Some bizarre truth about what really goes on in restaurants (Part 2)
All tip and no iceberg. That's a restaurant from the customers' point of view. The view from the pass is quite different. Demanding customers, unhinged staff and nocturnal hours make it an industry where the unusual is anything but. We approached chefs, waiters and restaurant owners to share their best stories without having to put their name to them. What results is a snapshot of the restaurant industry as we never see it, and, be warned, much of it is not pretty.
- A rather large young bloke turned up at the gastro - pub to celebrate his birthday, just before noon on a workday. I gave him a pint of his favourite beer on the house, and then he quickly downed two pints of cider. He proceeded to eat a dozen oysters and a steak. Halfway through his steak he went to the bathroom, and coming back out he said the ominous words to me, "I think you'd better get someone to clean that up." He'd vomited all over the floor and basin, just left it all and went back to eating his steak. No apology at all. I had to clean it up myself. He then went home and wrote on our Facebook page that the oysters had been off and that the level of hospitality had really dropped off.
- A customer tried to hide in the toilets when we were closing up. He seemed like a really nice guy, too – he said he just always wanted to know what it was like to be in a restaurant after it shut. He joined us for staff drinks.
- We had a chef called Tom… he has big ears so we called him Russell. He would regularly come in to the kitchen wearing other people's clothes from the change room. Quite often with no socks and wearing two right-footed Birkenstocks.
- When we opened our new wine bar we had a pretty wild few months of being used as a hospo [hospitality staff] haunt. One night a table of two disappeared upstairs. We couldn't find them anywhere until someone tried to run food up the back stairs and ran into them having an intimate moment. They thought it was an empty staircase but it was actually our internal stairs from the kitchen.
- There was a customer– a male customer, naturally – who ordered a rib-eye steak medium rare every time he came in. He came in about once a week, so he was definitely a regular, but he always ordered the steak and he always complained that it was rare rather than medium rare and sent it back. It became a bit of a ritual and it nearly drove the chef nuts. So one week the customer finally said it was exactly medium-rare, first time, and all the kitchen staff were really happy about it. The funny thing is, we never saw him again.
- A table had brought in a cake to the restaurant but right before it was to be sent out the chef knocked it off the bench and destroyed it. The restaurant owner was a crafty woman, so she plated the mangled cake and came out of the kitchen singing Happy Birthday as loud as she could. Her head waiter then did as she'd ordered him and deliberately crashed into her. The cake went up and so did the owner, right in front of the table the cake was meant for. The table sprang up and rushed to help the owner of the place rather than worry about the cake. She apologised a thousand times, tears in her eyes, but all they wanted was to make sure the lady was OK … Got away clean!
- We hired an apprentice – a bit of a wild kid, used to love a party but definitely had some real potential. In his first three days in what was one of the toughest kitchens I've ever seen we got a call from the Sydney city police department asking if we had an employee by the name of "John Doe". Apparently he'd gone out for breakfast with his mates after a night on the town and did a runner – but he left his bag behind, with his TAFE book inside, proudly emblazoned with name and place of work. We put the fear of god in him and said the cops were coming to arrest him and if he wanted to sleep in his own bed tonight he best get down there, pay the man and retrieve his property. He ran down, fully clothed in uniform and was back before service. From that day onwards he was referred to exclusively as "criminal".
- We were hiring a kitchen hand and two very well-dressed Nepalese men came into the restaurant off the street together. We mentioned that we only really had hours for one person. They both did a trial and seemed equally good so we chose one guy and apologised to the other. Then the following week they both turned up. We said there was only job for one and the guys just smiled and nodded and got on with it. Then the next day, same thing, and the one after that … After two weeks another job opened up and they happily joined the team … It was a funny way to start out but now, eight years on, kitchen hand No. 2, who was never really hired to begin with, is one of my key chef de partie and 2016 employee of the year in my current group.
- Had a sillionaire (silly millionaire) come in for lunch to the restaurant. He was equipped with a security team and he began communicating to the waitstaff by text messaging his security team and they would relay the request … "Ask them to clear my plate please …"
Source: External
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