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

[Olwen the Odd]

>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
>
This is close to the way we do it here in Bright Hills when the Cooks Guild
does a feast.  We employ Lord Barre to be in charge servers.  We have,
thanks to Baroness Ekaterina and others, some really spiff tabards for the
servers too.  Servers are usually offered food free but in a few cases that
is not possible.
Olwen

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