February 2011 Archives

I want to begin this post by paying tribute to the masters of service, those great people who have dominated our industry, such as Silvano Giraldin of Le Gavroche, Diego Masciaga of the Waterside Inn, Jean-Claude Breton of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and of course our own Alain Desenclos who has been responsible for so much of our success at Le Manoir. All of these maîtres introduced the highest standards to their establishments in the face of many difficulties. Will we find people like them in the future?

Even to discuss the future of service, we have to admit that we are still having trouble recruiting the very best people into our industry. Staff turnover is still high. And we have a skills gap, where our current workforce simply does not have the skills we need, especially when it comes to customer service. Why is this?

How is it that we can attract 7,000 year-10 schoolchildren for a future chefs competition but cannot recruit enough young people to staff our hotels and restaurants.

We need service in every aspect of life, whether it's buying a sandwich in a supermarket or a quality snack on a train. The wage cost will always be the main cost of our business. You can't reduce it, but you can make it more efficient. Selection and recruitment is the key. You have to see that the person you recruit can be taught to share your vision, and stays with you - staff turnover is one of our worst problems. Training and constant retraining must be at the heart of our industry. As employers, we simply must see that the systems are in place and money is set aside for this.

1. Young people joining the industry should be nurtured. Their hours of work should be gradually increased after the initial stages of their career - as their experience and stamina increases. To work them long hours from day one does not allow them to adjust and build their stamina to handle the pressures of the kitchen and restaurant environments.
2. Salaries should be fair and competitive - otherwise rival industries (such as Retail) will lure our capable staff away.
3. Split shifts do not allow the work/life balance to be achieved - which we are told is what 'generation Y' crave the most.
4. Employers should shout about the lack of support given by career's teachers (who have limited knowledge of the industry) in promoting Hospitality as a career of choice.
5. Employers should work with their local colleges to influence and update the curriculum according to their needs.
6. Clear career pathways should be identified by employers to help promote the opportunities within hospitality
7. Employers need to work with their local colleges to ensure that work placement and updating opportunities for staff are identified and offered
8. Employers should lobby the awarding bodies such as City and Guilds to include in the mandatory curriculum modern and contemporary issues such as food sourcing and sustainability
9. The government's apprenticeship scheme requires employers to pay a contribution towards the training - but many employers still believe that learning in a catering college is free. With aggressive funding cuts being introduced by the government, it is vital that the industry should pay for the training for learners aged over 19yrs.
10. New service-based TV programmes are attracting a new wave of learners into service. - It is vital that career opportunities are spelled out to these potential employees and how it is possible to climb the ladder in many different directions leading to managerial and supervisory jobs. 

I am sure you will all join me in congratulating Michel Roux on his recent series BBC 2 on Service; it was a most timely piece, which reminded us all that there is much work we need to do collectively in order to bring service to the forefront of our industry. Bravo Michel.   

As some of you will know, I will be giving away all my "Kitchen Secrets" - in the TV series that starts on BBC2 on 21 February, and in the book with the same title published the same day by Bloomsbury. A week ago, though, I spoke to a seminar for the National Restaurant Awards. And told them all my "Service Secrets.". This week and next, I would like to share a few with you.

I only found out what I really wanted to do when I was 19 and a half. I saw an extraordinary scene unfolding in front of me. It was a warm August evening, in the middle of my hometown Besançon. The maîtres d'hôtel, dressed in their black ties, were carving fat ribs of beef, flambéing crepes Suzettes, and the young waiters, in their claret-coloured jackets, were moving attentively around the guests' tables. It was just so beautiful!  At this very moment I decided to be a chef, even, let's say, a great chef. It was my destiny; it was so obvious.

Like most things in life, you do not get what you want exactly when you want it, so I got a position as a cleaner. I became the best cleaner. I gave my heart and soul to it. I turned this 18th century house into the Palais de Versailles. I won the respect and trust of the maîtres d'hôtel, and the waiters who did not have to check behind me. That was service.

Then I was promoted to plongeur. I was in charge of the glasses. They were hand made and delicate. I learned the skill, and soon enough they were sparkling. I also reduced the breakage rate by 30%. The sommeliers loved me; the boss loved me.  That was also service.

Next I became a commis débarasseur, or runner, and at last I was able to approach the guests. Then, after a lot of running, I became a commis, and I was given the most beautiful purple jacket, the one that I saw first on the young waiters. It was a proud moment in my life.

I had the best imaginable teacher, Jacques. Patiently, he taught me how to carve, and the basics of service of both food and wine and at all times to give more than the guest expects. Under his guidance, I grew in confidence. He was exacting and always looked for perfection, but he was fair and would acknowledge my successes as well as point out my failures.

He taught me to prepare the room and lovingly make it even more beautiful.

He taught me how to be a host, and how to cherish each guest  - to make him or her feel that special. Much of this, of course, I had already learned from Maman Blanc at home, at our Sunday lunches.

I learned that service was a wonderful craft, but that it is also much more.

It empowers you, gives you empathy, even as a mere waiter. It allows you to give someone whom you did not even know, a moment that would be remembered fondly, sometimes for years to come.

I'm writing this from my hospital bed. Yesterday morning my wonderful surgeon, Mr Richard Keys, removed the plates and screws he put into my leg almost a year ago, when I fell and broke it on six places. This blog post is evidence of what a great and rapid recovery I'm making. Of course, there is a certain amount of post-surgery pain; but my goodness, how pleasant not to have so much of the inventory of an ironmonger's shop installed in my leg.

What I really want to tell you about, though, is the remarkable experience I had on Monday, 7th February. I was giving the keynote address to a National Restaurant Awards exclusive seminar at Hakkasan, for an audience 40 of the country's top chefs and restaurateurs, including the Award winners named last October. The host was Restaurant Magazine.

My topic was good service: my own "Service Secrets" to complement my Kitchen Secrets book and new series starting on 21st February. In the talk - which I wrote out in advance so many times that I found it wasn't necessary to read it, as I'd unwittingly memorised most of it - I detailed some of the changes we've made at Le Manoir. If you follow this blog, you'll have already read about some of these.

In the end, changes like these, though they serve many ends - even resulting in better balance sheets -  have a single purpose: to make the guest enjoy himself more, to meet the changing expectations and needs of the modern guest.

But what I want to tell you about is not what I had to say, but what happened later. That afternoon I joined a huge number of chefs at the Connaught, to celebrate the shiny, new second Michelin star just awarded to another French-born chef, Hélène Darroze. The host of this elegant party was the General Manager of the Connaught, Nathalie Seiler-Hayez (Swiss-born, and French-speaking, so nearly another compatriot).

Between Hélène's exceptional culinary offerings and the warmth of Nathalie's hospitality, we were all so blissed out that many of us were late arriving at the next celebration, for the opening of Heston Blumenthal's new restaurant Dinner, in the most wonderful, spacious room at the heart of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park.

But not me. I was the first of the chefs to arrive. Heston already had his trademark big grin on his face. And for good reason: everything felt so very right. There is drama in the glass-walled wine cellar, as in the big glass-fronted finishing kitchen, visible from all over the dining room, full or young chefs working together, focused and with precision.

I've recently been thinking about the areas in which Britain is catching up or excelling France. One half (50%!) of the food consumed in the UK is imported (according to the Food Standards Agency in a report reprinted in May, 2010). France, by contrast, is the world's second largest exporter of food. What accounts for this disparity? I think it is because we in Britain have lost our former craft and skills in many areas, whereas France, whose gastronomy has just been added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list, has managed to retain most of her crucial agricultural and foods-related skills.

There is, though, one great achievement of which we can be hugely proud: There has been a renaissance in British cheese making, not just in England, but also in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The British Cheese Board claims there are more than 700 named cheeses made here. The famous quotation ascribed to Charles de Gaulle about the difficulty of governing France mentions only "246 different kinds of cheese".

And just think of where we've come from! In a 1989 food-poisoning scare the only thing linking the victims was that they'd eaten Stilton. Actually the cheese wasn't guilty. But that was discovered too late. The malign semi-governmental Milk Marketing Board persuaded the five farmers of the Colston Bassett farming cooperative, which was then the sole producer of raw-milk Stilton, to buy expensive pasteurisation equipment. The Minister of Agriculture actually threatened to prohibit the sale of all unpasteurised cheese.

This had the effect of making Stilton, the most celebrated cheese of England, extinct! (I'm not counting all the glorious cheddars, because cheddaring is a process rather than the name of a specific cheese.) After 1990, when the last genuine unpasteurised Stilton was sold, it was gone forever - chiefly because the remaining cheese-makers, including, to their shame, the wonderful cheese-makers and well-intentionedfarmers of Colston Bassett, saw to it that the EC Protected Designation of Origin standards included as part of the definition of Stilton the requirement that it be made from pasteurised milk.