What is more important good food or good service.

Now as I sit and think about this I find myself in the unusual position that having worked both front of house and back of house I have seen both sides of the coin. And now as a chef, surrounded by chef I am in the company of people who constantly tell me that it is the food, the menu that is what people are looking for. You need the best ingredients, locally sourced and cooked with a very high level of skill. If you do not do this then you might as well not open.

In fact the media seem to think that if you have a failing restaurant all you need is a change of décor, a new menu and invite everyone in for a grand reopening and that is the problem solved. If only life was that simple.

The problem is that service is just as important if not more important as having great chefs and wonderful food. It is the service that controls the orders that go into the kitchen , that can put a break on how many orders are being taken and when. If they are all taken at once and delivered to the kitchen at the same time the kitchen will go in to melt down very quickly. And the same can be said for taking the food from the kitchen to the dinner. If it is ready to go and on one takes it then the food goes cold, or just sits on the pass waiting.

It is almost a waste of time for the chefs to even consider managing to serve a complex menu to any customers in any significant volume unless you have good service front of house.  And when I say good service I do not just mean the social graces that you need but also the planning to go with it and the fast moving pace that is required as well in so many places.

The pass is the area of the kitchen where the two worlds come together, where the finished dishes are passed over from the chefs to the waiting staff. It is at this point that the finished dishes are dispatched out to the customer. Unless the chefs start to take the food from the kitchen to the customer the final delivery is up to the waiting staff. It is at this point the chef has to relinquish control and the service staff take over.

The waiting staff meet, they great and seat the customer, offer their advice guide them through the dining experience.  After time they can even become friends with them, sharing in their lives as events are celebrated in the restaurant.  Now that is almost if not as important as what is on the plate.

To prove this how many times have you asked how an evening was and the person has responded , we went to that place we always go, we like it there and they do look after us so well. Then you ask how the food is and they say, the food is ok, ok not great, not the best finest cooked but tortured artisan chefs who lovingly prepare each and every dish. No they say it was ok.

You can have great food but without great service you are dead; you can have medico food and with great service you probably will still do just as well. And the reason for that is people are people and like to deal with people. Good service staff should have the ability to be the walking embodiment of the Rudyard Kipling's poem “If” and that is no mean feat.

So when I hear my fellow chef who go on about the food, the provenance, the method and presentation. Remember after they have done that then it is over to the front of house to do the rest. And in my opinion they are just as, if not more important to the survival of a restaurant than any locally sourced Gloucestershire old spot or the latest sous vide cooking techniques. They are the contact point with the customer and without the customer  you are just a empty building , looking for a new proprietor.