Waiter, there is a herb in my salad.
Ah the joys of our international restaurant community. Most of the time I don’t work with people who�have English as their first language. I have learnt to speak Italian, a little French, use plenty of gesticulations and somehow get through a normal working day but just occasionally something amuses me and I thought I would share it with you.
One of our young Italian waiters was serving a journalist and her husband the other day. The kitchen was nervous, he was nervous and we really wanted everything to go perfectly. The lady in question was served a salad of crab, avocado and it’s appropriate dressing. After a little while she�called the waiter back and said there was something in her salad. He panicked thinking it was something bad but couldn’t understand her so went off to find poor stressed Gregorio the Head Chef. Gregorio quickly donned a new neckscarf, changed his apron and went out to face his critic.
He immediately apologised for something being in her salad, was it a piece of shell, (we have had a shell in crab incident before - it happens, we cook and shell them ourselves). Gregorio sweated as she explained that yes there was something in her salad, a green herb with long leaves and she wanted to know what it was! He told her it was tarragon and she was delighted to know the recipe. Gregorio hastily went back into the kitchen and repromanded the waiter for worrying him unnecessarily!
I do remember when we had our first restaurant and I gave simple English lessons to the staff. I had to teach them once to say the special of the day - a warm salad of wild mushrooms and pancetta - they had real trouble in not saying - a worm salad.
Another fantastic mistake was a young waiter who insisted on describing the special of the day as - seabass on sauteed baby squirrels - the elderly ladies in question became quite upset as he insisted how good these baby squirrels tasted as they were in season now. Eventually the head waiter was called over as one of the women was becoming a little faint. He had to explain that the waiter meant baby spinach! I love that story, its one of those that I remember when I am sitting on a train on my own and it makes me smile when you know you can’t smile because you are on your own and then you want to smile even more.