What happens next
20 Feb 2011
And I have a very real problem with the terminology 'service director'. What a pompous, silly, self important expression. Barely passible in a multi layered, complicated restaurant like The French Laundry, where you really do need someone front of house to be a director, and manage all the various aspects of service. I still think its an unecessarily bloated word to describe what is, in essence, a maitr d' role, but I don't tend to take umbrage with it being used there, becos maybe its just the Americans wanting to update an old fashioned french term, and it can have some validity, given the complexity of the role in a restaurant like that. But it still sounds a bit too over the top for me.
Chefs are still called chefs - that term is given serious connotations and gravitas, and has survived the trip accross the Atlantic without being translated into 'kitchen director ', so am not sure why maitr d' hasn't.
And it is especially jarring to my ears to be used in a restaurant where the customers are expected to get their own cultery out of containers, and place them on plastic topped tables, that appear to lack even any form of napkin.
Director of what exactly?!
Recent Posts
Categories
- Interesting links
- Life in general
- Restaurant Details
- Books I've just read
- Wine
- Recommendations
- Food
- Cookschools
- Recipes - Ideas and Links
- Food product we sell
- People we like
- Interesting queries from customers
- Piedmonte, Italy 2012
- Suppliers who matter to us
- Customer Complaints
- Catering
- France 2007
- Things I've just learnt
- Things customers can do, that peeve us.