We’ll join this story in medias res, two weeks into Ramadan. I’m dealing with it a lot better than last year. No eating in toilets for a start. A year since I moved to Dubai has given me the chance to discover what bars remain open. The hotel is quiet but the popular Iftars draw a massive crowd, and the food and beverage teams are slammed. Many of the servers are fasting, or working long hours, strange hours, or both, yet guest service scores remain high, and having been to Iftar twice already, can see that, by-and-large, the guests — a few thousand through the door each night — are looked after wonderfully. And Muslims breaking their fast are a demanding bunch of folks.
Now, let’s scoot back a month or so. Sadly I am as delinquent as ever on here, but the time that has passed has given me a chance to seriously think about whether I should publish this post, and I have decided to go ahead.
Being someone of a somewhat laid-back inclination, I don’t care much for service, as long as I leave a restaurant feeling slightly drunk and very full. Well aware that it is kind of my job to find superstars whose passion is to offer guests way more than the above, maybe I am in the wrong industry but I firmly believe that the role of the server is primarily to help people relax.
I am also someone who totally gives waiters and waitresses a forgiving, overly easy ride, having been there and done that aeons back. One personal horrific memory was asking a cantankerous old lady in Bella Pasta what exactly she meant when she had beckoned me over and ordered a “glass of lemon”, only for her to bite back with “ARE YOU STUPID? A VODKA AND LEMONADE!”. Yes, being a waiter is largely dealing with nonsense like this. The grey-market of after-hours alcohol procurement and consumption (it may have come from the store room, it may have been brought on premises by a colleague or simply started life as dregs from the table of eight who came in at half nine in the evening), the usually generous tips and drunken afterparties in the Fez Club in Cheltenham didn’t do much much to detract from what is essentially a repetitive, thankless calling, something which many of us have gone through at some point in our life.
I empathise, I really do, and have so much respect for those individuals that turn waitering into what has the potential to become a genuinely lucrative career, one that exemplifies in so many things the greatness of the hospitality industry. So it is with heavy heart that I find myself writing about the most sullen, miserable and squalid server I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.
Some people will jump in immediately here and say “Well, hold that back a second Mike, he could have had a bad day? Some bad news?” He was about as hipstery as hipsters come, so maybe his beard wasn’t quite on point that afternoon. Sorry, that was a terrible attempt at a joke. But then again, it was Saturday lunchtime, and one needs to look ones best. Well, all I would reply to the naysayers was that his bad day didn’t seem to to be affecting his service of the two stunning blonde ladies sat on the table next to us. Not that I’m jealous or anything. I mean, I know I’m no oil painting but my, friend, well she scrubs up wonderfully. Anyway, as I said, I’m not jealous.
The restaurant, Friends of Ham, was frankly wonderful. “Whoa! That was a great lunch, I’ll be back tonight for dinner, and back again tomorrow for Sunday brunch” kind of awesome. So if you’re here to find out what the place was like, then go there. Now. I totally, one hundred percent mean it. Nestled seconds away from Leeds city centre, the hotel I was staying in AND the train station, it was all about location, location, location and, crucially, pig, pig, pig, beer, beer, beer.
A big rickety wooden bar dominates the room. You sit at big communal oak tables on wobbly wooden chairs, or on smaller tables with bench-and-cushion seating, where we were. Murals of swine and cracked tiles are suitable eye candy. Beer mats read “A friend of ham is a friend of ours”. Our waiter’s beard is one of many in the dining room. One waitress stands out in my eyes as being exceptionally cute and short, with her arm in a bandaged up, in a sling. I was like “you’re awesome and I want to take you back to Dubai with me, post haste”, and seeing as by the end of the lunch, the alcohol was loosening my tongue, would have likely said that if we had her serving us rather than the guy we got. The place is exactly as you are imagining it. It could be a time-portal into Shoreditch 2012. There are of course, no bookings here. What did you expect?
The door throws you into the midst of the small, cramped dining area and you lunge onto an empty table. Our bearded friend, who I will herewith be referring to as ‘Grumpy’, actually greeted us warmly. What happened next is the only reason I could fathom for the complete flatlining of service afterwards.
We dive onto a table which as we sit, he clears with a smile and a welcome, etc. etc. It’s one of the large communal ones, and as we sit, I see a couple leave one of the more private tables in the corner. So, up I leap, dragging my friend with me. “Sorry, can we grab this one instead. Sorry, I know you’re busy” (you’ll notice that “sorry” was multiplied by two, as I’m so British, and acutely aware he’s clearing numerous tables for little old me). Without a word, he does so and then walks away. I honestly think that apart from taking the order and sorting out payment, the welcome was the last piece of discourse we had with Grumpy.
If you had to guess what the menu was printed on, you’d probably say brown recycled paper, wouldn’t you? Well you’d be right. Beers on one side, food on the other. The beers are numerous and enchanting, though they rotate, which means that in each section of the beer menu, only the first one on the list is on, and when that runs out, the second one is the only one on… and so on. The system is far from clear if you’ve not been here before, and is the only gripe I have about the whole food and beverage offering at Friends of Ham. Grumpy didn’t seem to tolerate me not knowing this, literally saying “No” when I asked for a pint of lovely-looking chocolate stout which was inconveniently third in accession to the tap. Only after one other failed choice, and me, sobbing and sulking, begging him to explain the Riddle Of The Beer Menu, did Grumpy explain what was going on. He efficiently but curtly guided us through the food menu, maybe because by now, the blondes on the table next to us had sat down.
Interestingly, we hadn’t really cottoned on to Grumpy’s unique 'treat them mean, keep them mean' style of service yet. Maybe he wasn’t that bad after all, but what was more likely was the awesomeness of the beers providing what was in hindsight a welcome distraction from the increasingly negative atmosphere. A ‘Whisky Barrel’ Dubbel from Edinburgh could have easily been labelled ‘Essence Of Scotch’ without misleading the public, whereas a half of sixteen-million A.B.V. stout from London was basically like drinking espresso. I was slurring after those two halves. My friend had some kind of strawberry pilsner which was basically like turbo-Fruli. So all this, and the long-overdue catch up, meant we were happy.
The food made only made us grin wider. The menu is simple, a few starters, kind of tapas-y things — mostly sliced off the sides of pigs — and then you have cheese and charcuterie boards – either pre-chosen selections or you make up your own, like a grown up pick ’n’ mix adventure.
What a wonderful idea! We made one up from a slightly strong Brie de Meaux, a cider-washed Capra Nouveau, prosciutto and nutmeg-cured Carne Salata. We also ordered some Bath Chaps (smoked pigs cheek) and Blood and Chocolate Chorizo.
Such food, being simply cheese or cured, cannot be screwed up, but by jingo it was good. The Bath Chaps almost had me writing my resignation and moving back home for ever, and the Blood and Chocolate Chorizo? Well, it was Blood and Chocolate Chorizo, so what do you think it was like?
That said, all the drinks were sat down without a single word from Grumpy (the food was brought over by a cheery, nimble little waitress, clearly a true ‘friend of ham’). Alas, there was no check back, Grumpy looked downright annoyed when we said that we wanted to look at the menu once more, to order some different drinks for round two (how dare we yearn variety?) and he managed to somehow clear the pates without looking at us once. That’s Olympic-standard twittery right there.
It seemed only right that the fond farewell, was cutely done by the waitress with the sling. She even held the door open for us with her one good hand. I melted right there and then.
I have thought so many questions about Grumpy since then. He could have been a teetotal vegetarian, forced to work at Friends of Ham as some kind of sadistic community service, or anything. But I keep coming back to my gut feeling that he is someone just not made for the industry, one of many people who certainly has a true calling, but contact with the general public may not be it.
I was prompted to finish off this piece — one that had sat in draft on my Mac for weeks, for fear of me coming across as a boorish, demanding snob — after my first Iftar a couple weeks back. Grumpy should come out here and witness one of them, where the most unmannerly or morose person in the room would not be him, but one of five hundred tired, ravenous guests, being diligently looked after by waiters who professionally overlook this nightly nonsense to deliver a level of service that our bearded friend couldn't even offer on his best night — not even if the room was full of paired-up blondes giving him a hell of a lot of eye.
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