The waiting staff in a restaurant can make or break a meal just as much as the people in the kitchen. For all our celebrity chefs and food fetishisation, most Brits still consider any restaurant job that involves dealing with customers as at best stop-gap, and at worst a last resort. The British Hospitality Association says there is “a deeply held antipathy towards the sector from too many parents, careers advisers and teachers”. Handling, too, is optimistic – but believes we need to let go of our veneration of French service and celebrate a British style of hospitality. We’re a “young cuisine” and “an arrogant people, who see serving as a poor person’s job,” he says, but at its best “British food is about personality, rather than discipline.

Source: The Guardian January 15, 2020 12:56 UTC