In a restaurant it's just taking your order, drinks and checking if your food was okay, there's not much more to it, maybe suggesting a drink to go with the meal, there aren't levels of good, there's either service or bad service
In a normal restaurant, yes... if normal for you is TGI Fridays, perhaps.
Michelin service is more focussed on all the details that turn it from a service, in which you are served by a servant, to an experience. Its the same sort of service you'd get from the best tailors in Saville Row, compared to the checkout girl in TK Max.
"Imagine how, at a normal restaurant, the squeeze bottle that holds olive oil on the salad station will be like one of those refillable ketchup bottles from a diner. It will probably have a thin film of grease and salt on the outside.
At a Michelin-starred restaurant, it will be a Clairol tint-bottle, because the necks are stronger and the tips are finer. It will be impeccably clean, because otherwise, your fingers will carry greasy fingerprints to the plates.
That’s the main difference. A clean, precise oil bottle instead of a greasy, imprecise oil bottle.
Then apply that concept to literally
every aspect of the operation - That's what makes Michelin-standard service"
Michael Ruhlman
"Service is pleasing - For a brand that means pleasure, customer service cannot be based on the idea that service means ‘being a servant’. Service is about delivering pleasure to customers. Staff also need to experience the pleasure of being professionals, constantly aiming to master their art. This is neatly wrapped into the commercial success of the restaurant with the idea that every service interaction is a unique opportunity to please and pleasing inevitably leads to profits"
Diego Masciaga
“No one who considers themselves a regular wants to be greeted with a desultory 'Been here before?'”
And what can other businesses learn from the restaurant industry?
guide.michelin.com
^This one is an especially good point. There are several Michelin places that we visit, some more frequently than others due to the distance, but on all return visits we have been recognised, greeted by name and welcomed like important people, even when it's been 4 years since we were last there.... and just as importantly, we remember the staff.
I spent a good hour late one evening chatting with William Birch, the sommelier at Inverlochy Castle, as I enjoyed the cigar and port he recommended. Years later it was as if we'd only been there the previous night.
On good weather days Diego, the chap mentioned above from the Waterside Inn, will let us take the launch out for an amble up the river, and since I always pilot it there'll be a glass of the wife's favourite champagne already aboard and waiting.
L'Ortolan is our local place and because we go several times a year, we know most of the house staff by name, with the exception of any newbies. We still hang out in the bar after food, where Maciej will make us one of the best martinis on the planet, and keep us updated on how his brother Jakob is doing after leaving the restaurant and returning to Poland.
We even know where some of the older hands moved on and have gone to visit their new places, too, with no real justification other than knowing we can expect great service. Most recently we went to a non-Michelin place, yet Alexandra the maitre'd remembered us from years back at L'Ortolan, straight away pointed out the smoking area for me and even remembered how we like our coffees done.
We're not especially rich or famous so I'm sure these places keep records of every guest or something but, however they do it, they really know their stuff and you don't get that kind of service at normal restaurants!
