overhead costs; personnel wages count in the budget of any eatery and can exceed the cost of the food. Yet, there is real damage being done by poor service in a dining room. On the other had, it appears that despite a large number of servers in the dining room, the skilled ones are still a minority. It is not easy to ascertain the extent of this situation, but one should be reminded that in the hospitality schools, approximately three-fourths of the students choose a career in the kitchen and only a fourth opt for the dining room. There are many explanations for such a choice, but one stands out: the position of unquestionable prestige of the chef in the eyes of the public, particularly the young clients. The chef is exalted by the press and television, and by movies and books. Scant attention is devoted to those who work in the dining room, including the room manager and the principal maître d’, and young diners pay even less attention to it. It is not a situation that reflects well on the business, as one can surmise from the use of terms such as ragazzo (boy) or garçon, a name that cannot be simply changed into “convivier”. The situation that we have schematically described helps explain how table service often tends to be replaced by the practice of the buffet, to the point that a new specialization has been created, that of the “buffet business”, which cuts down dramatically the presence of personnel in the dining area and especially that of skilled personnel. Buffet service does bring back and re-interpret an old Renaissance gastronomic tradition, but the role of cuisine and the chef becomes even more prominent, and it is possible that the use of industrial preparations will continue to increase. Is this a negative development? Certainly not. First of all, it must be emphasized that if many great chefs were able to establish prestigious restaurants, in the hotel business the great maître d’s and managers of the great hotels and hotel chains started their careers in the dining rooms, where they learned to greet patrons, to interpret their wishes and to satisfy their requests. In Italian dining rooms one can recognize highly qualified personnel, as non-Italians will readily attest. In fact, it is emblematic that the Academie Internationale de la Gastronomie awarded the 2001 Grand Prix de l’Art de la Salle to an Italian, Umberto Giraudo, Restaurant Manager of the Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria Hotels and Resorts. In Italy there is no dearth of excellent personalities, who unfortunately are not always recognized and rewarded as they should be, in spite of adequate referrals. Let this be an appeal to all Academicians, particularly to the Simposiarca of our Academic convivial dinners, and to those in charge of evaluating the restaurants.

Giovanni Ballarini

by Paolo Petroni

Second Adulthood: An Opportunity for the Academy

One of the books currently on the best seller list in the United States bears an intriguing title: “To invent the rest of one’s life”. Americans, always prompt in recognizing social and cultural movements, have taken stock of what they call the “second adulthood”. What is it? Sometimes we call it “the available age” but this definition projects an image of people who have nothing better to do, “available” as they are to walk the dog, to babysit and to run some useful errands. The reality is different. It is a more complex situation that should be addressed from a demographic standpoint, a phenomenon that encompasses epochal challenges. There is an army out there made up of people over 60, an impressive percentage that will soon represent one-fourth of the population, endowed with a brain and a body equal to someone ten years younger, and with a life expectancy of 82 years. It is a common rule of thumb that a 40-year old worker cannot find a decent job because 30-year olds are intensely pursuing the available jobs. Oftentimes this is true but it pays to think about the opposite situation. At a certain age, when 50-year olds do not have to contend with youngsters, and their spouses wait on them at lunch and dinner, they have more limited ambitions. They are content with decent salaries but do not feel compelled to push for a career. They often tend to be more understanding and flexible. They have a lot of experience. In sum, we are facing a long middle age that may last dozens of years. Indeed, it is a second life, with adult sons and daughters who may, theoretically, no longer need their parents, and these “second age” adults find themselves facing a long life that must somehow be re-invented. This long premise is meant to explain the essential impetus that the generation of the “second age” is imparting to cultural associations such as our Academy. The average age of our Academicians is 62 years (women constitute 23 per cent of membership). The trend, however, is toward a younger membership. A statistical study that we have commissioned shows that the median age of members who joined in 2012 is 57 years, and women have risen to 30 per cent. Other service clubs report similar data. The Academician must have one more distinguishing trait: he or she must have a gastronomic experience matured through diverse phases of life, journeys in Italy and foreign countries, and exchanges with different cultures and social classes. This is the prerequisite to be good judges of the values of the good table. We are not creating a geriatric category; on the contrary what we are recommending is to inject new blood into the Delegations, young people who are passionate about cuisine and willing to learn and to take over, thus paving the way for future generations. This is how we must proceed if we want to avoid the progressive wilting of academic life and of our very institutional mission. Thanks to the contribution of wise Delegates, this is happening, within a brand new context where “young” and “senior young” coexist with no distinction of roles, united by the same passion for the culture of gastronomy, with the same objectives and the same heartening perspective of staying together for a long time.