Source : THE AGE NEWS
It was a good night. A night we were getting through somehow, despite a dose of trauma during the day. A member of staff had walked out during lunch service at the White Hart, my establishment in West Somerset, England – something I have learnt happens in the bonkers business of hospitality.
When the going gets tough, the tough – or not-so-tough – really do get going. They down tools mid-service, flounce out and you’re left wondering whether that’s the last you’ll hear of them, or if there’ll be an employment tribunal to look forward to.
A person down, and we got through lunch. Next stop, dinner, with the place bursting at the seams and, weirdly, very few staff on the rota.
I was hoisted in to work – desperate times call for desperate measures – and the young members of the team, our 17- and 18-year-olds who are my pride and joy, rallied. We were also expecting our landlord in for dinner, and I wanted them to have a good impression of our enterprise.
As the evening chuntered on, I managed the bar, somehow dispensing drinks to the pub and dining room. Things eased a little, and I went to sit with the man with whom I displayed my greatest act of lunacy in life thus far – signing a 20-year lease. He and his chums joked at the vast number of actors we had hired for the night to make the place seem teeming with life and spending.
As I say, it was turning into a good night. So, duly, as we now know is the form, something had to go wrong. It began as a whisper in my ear. “Unhappy lady in pink,” was the gist. I informed the landlord of an impending problem that I needed to deal with – he joked that an actor had “gone rogue”.
“Madam,” I said, summoning my finest, caring, problem-solving self, “what seems to be the problem, and how may I help?” “Tuile,” she barked. “Three weeks ago, I pre-ordered dessert [she was in a party of 20], and it promised zabaglione with ‘tuile’. There was no tuile. I was promised tuile, but there wasn’t any. You’ll be getting a very bad review!”
I decided not to tell her that the “g” in “zabaglione” was silent, but nodded sagely, and whispered quickly to a colleague who said the tuile had been burnt. The finest chefs burn biscuits, tuiles especially. The salient solution being that no tuile is better than a burnt tuile.
“I am so sorry about this,” I replied. “Allow me to remove the cost of pudding from the menu, and bring you all a free round of cheese and coffee on us.” I then added: “How was your main course?” “The sea bream was excellent,” she replied.
I noticed that as she issued her complaints – she’d been vigorously finger-wagging, nay fist-shaking at a new member of staff, Sigrid, on their first shift – they were played mainly for the seemingly mute guests around her.
“Where’s the best place to eat in Taunton?” I then asked of her home town, attempting a friendly conversation. “At my home,” she replied.
Later, having dealt with the self-inflicted financial wound of the aforementioned reparations, I checked as the woman in pink was leaving. Was she calmed, sated, satisfied? Far from it. The fist shaking had resumed – she was now barking about poor service and was, in spite of my solution, still battling over the missing tuile. “Such a disappointment, I was promised a tuile,” her voice raised again, her tone distinctly unpleasant.
Sigrid looked close to tears. “And,” the woman added, “she had the audacity to call my husband ‘darling’.” He nodded in agreement.
She then attempted to corral more support. “How was your dinner?” she asked a diner from her group who had sat at the furthest end of the table. “Excellent,” she replied. The lady in pink harrumphed at this.
“And the service?” she asked. “Very good indeed,” the lady replied. The woman in pink was extremely displeased at this. “The customer is always right,” she growled as she moved through the door to the exit.
“The customer is not always right,” I said, “And you are an example of that. You’re wrong, you’re rude, you’re bullying my staff and I never want to see you in this restaurant again.” She then appeared to stumble into the street, gnashing her teeth perhaps.
Anyway, she’s banned. My first ban, my virgin “no future admittance” order. I took some advice before opening the White Hart from the great restaurateur, Jeremy King: “Don’t under-capitalise, don’t scrimp on staff and don’t tolerate guests who bully staff.”
At least I can tell my sage mentor that it’s one out of three now…
The Telegraph, London
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William Sitwell is the restaurant critic and a columnist for The Telegraph, as well as a writer and broadcaster for radio and television. He has written four books including The Restaurant: A History Of Eating Out.
