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.

The Trevor White Apology

a porn star

"The article was written as a satirical piece and in the context of the entire page the publishers believed that readers would not be left thinking that there was any truth in the assertions, it being an absurd parody of the inaccurate tabloid publishing generally." - Trevor White

Unfortunately that wasn't an apology to the waiters of the world. That was an apology to ElinNordegren . Elin Nordegren is married to one Mr Tiger Woods.

In a piss poor attempt to "satirise the tabloids" Mr White's magazine The Dubliner ran a Pre Ryder Cup article which claimed Mrs Nordegren Woods "can be found in a variety of sweaty poses on porn sites across the web". Probably didn't want to do that in retrospect. The "article" went on to state

"Most American golfers are married to women who cannot keep their clothes on in public. Is it too much to ask that they leave them at home for the Ryder Cup? Consider the evidence."

Pictures of Mrs Nordegren Woods accompanied the article alongside pictures of a naked model who by all accounts works in the adult entertainment industry.

Mr Trevor White was forced to issue an apology to all involved. Tiger wasn't a happy golfer at all and whilst mindful of not upsetting the good people at the K-Club and his Irish Hosts, of the Ryder Cup, he said "My wife, yes, she has been a model prior and she did do some bikini photos. But to link her to porn websites and such is unacceptable, and I do not accept that at all. Neither does our team. It's hard to be very diplomatic about this when you have so much emotion involved, when my wife is involved like this. My wife is an extension of me. We are in it together. We are a team and I care about her with all my heart."


EDITED AT 11:22 with thanks to Twenty Major and Is It Just Me?
In a piss poor attempt to avert getting sued to extinction Mr Trevor White offered to donate all the profits from the offending issue to a charity of Tigers choice. But alas no joy. As reported in the Independent, Elin Nordegren "issued libel proceedings against 'The Dubliner' magazine for publishing fake nude pictures of her during the Ryder Cup." But it gets worse she "is also suing Trevor White, its controversial editor [and Manuel's hero], over the doctored photos and an alleged satirical article entitled 'Ryder filth for Dublin?' published in September."

Ohhhhhhhhhhh that's gotta hurt.......

So Trevor, you have proved that you can own up to your mistakes, time to do it again. Or do you only react to threats of lawsuits? Trevor, say it ain't so.....

not a porn star
Manuel can tell the difference

Hi and welcome to Trevor White Week™

Mr Trevor White
with foppish hair

Yes, dear readers, this week will be dedicated to Trevor White! We shall have competitions, fun facts, book and magazine reviews, personal testimony, and a whole lot more. A whole week dedicated to all things Trevor White. By the end of this week you will know the man as intimately as you know yourself.

The WellDoneFillet schedule has been cleared, the calendar re-written, the milk cancelled and the cat put out. This week is just for Trevor, nothing will get in the way of TrevorWhiteWeek™.

I know some of you will be unsure about TrevorWhiteWeek™ but I have compiled a handy TrevorWhiteWeek FAQ section which I'm sure will answer all your questions.

Why Trevor White? Trevor has said some nasty things about waiters that can't be allowed to go unchallenged. So I have sent him an email asking him to clarify his remarks. So to kill time until we get a response I thought we should get to know the man.

So who is Trevor White? Trevor White cant be summed up in a couple of lines. It will take a week to learn about and to love the man. What really is the secret of his foppish hair?

Trevor White? Have I heard that name before? Yes you probably have, just don't mention Trevor White to Tiger Woods or Mrs Tiger Woods either now that I come to think of it. More to come on that little issue.

What can we do, as readers, to help with TrevorWhiteWeek™? If you have any lovely Trevor White stories send them to me. If you have met Trevor White then share your insights with us. Have you any photographs of Trevor White, incriminating or not, that you would like to send to us? Have you served Mr Trevor White in a restaurant or bar? Is he a good or bad customer? Please share with the group.

You said you have sent Mr Trevor White an email. Yes I did, early on Sunday morning. Can we see it? Yes you can....

Dear Mr White,

I hope the day finds you in fine fettle and all is well in your little world. I wish all was well in my world but alas all is not well, not well at all. And I am afraid to say that you are at the very centre of my unhappiness. For you see Mr White I am a waiter, a hard working, professional waiter. I love what I do, I care for my customers, I help and guide them through their dining experience. I have been working in the Hospitality Industry for over 18 years. I know from your interview on Five Live that you don't like that term.

I know my craft and know it well. I am neither a resting actor nor a middle class dropout. I find this to be offensive in the worst way possible. "Middle class" indeed!I love a good stereotype as much as the next man, and a good sweeping generalisation is so much easier than actual work. But I do take offence at this particular remark.

But maybe I have taken you up incorrectly. Have I taken you up incorrectly Mr White? No profession is above criticism, why just the other day I was served by a waiter who was less that fantastic. But to smear us all as uncaring and unskilled is just factually incorrect.

I reacted very badly to your interview on Friday night and posted as such on my blog, WellDoneFillet . But I am prepared to give you a chance to explain yourself. I will buy your book and read it and then post my views on it. I nearly bought it online on Friday night but for the postal strike. I don't want to have to wait a week to get it started. Such is my intrigue.

I await your comments Mr White on waiters and waiting as a profession. Have I taken that passage out of context and you are actually filled with love and admiration for us waiters? Or are you just a fan of a good soundbite?

Now where did I put that video store clerk application form..?

"Manuel"

Do you really think he will respond? I hope for Trevor's sake I get a response. I have faith that Trevor will do the right thing.

So a whole week then? Yup, gonna be fun eh......

Trevor White, consider this your first warning...

Mr Trevor White
someone please spill soup on him...

Manuel's gonna get you, gonna get you good....

When I heard this rent-a-fucking-quote I was shaking with anger. But now I am beyond anger. I have reached a new angry place, a level of anger that I never knew existed. Mr White was on Radio 5 plugging his book, "Kitchen Con", and made a snide remark about waiters, and how we take advantage of customers who have had too much to drink. He was making lots of snide and factually inaccurate remarks about the restaurant trade.

When he had finished his tirade of cynicism and I had cleaned my dinner off the radio I took the liberty of Goggling Mr Trevor White to see what he was all about. I came across his book's website. In the "Choice Cuts" section I discovered this nasty little paragraph,

"On Waiters. History teaches us that at some dim point in the past, humans regarded service as a noble calling. Today, in terms of the level of esteem that society affords it, working in a restaurant is just below clerking in a video store, and just above selling cocaine. The art of running a dining room is now practiced in the main by resting actors and middle class dropouts. Neither have much interest in other human beings, and both have reason to be deeply insecure."

Well, you can imagine my rage. You can imagine how I find that to be so deeply fucking offensive. I, like most waiters, work hard for the money, so hard for the money. I will not let that stand, not for one moment. But unlike Mr Trevor White I am a man of reason. I will buy his book, I will read it, and then I will comment. But Mr White, be warned, if I find more shite like that quoted above you can expect to hear from me.

Until then I implore all waiters who come into contact with this nasty, vindictive, little man to give him the treatment he so richly deserves. You know what I mean....

I'm not looking forward to reading his book after finding these two reviews on Amazon,

"I thought it was just me but after reading other user reviews from amazon.com and amazon.ca I realize I'm not the only one that dislikes this book. It is such a bore to read. There is nothing interesting being said and it is written so poorly. It has zero flow and it almost sounds as if a thesaurus was used extensively to mangle the hell out of sentence in order to make it sound intelligent and important. I am only a quarter of the way through but it's too painful to continue. I have better things to do/read."

&

"Read some of your favourite menus instead

After all, that is what our generation is all about, according to Trevor White. We read more menus than recipes. Although I somewhat agree with that blanket statement, it seems odd to hear such a criticism coming from a restaurant critic. Here is a person who eats out for a living, encourages people to dine out and admits he knows very little about cooking. Clearly his kitchen experience has not yet been extensive enough to hear that one about the pot and the kettle.

Overall, this book was fluff. Unlike what is promised on the cover there are no major revelations or shocking facts about the restaurant industry. Most of the time, the chapters consisted of unconnected anecdotes and I was unsure of what point he was trying to get across. His observations about celebrity chefs, guidebooks, famous restaurant critics and inflated prices at restaurants should be bloody obvious to any reasonably intelligent person. Without the book in my hand, I am having trouble picking out other topics to talk about. It really is forgettable stuff.

The fact that he is Irish and I am Canadian probably didn't help. I had never heard of most of the names dropped in this book. It is possible that my dislike of this book is simply a cultural thing. I doubt it.
The only bright point for me was when he advocated an end to tipping. I do agree that restaurants should pay their workers honest wages rather than customer subsidies.
The author also points out numerous times how the internet is changing restaurant reviewing by shifting power away from critics and into the hands of the even the lowliest diner. That's a good thing. Unfortunately for him, the internet has done the same for books."

Crikey that's got to dent the huge ego a little......