This week, on Wednesday and Friday morning, I organized a practical class for my Restaurant Management course students… the idea is to recreate the “real” conditions of a restaurant, in a 35 sq m2 classroom 🙂
Luckily we have a practical kitchen just separated by a window, so there goes our “kitchen pass”!
Half the team of 13 is divided into two groups, one plays the kitchen brigade’s role with a chef, whilst the others are in the “restaurant”
Prior to the practical class we spend a couple of hours talking about the different service styles and how to prepare for a restaurant service.
That’s when I started telling them about my first job in Mexico, as Banqueting Assistant Manager of the Hyatt Regency Merida…
The capital of Yucatan was at the time, a sleepy (mostly verified between 2 and 4pm, siesta time, but, no wonder with such heat and humidity!!) colonial town.
It is located a few hours drive from Miami inspired Cancun, tourism Mecca of spring breakers and Jazz festival goers, where I would spend the next four years…
Since the late 1990’s Merida underwent growth fueled by economic development, but fortunately has retained that colonial feel… It just may be a little bit less sleepy because of the noise from heavier traffic, one of the terrible consequences of -again- America’s inspiration for -big, huge, gas guzzling- cars (always wondered why people needed 4x4s in the middle of urban jungles such as Panama, Mexico or Lima… oh well 🙂
As I was explaining to my audience, most days in banqueting are very different from one another, events can be of all sizes and at any time of the day, or even night.
My week was usually made up of various meetings, conferences and coffee breaks scattered around the banqueting floors of the hotel, or on the last floor, or even by the pool when the thermometer was in the lower thirties celsius, which was rather rare!
The rhythm would start increasing on Friday night, when a wedding or “15 años” celebration (very traditional celebration, mostly in provincial Mexico, the 15th birthday of a young lady is usually celebrated in a wedding style, with multi storied cakes, and dancing all through the night!) was held in the Regency hall.
The functions averaged 150 to 200 invited guests, and were scheduled to begin around 9pm, with dinner served at about 10pm…
I then told my students that one of the joys of the world of hospitality, is that not one day is ever the same as the other, and you have to really be prepared for the unexpected : guests at these weddings or 15 años usually showed up around 10 or 11pm, and dinner would consequently begin at around midnight… in some cases we even ran out of food, when an extra 50 or 100 hungry guests came by around the time of service… the chefs had gone home, and I was usually the only supervisor left in charge, so I had no other choice but to take a look in the walking chillers, I remember preparing grilled chicken on the stove on more than one occasion… whatever you do, make the guest happy, right? – I often compare an hotelier as the man on the picture below…
Saturday was quite similar to Friday, and the functions would end in the early morning on Sunday… less disciplined guests had to sometimes be escorted to the entrance of the hotel, after having called a taxi…
The weddings could not go on after 6am for a good reason : Sundays were very often “baptism day”… usually those functions started around 11am, and ended, well, officially after lunchtime, but most of the time the atmosphere was so good they finished at 8 or 9pm!
Needless to say my Sunday evening consisted of going straight home to sleep until Monday midday, which thankfully was usually my off day 🙂
Happy sunday evening and until next week !
