I am biased to a good bottle of bordeaux. I recently had a Château Batailley 2014. That wine, oh my God. Bordeaux, when it’s well made, it’s just something else. of the many opportunities in this industry. It opens doors to so many things. You can travel the world as a waiter.

Gerrard, Neil (30 March 2017). "Fred Sirieix to front new programme to get young offenders into hospitality jobs". thecaterer.com . Retrieved 10 April 2017. In 2018, he presented Million Pound Menu, a new show for BBC Two. [12] In December 2017, he appeared in ITV's Gordon, Gino and Fred's Great Christmas Roast, alongside Gordon Ramsay and Gino D'Acampo. [13] Fred Sirieix knows exactly where his interest in service comes from: his parents’ careers in the French equivalent of the NHS in Limoges, where he grew up. “Every day before going on the night shift my dad would shave,” he says now. “I asked him why he did that. He told me it was to make the patients trust him. The conversation around the dinner table was all about patient care. It was about making sure people had a good experience.” José Etura has arguably the hardest job in London restaurants. As the man in charge of service at the trio of Barrafina tapas restaurants, he has to manage some of the city’s hungriest queues. Since the original opened on Soho’s Frith Street in 2007, Barrafina’s food, overseen by chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho, has been acclaimed as some of the city’s very best Spanish cooking. But with all the restaurants boasting non-reservable counter seating only, getting to eat it isn’t always easy. “Sometimes people queue for over two hours,” Etura says. “And when people have queued for that long, you have to work 10 times harder for them, because they have huge expectations, and they have to be fulfilled.” In the future, possibly phones will come with health warnings. It’s become an addiction. People are taking pictures of food but they are not talking to each other. Look, I don’t mind what they do. If they are using flash and it is irritating others then yes, I would intervene. When you work front of house you have to use good sense when deciding to get involved.Nankervis, Troy (23 March 2017). "First Dates maître d' Fred Sirieix promises fans surprise 2017 location change". Metro . Retrieved 18 April 2017. Fred has presented and co-hosted many programmes, including Million Pound Menu, Remarkable Places to Eat, Michel Roux’s Service and Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip. In a world full of celebrity chefs, Fred has become Britain’s only famous maître d’, and his role on television is helping to raise the profile of Front of House jobs. I’ve lived in England longer than I lived in France. I’ve been here for 30 years and I’m 49. And I still sound like this, right? As much as you can take me out of France, you can’t take France out of me. In 2019, he hosted the CBBC series Step Up to the Plate with Allegra McEvedy where they tested 8 young people in each episode to see if they had the skills to run their own restaurant. [14] A second series was broadcast in 2021. [15] As is the often the case, much of his story is happenstance. School did not suit him and when a friend announced he was going to catering college, Sirieix followed. While he did some training in the kitchen, and believes he could still work a service as a cook if they were desperate, he soon specialised in working front of house. After training in a Michelin one-star in France he came to England to work at Pierre Koffmann’s La Tante Claire as much, he says, out of a love of the English language as anything else. That was 24 years ago. Since then he has worked everywhere from Le Gavroche to Sartoria and the Bluebird Cafe, before joining up with the Galvin brothers 10 years ago.

a b c d Rayner, Jay; Lewis, Tim (17 April 2016). "The art of service: secrets of the maître d' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 16 February 2017. Fred Sirieix Biography - Biogs.com". 11 October 2019. Archived from the original on 11 October 2019. Etura came to London from Valladolid in north-west Spain in 2007 to learn English, intending only to stay for a year. He got a job in the first Barrafina as a glass polisher, became a waiter a year after that, and nine months later was a manager. Now 35 and the top man front of house, he has had to devise a philosophy of the queue. “You need to be a psychologist,” he says. “You need to understand different sorts of people, that a banker is not the same as an 18-year-old student.” When people have queued, you have to work 10 times harder for them, because they have huge expectations a b Finn, Rachel (25 June 2022). "Gogglebox fans in awe as Fred Sirieix appears with rarely seen fiancée Fruitcake". OK! Magazine . Retrieved 26 June 2022. Elena Salvoni never retired. She was just unable to make her last service. In early March, aged 95, she was due to preside over another of her regular lunch events at Quo Vadis on Dean Street, after which I would interview her about her eight decades working front of house. A magazine edition dedicated to the art of service would simply not have been complete without Elena Salvoni. The day before, she suffered a major stroke from which she did not recover. Her son Louie was almost apologetic, but mostly because he knew his mother would hate missing the lunch. “She was so looking forward to it,” he said.Knowing the difference between all those bottles on the supermarket shelves will double the pleasure you get from a glass of wine and, with Fred Sirieix as your guide, you'll discover how to get the flavour you want. Delgado, Kasia. "First Dates maître d' Fred has gone from matchmaker to musicmaker". RadioTimes. Archived from the original on 29 July 2015 . Retrieved 11 April 2017. Danielle Thompson smiles a lot. This is partly just her generally sunny disposition, she thinks, but also she has found it a useful tactic at work, as general manager of Scott’s in Mayfair. “If stuff is going wrong, smiling almost makes you more relaxed in a way,” she says. “Maybe there’s a booking that’s gone in the wrong night and you’ve got six guests standing in front of you with no table. Or maybe a tray of main courses being dropped. It’s a live environment; this is how it is. But, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter what has happened, it’s how you deal with it.” He trained at a Michelin-starred restaurant in France, [ citation needed] before moving to London restaurant La Tante Claire where he worked as a chef de rang [ fr]. Following this, he worked at Le Gavroche, Sartoria and Brasserie Roux. He was the general manager of Galvin at Windows, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the London Hilton hotel on Park Lane for 14 years, until December 2019. [4] [5] [3]

Three years ago, Thompson’s daughter, Daphne, was born; Thompson took 11 months maternity leave and then returned to Scott’s part-time. Again, this is “unconventional” in hospitality, which demands long, antisocial hours. Thompson gives credit to Caring for being open to the idea and she hopes that her experience will be helpful to other women in a similar position. “Yeah, I’m definitely flying the working-mum flag,” she says. “I didn’t want to pretend it was going to be OK and then totally crash and burn. Hopefully I’ve proved the fact that it is possible.” Sirieix is the Maître d' on Channel 4's First Dates, deciding to be part of the show because "it sounded fun and you have to consider any opportunity. I looked carefully at it and became sure it was a good programme at heart." [3] He was also Maître d' on the First Dates spin-off show, First Dates Abroad. [8] In addition to First Dates, Sirieix, along with celebrity chef Michel Roux Jr, co-hosted BBC Two's Michel Roux's Service. [9] In 2012, he appeared on BBC One's The Apprentice whilst the programme filmed at Galvin at Windows. [10] In 2017, he appeared in Channel 4's Tried and Tasted: The Ultimate Shopping List. [11] We don’t value hospitality in this country, that’s for sure. There’s a lot of examples to show that: it was labelled as low-skilled only recently. If you speak to a career adviser, they wouldn’t recommend hospitality as a career for kids. But it’s just incredible what you can do in hospitality. Also, it’s a meritocracy. That’s what I say when I do talks in catering colleges: if you work hard, you’re going to go all the way to the top. It’s your time now. Starkey, Adam (21 December 2017). "Gordon, Gino and Fred prove a winning combo on Great Christmas Roast". Metro . Retrieved 9 January 2018.Any customer is good. I like people. There are those who come by themselves once a year and those who come three times a week. It doesn’t matter how often they come or why. They are all deserving of good service. Glennon’s distinctive dress sense started to take shape when she moved to 34. “It’s helpful especially with so many different restaurants to be, ‘Oh right, you’re the woman with the big glasses, yes,’” she says. It is, though, very much a uniform. “I dress completely different away from work. What did I wear today? Jeans and trainers. And I love hats, so I’ll constantly be wearing hats around.”