SC - A question on Servers

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

HI all from Anne-Marie
Claricia sez:

The autocrat rather unceremoniously informed 
> me that we would not be having servers, just a person from each table 
> would truck off to the kitchen.

*sigh*. I guess that's why they call them "autocrates", eh? :) Fear not,
kind lady. We can make this work. We've done several banquets for 150 this
way and it was OK. not as flashy as we would have liked but oh well.

The key is to have a "kitchen steward", ie someone who's job it is to make
sure food is garnished correctly, stage it on a couple of tables and keep
the hordes out of your kitchen and at bay until its ok for them to to take
the dishes. We put a couple banquet tables outside the kitchen door. The
food leaves the kitchen and goes to Team Garnish. After they attck it with
the edible flowers and parsley sprigs, it goes to the staging area. Small
folded index cards, one with a number for each table, mark which dish goes
to which table. If there's no card, it means someone already picked up your
dish. The Kitchen Steward answers questions ("what is THAT????"), makes
sure the sauces go out with the meat, etc. After every course goes out, she
cruises the tables and makes sure that every table has one and only one of
everything. Us stirring about in the back of the hall, putting dishes on
the staging tables is the signal that the next course is coming out. If the
server is annoying, we will bop them with a ladle. :)

The keys to making this method work, we find are the following:
1. One thing per table. Make sure there's eight servings on one plate, and
the Kitchen Steward keeps them from grabbing two sauces, etc. The index
tent cards help here too. 
2. Keep them out of the kitchen!!!! This is part of the Stewards job. I
guess our barony is well enough trained...they stay out of the kitchen
pretty much on their own :). 
3. The Kitchen Steward is a job that requires nerves of steel, the ability
to think on their feet and impecible tact. Its also a very fun job,
juggling all kinds of diverse tasks so that the kitchen crew can focus on
producing amazing food.
4. Make your table servers meet you for a few minutes before the food
starts coming out so they know the drill. FOlks wanna do right, but they
need to know what that is!

So, the family style thang can work, it just takes some planning ahead of
time and a good Steward.

Alternately, if you have yur heart set on fully serving, one can do like we
did for our Elizabethan banquet, where we got our local Drama guild to be
the servers (any opportunity to act). They bought their tickets, and we
just made sure that they had their own table, and that they got food. They
just got to it a bit later. The courses were staggered enough that they had
a bit of time to sit and eat. Our budgets dont allow us to do ANY comps,
and this worked well for us.

Sounds to me like your autocrate is going through some pretty typical
pre-event "eek! I am not in total control of this one very important
thing!!" jitters (never been there meself, nope nope nope :)). Hang in
there, dont kill her, and all will be well! :) (if you're in the slammer
for manslaughter, who will run the kitchen? )

let me know if you have any other questions...hope this helped some.

- --AM
 

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