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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.” 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. 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

In 2010, Sirieix was nominated for the Cateys manager of the year award, winning it three years later in 2013. In October 2011, he won the National Restaurant Awards' Personality of the Year for his charity work and promoting the hospitality profession. He was voted Educator of the Year in 2012 at the Imbibe awards and in March 2014, he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of West London. [5] Personal life [ edit ] Daughter Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix in 2022 Starkey, Adam (21 December 2017). "Gordon, Gino and Fred prove a winning combo on Great Christmas Roast". Metro . Retrieved 9 January 2018. Thompson’s first experience of hospitality was working as second chef in a fish restaurant in the village where she grew up. While at UCL, she helped out friends at Medcalf in Clerkenwell. She has been at Scott’s since 2006, when it was relaunched by Richard Caring as his first venture for Caprice Holdings, first as lunchtime maître d’ and then, after three years, as general manager. Being a young and female GM was “unusual”, she concedes, especially at a high-profile restaurant. Thompson says simply: “In my position now, I carry the can.” 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.”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. The winner of Ultimate Wedding Planner has been crowned". bbc.co.uk/mediacentre . Retrieved 17 September 2023. For Etura, a big part of the job is calculation: working out how long diners will take and when the number of people in the queue matches the amount of time left in which to get them fed. The biggest mistake he could make, he says, is for someone to queue only to be told there is no space. “I’d rather leave seats empty than that happen.” Not that it’s likely. He knows how to work the numbers. And his tip for reducing queue times? “You can queue before we open. At Frith Street the queue for the 5pm opening starts at 4pm. Or use the 90-minute rule. So come at 5pm for 6.30pm, or 6.30pm for 8pm.” And so to the killer question. Would he be willing to queue for as long as his customers? “Of course, and I have. Friends come from Spain and they want to eat here. So we wait.” 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]

a b c d "Fred Sirieix - General Manager: Galvin at Windows". www.galvinatwindows.com . Retrieved 16 February 2017. Fred Sirieix Biography - Biogs.com". 11 October 2019. Archived from the original on 11 October 2019. 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.Nankervis, Troy (23 March 2017). "First Dates maître d' Fred Sirieix promises fans surprise 2017 location change". Metro . Retrieved 18 April 2017. At Barrafina, everybody has to observe the rules of the queue, even if they’re the boss. ‘She could make you feel the world was a safe place with just a smile’ 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.”

Oysters. Fat, rich, juicy Irish oysters. I love all oysters, but I had some Irish oysters recently and I have to say that they were bloody good. Elena Salvoni at the Little Italy restaurant in Soho, London, 2011. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for Observer Food Monthly A great restaurant is as much about the service as the food. It’s about the smile when you arrive, the way you’re seated at your table, the glass of your favourite wine appearing as if by magic. Nothing is too much trouble. The art of perfect service may seem effortless but what’s really going on behind the scenes…? She goes on: “Some of our best customer relationships have been conceived in a moment of awfulness where somebody has complained. That’s your opportunity then. That’s something you’ve got to build on. It’s about taking ownership, being on the front foot, and smiling and communicating. All basic principles but oft forgotten in restaurants.”BBC announces new popular factual and factual entertainment commissions" (Press release). BBC. 5 October 2017. 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] In 2019, he presented a series on BBC Two entitled Remarkable Places to Eat, in which he was taken by chefs to their favourite restaurants in different cities. [16] [17] [18] 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.”