There once was a beautiful restaurant in Albion. It had
handpicked furniture, beautiful décor and was run by a dedicated and
experienced family. It had won awards for their food and wine. It was a lovely
gem of a dining experience in Brisbane.
Bespoke hired me as a waitress and I still cringe when I
remember my time there. I had no experience in fine dining and embarrassed
myself nearly every shift. On several occasions customers opened their own
expensive bottle of wine as I had to give up trying to get the cork out. I
caused carefully constructed plates of food to collapse carrying them out to
the table. I served champagne in wine glasses, couldn’t pronounce the menu and unintentionally
plied one customer with drinks until he threw up all over the bathrooms. I was
a disaster.
Particularly as I had no idea how bad I was. I couldn’t
understand how someone would be so fussy as to need the right glass to drink
out of. Or wanted their food replaced because it had fallen apart on the way to
the table. I was so tragically uneducated.
The surprising thing is that, despite being that bad, I
lasted at Bespoke for a few months. Obviously I mustn’t have screwed up every
night but looking back it sure felt like it.
After the restaurant closed,
the owner/chef became a relaxed and generous boss instead of a screaming maniac
and the stress went out the door with the last customer. We would all sit
around having a knock off drink and then start the cleaning and polishing,
restocking and storing for the night. We made good tips but instead of taking
them we drank them from the bar, and the staff meals were amazing even though
we didn’t actually get breaks to eat them. We had to just quickly sneak bites
opportunities arose.
Shortly after I started the mother of the chef, who was
always around and was terrifying, found out that I had worked in café’s and
actually knew how to use a commercial coffee machine. They’d bought one with
the business but no one knew how to use it so they were turning out the worst
coffees ever. So after that I was on coffees for the later part of each
evening, a much more successful task than allowing me to talk to customers.
Several months after I was fired (justifiably) I walked
past and found that Bespoke was no more. It had closed down and the giant
yellow For Lease sign clashed appropriately with the loveliness within. I’m sad
now that I never went there for dinner before it closed but with the staff they
hired I might have ended up with it down my front…
If you have no idea how to open a bottle of wine, find
yourself unable to understand fancy menus and think that any beer with an
adjective on it is classy – do not work in a nice restaurant. You will just
embarrass everyone involved.
