The Geneva Menu Convention

I'm reading Table Talk by A.A. Gill the infamous food critic for the Telegraph, London not Belfast. It's not a bad read. The section on waiters made me laugh. Which, as I'm sure anybody who was here for Trevor White Week™, can testify is rather unusual. Waiters are usually nothing more background in TV food shows and amongst the supporting cast in movies. Honestly, watch the credits to any movie with a restaurant scene and when the credits roll there we are credited as WAITER NUMBER 1 alongside CAB DRIVER and DEAD GOON'S. Brilliant! They don't even bother to spend 30 seconds and give the guy a name.

What a travesty.

Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the few TV shows were the waiter gets more than a walk on part. They get to speak! Quite often they are remonstrating with Larry or being set on fire but hey at least they get to do more than serve the food and pour the water. We need more waiters on TV to inspire the next generation or something like that.....

But back to A.A. Gill's book.

His biggest problem with waiters is getting information from them,

"If you do ever try and prise information out of a waiter, it's like interviewing enemy airmen. 'I'm sorry, under the Geneva Menu Convention I'm only obliged to tell you my name and tonight's specials.'

Waiters, in general, are remarkably badly informed about what it is they are selling, but they always manage to make you feel like the dummy."

Takes years of practice that. As an example he sites his attempt to find out more about the venison.

Great, what sort of venison?

It's fillet, sir.

No, where does it come from?

From our specialist supplier, sir.

No, you don't understand, what sort of venison is it?

It's a deer, sir. They are wild animals. They look like elegant cows.

Oh what I wouldn't give for the opportunity to be so cheeky. I can push it sometimes but that is just waiting at it's best. Bravo young man bravo! Seriously though the point Gill was trying to make was that chefs are very difficult people to try and extract information from. As he puts it, "What other business has a need to know relationship between manufacturer and sales force?"

standard chef pose....

He is of course completely accurate in this assertion. Even my own head chef can be more than a bit evasive when you try to get information from him, even the smallest detail can turn into a game of twenty questions.

What's todays soup?

Eh vegetable.

Cream off or broth?

What?

What kind of vegetable soup is it?

IT'S VEGETABLE SOUP!? I DON'T HAVE THE FUCKING TIME TO PISS ABOUT WITH NOSEY WAITERS!

Jesus (whispered under breath)

At that point you have to just move down the pecking order and hope you can bribe a lowly chef de'partie for the contents of the soup with coffee and fags. And it's not as if you can just ask them straight out what the soup is, you have to lower their guard with talk of football and cars first of all and then hope to segue it in some how. Now there are only three possible explanations for this coyness.

First, they just don't know. Highly unlikely that the whole kitchen draws a blank. One of them must have made the soup.

Secondly, they are making it up as they go along. Quite possible, especially when it comes to specials. A little bit of this and a large dollop of that. Who the fuck knows what's in there by the time it comes to service.

Thirdly, they just don't like waiters. That's normally the most plausible explanation. Chefs, especially junior chefs think that they are the dogs balls and that they don't need to share their secrets with the likes of us.

It's like they have taken a vow of Omertá or something. The Gestapo would have struggled to find out what the lunch special pie contained. So the next time you are out for dinner and you ask the waiter is there chicken stock in the vegetable soup you should be aware that he is probably just guessing. Any way the book is a decent read even if the waiter section is only two pages long but still better two good pages than eleven and a half by Trevor White.