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- “We review the reservations list during pre-meal. Every new guest is a potential repeat guest, so we try to learn what we can about new guests. Do they live or work nearby? Then we let the server know in pre-meal. They won’t have a different caliber of service, but the more you know about a guest the better you can take care of them.”
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- “Their wine preference, water preference, allergies — we record copious Guest Notes about diners. Then we announce them in pre-meal — we print them from the OpenTable system and hand to the server and manager, and they’ll pass it along to the kitchen if there’s something food-related.”
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- “Their wine preference, water preference, allergies — we record copious Guest Notes about diners. Then we announce them in pre-meal — we print them from the OpenTable system and hand to the server and manager, and they’ll pass it along to the kitchen if there’s something food-related.”
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- “We do a 40-minute wine school training twice a month, where we have a tasting of something that’s new on the list. And not always just wine, but also spirits and cocktails that are on the list. Often we’ll bring in a winemaker or an expert of some kind.”
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- “If there’s a new ingredient or dish, Chad wants us to be enthusiastic about it. He’s extremely thorough and methodical. He will announce it in our meeting, show it to us, and then write up a description to post on our bulletin board so we can go back and refer to it.”
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- “With the rotisserie, we learned to adapt our roasting and resting times. One is used for large roasts, and the other is used for individual brochettes. It’s very visual — the kitchen may be in the back, but you see a glimpse of the rotisserie from the front door.”
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- “Our regular menu changes many times within the season. We try to organize it so that we print menus the day before, so we’re not scurrying — and that way the host can remove the old menus and put in the new ones the day before. We also create custom personalized menus for our private dining guests.”
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- “Before service there’s napkin folding, detailing stations, spot checking, scrubbing down banquettes, and cleaning the carpet.”
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- “Our evening staff arrives around 4 p.m., when we’re re-cleaning the dining room, re-setting the tables, re-folding napkins, and re-stocking the bar. Family meal is at 4:20 in the main dining room. The front of house and back of house eat together: cooks, stewards, bussers, and bartenders.”
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- “We’re a tight-knit group — no back of house or front of house. That wall doesn’t really exist, physically, psychologically, or operationally.”
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- “Unclean menu covers are one of my pet peeves. If a customer touches something on the menu cover that’s not nice, it makes the guest think, god knows what the kitchen looks like!”
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- “We use silver silverware, not just flatware. It has to get polished with silver polish, which happens every couple of days. We also polish the glassware, of course.”
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- “If there’s a new item on the menu, we test it out as a daily special before it goes on the permanent menu. Then the chef makes it for pre-meal for the staff to taste so they can describe it to guests.”
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- “The day before service, we would have confirmed every reservation for the next day — both lunch and dinner. We confirm the day’s numbers to the kitchen before closing, along with any particular incidents, and then we report cover counts for the following lunch and dinner. We begin to clean up, allocating tables in the floor plan for lunch and dinner. There’s a bit of fine-tuning and jockeying.”
In our Pre-Shift series, we show how different restaurant teams prepare for service, from cooking and polishing to team meetings and table layouts. OpenTable’s Alex Loscher visited New York City’s Rotisserie Georgette to document the scene and talk to founder Georgette Farkas about her pre-shift process — click through the gallery above to get started.
At her Manhattan restaurant Rotisserie Georgette, Georgette Farkas serves the kind of food she grew up with in France: simple roasted meats, fish, and vegetables that people come back for again and again. The restaurant is a combination of the family-style places she knew in Europe, where there were no menus but just a few signature dishes cooked in big, rustic fireplaces, and the refined, luxurious style she mastered over almost two decades at Daniel.
After attending hotel school in Switzerland and apprenticing all over Europe, Georgette settled in at Daniel, at that time the only restaurant owned by Chef Daniel Boulud. “I had the idea that I was going to open a restaurant one day, but I woke up one morning and 17 years had gone by!” she says. “When you work for a company like that, every day is inspiring and motivating and you’re challenged to do something new. And you’re working with the best of the best. Why would you take the risk of starting a business?”
But eventually her entrepreneurial spirit won out. Georgette and business partner Katina Pappas opened Rotisserie Georgette in 2013, focusing on whole-roasted fish, game birds, meats, and vegetables that rotate according to the season and appeal to the most elementary part of our senses.
Georgette says, “When you’re planning a restaurant, you have to think about winter, spring, summer, and fall. How will it feel at night? How will it feel during the day? How will it feel for men and for women? People ask me what kind of demographic we have, but I’m like, what do you mean? People who like good food! People who want to eat! It’s the sort of thing you come back to every week.”
In addition to bringing in Katina, Georgette hired Chad Brauze as Executive Chef and built a team she’s immensely proud of, while committing herself to making the restaurant a respectful, pleasurable place to work. She started with the stewards, the dishwashers, whom she says have the hardest job there. “If they have ultimate respect, then everyone is going to get it.”
That attitude extends to the guests as well, who are guaranteed to hear “yes” to just about any question they ask the staff. “When a customer walks in a little bit grumpy, I feel like it’s almost a challenge,” says Georgette. “If you can have them smiling by the end of the night, that’s amazingly gratifying.”
