Wined, dined and rested.

Health warning : some of the photos herein are blurry, do not adjust your glasses, there is a good reason for this…..

Our impression of a restaurant rests largely on the quality of service from the front of house staff. Fabulous plates of food when hurled onto the table in front of you by unsmiling staff who don’t even look at you can spoil your enjoyment of the food – this is perhaps a statement of the blindingly obvious, but I’m constantly surprised by the attitude of serving staff who would clearly rather be on a beach, in a different country, playing video games, developing their modelling career or basically just ANYWHERE than serving at table.

We recently ate a few times at a very good brasserie in a small town in the Drôme, France – it’s called l’Étoile and it’s in lovely Buis les Baronnies.

A brasserie is a normal eatery, it is not (usually) a Michelin-starred gastronomic experience, but it should serve good everyday food; the Étoile in Buis les Baronnies is exactly that, the menu includes standards like warm goat cheese salad, steak tartare, garlic and parsley dressed snails, and they also have a selection of pizzas cooked in their wood-fired oven.

In high season there is a constant flow of customers from breakfast until dinner, and at a rough count there are around 40-50 tables but these guys do not stop racing around, remembering random requests shouted at them from all directions and still managing to be civil and smile. 

The one maitre d and 2 waiters do not stop running, carrying trays of drinks, plates of food, answering requests – there is reason this photo appears blurred……

They didn’t stop long enough for me to get their names, but we particularly enjoyed the little dance that this young man below performed as he cheerfully waved plates of food up and down as he literally executed little dance steps around the restaurant at one point….

Of course, you will say, this is how waiters should be, why write about it?  My answer comes right back at you – precisely because you do not always get this kind of service. Any normal person would need several days at the local spa after a day of this kind of activity, but there they are next day ready for the breakfast service. And of course they are not alone, all around the world there are waiters doing this but just sometimes we should stop and appreciate what they do.

This gentleman seems to run the floor, while also turning the clearing of tables into an Olympic sport…..

… and still he managed to smile as he said goodbye at the end of a very long evening.

I feel exhausted just thinking about it, I could do with a refreshing café gourmand – ah, here it comes, delivered at speed of course ….

Thank you to cheerful, hard-working waiting staff the world over; you put up with a lot, and of course you can’t always be cheerful, but many of us notice when you are and you make our dining experience that much better.