Formal Restaurant Service week one

the view across the road

Some conclusions about the front of the house experience.

We started another block - Formal Restaurant Service. The difference between contemporary and formal service in our case is not significant. The expectations are much higher, however the way we serve and the menu itself are the same. The expectations are that we are able to provide service to our guests at the higher level. It is more important that we follow three R rule (refill, replace, remove), we greet each table in two minutes, keep an eye on assigned tables. The ultimate goal is guests happiness with all aspects of the service.

The first week was quite hectic. I have no idea why it was quite difficult. On the day one my back server started the day by giving me instructions what to do and how to do it. You may imagine my 'happiness'. Unfortunately, the guy did not remember his duties and since that had an impact on my guests, I told him about that. Later on,

Contemporary Restaurant Service week two and three

Restaurant's terrace in the evening

How possible to meet people from Toronto at the school?

One more week where I missed the post.

It was our second week of the contemporary restaurant service. There was a change how we work. We are not doing the whole cycle for a table. Instead we were divided for front servers and back servers. The front server is responsible for sales to the table, for taking order, communicating with the chef if there are any questions. The back server is a helper and supposes to serve water, bread, remove dirty plates, mark the table for the next course, and so on. Also there were different workload starting that week. The front server served four tables and the back server provided support for two front servers. These positions are not permanent,

Contemporary Restaurant Service week one

Our restaurant inside

What is more important - good food or good service?

Somehow I missed posting here for a couple of weeks (again), so need to fix this. We started our restaurant classes, our last big block before graduation. The schedule changed dramatically - we have classes from Tuesday to Saturday, also the hours for the classes seem quite long from 2 p.m. till 11 p.m. The end time is approximate, the first week we finished around 11:30 p.m. every day.

The first week of service each of us had two tables and we were doing the whole cycle for our tables, starting with water, taking orders, bringing food, cleaning and resetting our tables. Honestly, I was scared about this class. The idea to speak with strangers, explaining the menu, trying to sell something was terrifying. Also there was expectation for us to know

Wine study weeks three

What is a good wine pairing?

Somehow found myself behind with the blog. The last week of wine study was less intense, than previous two. We had a quiz on Monday about European countries we had learned during week two and the final exam on Friday. The final was easy, as it was an open book exam. There were a couple of crazy questions, but it was not so bad.

On Monday we had a food pairing exercise in class when we were given six wines, bean soup puree (quite basic), and a tray with 25 different food items (cheese, bacon, pork, herbs, sour cream, and so on). The idea was to find best adds on to the soup, to improve it taste when you try it with wine.

On Tuesday, as a part of the class we had a lunch at the school restaurant with wine tasting. For each course (appetiser, main, and dessert) we had three different wines. The idea was to taste food with wine and find out which one is the best choice for the food item. Then we had to write a paper