Restaurant 101 is the training restaurant for Enderun College’s food and beverage students. I have always been impressed with the meals served at 101, but this time I was more specifically interested in the food and beverage students who were being examined on their service skills. Having trained at Regency Park College in South Australia, I am always interested in observing other food & beverage students, and seeing them develop. So I was delighted to be invited to be a guest participant during the Final Practical Exams for last semester’s batch.
I was asked to make up a table of four, so I gathered up three good friends, all with experience in the F&B industry. We were briefed at the door as to what to expect and how to conduct ourselves. We were given an assessment sheet, and told we should try to order different dishes, presumably to give the students plenty of practice at taking orders.
For our contribution to the assessment, we would be served a 3-course meal, to include one soft drink and the after-dinner coffee or tea, which we were politely requested to order.
Restaurant 101 is elegantly attractive. Today it was brimming with guests, and yet still surprisingly peaceful. There is a kind of innate hush that politely requests we don’t raise out voices. I always find this dining room a haven compared with the noise pollution that accompanies many modern restaurants these days. Certainly no expense appears to have been spared to provide a congenial, calm atmosphere.
We were welcomed nervously to our table by our young waitress, and settled ourselves down to observe how she got on. Apparently, the students had designed their own table settings, so there as an interesting mixture of flower arrangements, and competition was rife.
Our server then presented the menus. These were unusually sparse in description or explanation, presumably to invite questions to our server and assess how well she knew the menu. Not very well, as it turned out, but her instructor was at hand to fill the gaps so we weren’t left completely in the dark. It was, as always, a simple lunch menu. As westerners used to larger helpings, especially the North Americans at the table, we were initially a little surprised at the small serves. However, we later admitted that the portion sizes were all we needed at lunch time. And none of us could fault the quality of our dishes – but then of course we had not been invited to assess the kitchen, who were all professionally trained.
We obediently made different choices from the menu, and my baked oysters were the best I have ever tasted. The oysters were a good size and texture and warmed nicely beneath a smooth, tangy béarnaise sauce that complemented them perfectly. Others enjoyed the quality of the salad, but thought it lacked the necessary spark to lift it from the ordinary. Our waitress did a great job getting everything safely to the table – we had joked about large plastic coated aprons – and did not have the misfortune of a neighbouring performer who toppled a glass to the floor.
Simplicity was truly the focus for our main courses: a tasty piece of red snapper on rice; a bowl of tiny gnocchi with a light white sauce; a fish soup with muscles, all highly praised by the recipients. Meanwhile our waitress practiced pouring our wine: iced tea in a recycled wine bottle! I remember spending hours practicing with a waiter’s friend corkscrew to get the knack of pulling corks at the table. I am very envious of this generation blessed with screw top bottles.
Seamlessly the plates were cleared and the desserts selected. A tiramisu and a Filipino version of the same called rhum baba. We ordered both, very politely. The cream fetishists at the table (two of us) found the thick cream on top of our tiramisu positively orgasmic, but had to admit that the very thin layer of sponge beneath was disappointing. We could taste neither masala nor coffee, so that really, it was a yummy bowl of cream. Unfortunately the rhum baba was also rejected, and certainly looked heavy and uninspiring.
However, our waitress completed her performance neatly, right down to decrumbing the table with a linen napkin. I cheerfully added some cream from my dessert to my coffee, which improved it enormously. We then duly completed the questionnaire, paid our bill (with monopoly money) and left the table.
The questionnaire was interesting in that most of the questions were worded such that our answers were inevitably yes, and there was rarely room to comment further, except, strangely on the bread rolls, for which we were given about four lines. The emphasis seemed to be more on appearance than performance, and we were – again surprisingly – asked to comment on the food.
Nonetheless, our lunch was served efficiently, and the plastic aprons weren’t required after all. The students may still have a little way to go, but, watching their teacher progressing around the room, I am guessing she will find a way to bring them up to scratch. And I have to add that our waitress ticked several of our pre-discussed boxes: she did a great job of balancing instantly available with unobtrusive – always a delicate task when you are learning the job. And there were a couple of memorable little touches – like bringing over a small side table so our handbags weren’t tangled round our feet, and remembering to tell our vegetarian companion that the mushroom soup was cooked in a beef stock. Also, much to our approbation, she waited to clear our tables till we had all finished eating. Other little details she will pick up along the way. And she apologized very sweetly and sincerely for any errors before we left her to get over the shock of her examination.
It was heartening to see Enderun working so hard to raise the standards of service here in the Philippines. That warm, friendly Filipino smile is always welcome, but can’t always undo the damage of sloppy service. So keep up the good work Enderun.
Restaurant 101 at Enderun Colleges is open from Monday to Saturday; from 11:30am to 2pm for lunch, and from 6 to 10pm for dinner.
* Images from Enderun’s website: http://www.enderuncolleges.com/
Glad you didn’t terrorise the poor girl… I may have been tempted! I remember your days at Regency. I wonder – were you exposed to this traumatic kind of examination? X
You bet – with my mother’s dear friends and my darling aunt turning up in hats and gloves thinking they were terribly funny!