Before we begin…
After 62 consecutive weeks, the Always Care Community didn’t publish an article last week. The reason was simple - Family First!
Our daughter, who lives overseas, was visiting. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we hadn’t seen her for two and a half years. You’ll also know that we celebrated our reunion and our three birthdays by watching “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in a theatre that serves cocktails and snacks at your seat.
On March 26, my mother turned 90. For the first time in seven years, our family was together in the same place at the same time. It was the first birthday we celebrated together since 1970-something.
To be present for my mom, our daughter, and the rest of the family, I set my writing aside last week. Like I said - Family First!
If you’ve read our book, “Spin the Bottle Service - Hospitality in the Age of A.I.”, you’ll know I’m not always a huge fan of fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurants.
There are notable exceptions, and we mention a couple in our book, but too often I’m left with the impression that the staff feels they must live up to all the incorrect stereotypes of stuffy, arrogant, Parisian waiters. By the way, we also debunk that myth in our book.
Oslo, 1988
As a hotel security guard less than a year into what would turn out to be a 30-year career, I was still learning the ropes. During that first year, I had to write reports about angry chefs who threw knives at apprentices. The Executive Chef told me I should be fired for putting a note in the staff suggestion box advocating for pizza on the room service menu.
“There will never be poor man’s pizza on any menu in a businessman’s hotel!”
In my defence, I had grown tired of seeing guest after guest come in from a night on the town bearing boxes from Peppe’s or bags from Burger King, while the French Onion soup and open-faced salmon sandwiches on the night menu went unsold. Of course, I was just a rookie security guard, so what could I ever know about customer service or guest preferences?
In those days, our hotel had a proper fine-dining restaurant. One with expensive linen tablecloths and monogrammed silverware that was made of silver. The apprentices who worked the first shift cutting vegetables and other “mise en place” activities were gone before the first guest arrived.
The chef was a famous cook from Sweden who lived up to the stereotype I had in my head even though I’d never been in a fine-dining restaurant. The hotel was the flagship of the chain and our GM was a high flyer on the Norwegian social scene so it was a surprise the day I witnessed the Swedish chef tell the GM to leave the executive office because the chef was going to use it to make a personal phone call. The GM obliged.
Not long thereafter, the Swedish chef went back to Sweden and a 31-year-old Norwegian was the surprising choice to run the restaurant. One of the first things I noticed was that once in a while he joined us “regular staff” for a drink at the pub after work.
I remember discussing what it would be like to invite someone like him, on his way to international fame in the culinary world, over to dinner. What would people serve him? How much pressure would that be?
“No pressure,” he said, “I’d be happy with beer and a hot dog. Most people can make hot dogs.”
Regretfully, I never asked him over for dinner. My excuse, and I’ve convinced myself that it’s a valid reason, is that I usually worked, 6 - 7 days a week, more than 10 hours a day, and that while there was always dirty clothing on the floor, there were no hot dogs in the fridge.
After winning the Silver medal at the 1991 Bocuse d’Or our new chef was too famous for the hotel to keep. He started his own restaurant, earned a Michelin star, and never looked back.
Hotel security guards are not well paid. I took a 40% pay cut from my lucrative job as a ticket taker at a movie theatre when I accepted the hotel gig.
Oslo, June 2016
Ferris Bueller was right. Life moves pretty fast.
Following moves to Copenhagen, where I met and married my wife, and Brussels where I suddenly was an expat instead of an immigrant (more on that in next week’s article), my career had also taken off. No longer did I sit in the basement of a hotel. I sat in a glass building and was head of security for a hotel group with over 1000 hotels around the world.
The “first white person the company ever sent to China who understands that Chinese are people” had left our company, left China, and had a growing family with a lovely partner and three boys back in Norway. All that takes time, and suddenly, my best friend was 50. He invited me to his party which was a “boys only” affair with his closest friends from hotel school and me.
The party was on a Saturday at an undisclosed location, so Kirsten and I decided to make a weekend out of it. I’d often spoken about the fine dining chef who had impressed me during the couple of years he was at the hotel and the regrets I had for never having been able to experience his restaurant.
The internet told me the restaurant was still in business and the chef was still in charge. I sent an email, asked if he remembered me, and asked if Kirsten and I could book a table for Friday evening. A short while later, he responded.
Yes, he remembered me and yes, he’d be happy for us to book a table.
Friday
The restaurant was a 25-minute walk from our hotel. In June, darkness comes late in Oslo, so the sun was still shining brightly as we wandered through Slottsparken on our way to our 7:30 dinner reservation.
When we arrived, the chef was waiting for us. In his chef’s whites and tall toque, carrying a silver tray with two glasses of perfectly chilled champagne.
“Nice to see you again.”, he said, as if twenty-some years were more like twenty-some days.
We had an unforgettable evening. One of the chapters in our book is titled “Fancy Doesn’t Have to Mean Cold and Formal”. This place was an excellent example of what we meant when we wrote that section.
Little did I know, the experience Kirsten and I had was simply an amuse-bouche.
Saturday
The party started in the late afternoon at the birthday boy’s house in a suburb west of Oslo. After a cold beer on the deck, a mini-bus arrived to take us to our dinner destination. We were rolling through an upscale neighbourhood when I had the first feeling that an exciting coincidence was about to take place.
No, that couldn’t happen.
Oslo has a wide array of excellent restaurants andI didn’t even know if my friend even remembered the chef from way back when.
But when we turned off Bygdøy Allé onto Gimleveien, I started to wonder. I caught my friend’s gaze. He was looking at me with eyes twinkling like a mischievous five-year-olds do when they pull pranks on parents who pretend to be fooled.
As we entered the restaurant, Chef didn’t greet us at the door with chilled champagne. Someone else did because Chef was busy cutting carrots in the kitchen.
Yep, some fancy chefs throw General Managers out of offices to make phone calls, but the good ones show their staff that cutting carrots is not beneath them.
Chef and the birthday boy could hardly contain their laughter.
“When I saw your email, I didn’t know what to do because I knew you’d be coming tonight. I called Bjørn and asked what I should do.”
“Business is business”, said Bjørn, “so I said of course he should give you a reservation. Besides, your wife deserved to experience this place too!”
Look at the menu.
We had another unforgettable evening.
Epilogue
What’s the name of the restaurant you ask?
Stay safe, Always Care
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If you’re in hospitality, read our book, Spin the Bottle Service. A local server told us it should be required reading for everyone who works in a restaurant or hotel.
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In addition to writing stories, I love to tell them.
As a multi-award-winning corporate leader in the fields of hospitality and global security, captivating keynotes, compelling coaching sessions, and edutaining, motivational workshops are all part of my repertoire.
Email me at paul@alwayscare.ca.
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