[Sca-cooks] Feast Service: thanks and a question

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:

> Thanks to everyone who provided the feast service sanity check a while
> back. The event is over, the feast went off well and the feast cook
> actually cooked stuff that their Highnesses would eat. Thank you, thank
> you.
>
> Now, I would like to hear from people how _they_ handle formal feast
> service in their area, if they do it, and what they consider good feast
> service, as I've volunteered to coordinate the feast service for an event
> in June and need all the suggestions and help I can get.
>

Well, hm.

Feast service according to me:

Servers get half-price or comped meals, if at all possible. I may have
mentioned before--it doesn't have to be the feast dishes, it can be
something else easily heated up, like lasagna or stew in pans.

Servers eat early-ish--if feast is at 6, then servers eat at 4:30 and can
take their time eating and still have time for setup. Servers can help set
up the tables but this isn't strictly necessary.

Head server coordinates serving pieces together with head cook, so that
both of you know if those serving bowls will need to be washed right after
the first course, etc. I like to lay everything out on tables in the
staging area, so I know if I have enough serving spoons for the rice dish
in the second course without having to wash the ones used in the first
course. Of course, it helps if the group has dedicated feastware.

Head server has the useful list of courses and what ingredients go in each
dish, so that the servers don't have to go bother the head cook.

Head server acts as intermediary between servers and kitchen.

If there are enough servers, some of them get to be beverage
servers--their job is to make sure people have enough to drink,
independent of the food servers. Children are good at this, it makes them
feel useful and important, and they don't have to try to carry heavy
platters of hot food.

Having matching tabards for servers is really spiffy. A number of groups
have service tabards for their feast servers, some as simple as
parti-colour in the group's colors, others with silkscreened devices. I
know when my household volunteered to be feast servers, the other servers
wanted to know if we had extra tabards to lend. Tabards also work very
well as aprons to protect the clothes of the servers.

Margaret FitzWilliam