A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of cuisines and service models ranging from inexpensive fast-food restaurants and cafeterias to mid-priced family restaurants, to high-priced luxury establishments.
A gratuity is a sum of money customarily given by a customer to certain service sector workers such as hospitality for the service they have performed, in addition to the basic price of the service.
A waiting room or waiting hall is a building, or more commonly a part of a building or a room, where people sit or stand until the event or appointment for which they are waiting begins.
A sommelier, or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, normally working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food pairing. The role of the sommelier in fine dining today is much more specialized and informed than that of a wine waiter. Sommeliers Australia states that the role is strategically on par with that of the chef de cuisine.
Rodízio is an all-you-can-eat style of restaurant service in Brazilian restaurants where waiters bring a variety of grilled meats repeatedly throughout the meal, until the customer(s) signal that they have had enough.
A buffet can be either a sideboard or a system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners serve themselves. A form of service à la française, buffets are offered at various places including hotels, restaurants, and many social events. Buffet restaurants normally offer all-you-can-eat food for a set price, but some measure prices by weight or by number of dishes. Buffets usually have some or mostly hot dishes, so the term cold buffet has been developed to describe formats lacking hot food. Hot or cold buffets usually involve dishware and utensils, but a finger buffet is an array of foods that are designed to be small and easily consumed only by hand, such as cupcakes, slices of pizza, foods on cocktail sticks, etc.
Mr. Creosote is a fictional character who appears in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. He is a monstrously obese and vulgar restaurant patron who is served a vast amount of food and alcohol whilst vomiting repeatedly. After being persuaded to eat an after-dinner mint – "It's only wafer-thin" – he graphically explodes. The sequence opens the film's segment titled "Part VI: The Autumn Years".
In North America, a busser, sometimes known as a busboy or busgirl, is a person who works in the restaurant and catering industry clearing tables, taking dirty dishes to the dishwasher, setting tables, refilling and otherwise assisting the waiting staff. Speakers of British English may be unfamiliar with the terms, which are translated in British English as commis waiter, commis boy, or waiter's assistant. The term for a busser in the classic brigade de cuisine system is commis de débarrasseur, or simply débarrasseur. Bussers are typically placed beneath the waiting staff in organization charts, and are sometimes an apprentice or trainee to waiting staff positions.
The foodservice or catering industry includes the businesses, institutions, and companies which prepare meals outside the home. It includes restaurants, grocery stores, school and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, and many other formats.
A cocktail waitress, colloquially known as a bottle girl, is a female server who brings alcoholic drinks to patrons of drinking establishments such as bars, cocktail lounges, casinos, comedy clubs, jazz clubs, cabarets, and other live music venues. The gender-neutral job title is cocktail server.
Room service or in-room dining is a hotel service enabling guests to choose items of food and drink for delivery to their hotel room for consumption. Room service is organized as a subdivision within the food and beverage department of high-end hotel and resort properties. It is uncommon for room service to be offered in hotels that are not high-end, or in motels. Room service may also be provided for guests on cruise ships. Room service may be provided on a 24-hour basis or limited to late night hours only. Due to the cost of customized orders and delivery of room service, prices charged to the patron are typically much higher than in the hotel's restaurant or tuck shop, and a gratuity is expected in some regions.
The maître d'hôtel, head waiter, host, waiter captain, or maître d' manages the public part, or "front of the house", of a formal restaurant. The responsibilities of a maître d'hôtel generally include supervising the waiting staff, welcoming guests and assigning tables to them, taking reservations, and ensuring that guests are satisfied.
Silver service is a method of food service at the table, with the waiter transferring food from a serving dish to the guest's plate, always from the left. It is performed by a waiter using service forks and spoons from the diner's left. In France, it appears to be now known as service à l'anglaise, although historically that meant something else, with the hostess serving out the soup at one end of the table, and later the host carving a joint of meat at the other end, and diners serving themselves with other dishes present.
Restaurants fall into several industry classifications, based upon menu style, preparation methods and pricing, as well as the means by which the food is served to the customer. This article mainly describes the situation in the US, while categorisation differs widely around the world.
The Slammin' Salmon is a 2009 American comedy film by the comedy troupe Broken Lizard. It is about the owner of a restaurant who holds a contest to see which one of his waiters can earn the most money in a single night. The winner receives $10,000, and the loser receives a "beat down" by the owner, Cleon Salmon, a former heavyweight boxer. Kevin Heffernan directed the film, his first time for a Broken Lizard film.
In the restaurant industry, gueridon service or tableside service is the cooking or finishing of foods by a waiter at the diner's table, typically from a special serving cart called a guéridon trolley. This type of service is implemented in fine dining restaurants where the average spending power is higher, and an a la carte menu is offered. Gueridon service offers a higher style of service to the guest.
Mandatory tipping is a tip which is added automatically to the customer's bill, without the customer determining the amount or being asked. It may be implemented in several ways, such as applying a fixed percentage to all customer's bills, or to large groups, or on a customer-by-customer basis. Economists have varied opinions on the issue of mandatory tipping. Arguments against mandatory tipping include higher food price at the restaurant to make up for wages and loss of control of dining experience.
The tipped wage is base wage paid to an employee in the United States who receives a substantial portion of their compensation from tips. According to a common labor law provision referred to as a "tip credit", the employee must earn at least the state's minimum wage when tips and wages are combined or the employer is required to increase the wage to fulfill that threshold. This ensures that all tipped employees earn at least the minimum wage: significantly more than the tipped minimum wage.
Beniamino Schiavon, generally known as Mr. Nino was the maître d'hôtel of the Drake Hotel in New York City from 1942 until 1967. He was said to have created Steak Diane.
