Made With Love
By Sophie Levenson
In the opening pages of Priya Basil’s Be My Guest, the British author writes, “Nobody in the world welcomes us quite like our parents do … Mothers, of course, host us like no one else can — in their bodies.”
When I first realized how much I value hospitality, I chalked it up entirely to my experience working in restaurants over the past several years. Taking care of people — with food as a centerpiece — seemed to be a value I had learned from managers and chefs, more than anybody else. There is plenty of truth to that, and the impetus for this piece lies absolutely in my love of the service industry. But perhaps my mother deserves some credit, too.
Nobody sets a table like her. Beautiful placemats, cloth napkins and table runners fill the drawers in our kitchen, and another one is stocked entirely with tea lights. Saturday nights draw in couples by the number to admire their place settings. I grew up in a household that loved to host, even if it was not one with much of a knack for cooking.
That must be where it started, for me: parents who found great joy in taking care of their friends.
A great restaurant does that, too. Community Table co-owners Kelleanne and Ryan Jones taught me this at 15 when they stationed me behind the hostess desk of my neighborhood restaurant. At first, hosting satisfied my chattiness, my love of new friends, my need to constantly move around. The only complaint my bosses had was that I talked too much to tables when I had other things to do. Joe and Burnum, Peggy and George, Dave and Sabrina, Vernon — Community Table’s regulars — became my dear friends. They loved to dine, and I loved to serve them.
Peter, who took over the kitchen after Atif’s exodus, cared about his food and about the people who ate it. Angry at the loss of my role model, I spent months fighting this new, seemingly soft approach to food service. If a steak was sent back undercooked, Peter apologized and prepared a new one, while I scoffed or rolled my eyes. From Atif, I had adopted a strict disbelief in the kitchen’s belief to do wrong. We worked too hard to take criticism — the steak was not the problem — it was the customer’s fault! How dare they insult the hard work we do back here!
It wasn’t until I replaced the word “customer” with “guest” that I realized that I had been horribly wrong; that all of my anger towards diners was not just insensible but, in fact, ludicrous; that I needed a magnificent shift in attitude. I had understood it once, as a chatty hostess — and in my senior year of high school, I began to figure it out again.
The “it” that I refer to is, of course, hospitality. Which means what, exactly?
Ancient Romans believed that the gods demanded the utmost hospitality between friends and strangers alike. By definition, hospitality means a “friendly or generous welcoming” of visitors, in any capacity. Colloquially, at this point, “hospitality” refers to the food and beverage industry, with a connotation of money-making that does not, really, reflect the meaning of the word.
Sometimes, however, taking care of strangers is unpleasant, because strangers are often unpleasant. At 15, I hadn’t lived in the South long enough to have adopted the deferential politeness expected of young girls at hostess stands (I still haven’t, mind you). My patience slowly waned, and I stopped finding smiles for rude customers. Covid didn’t help: I spent far too much of my time asking people who didn’t believe in the virus to put on masks. Eventually, my boss stuck me in the kitchen, where I couldn’t be rude if I tried.
Atif Scott saw the world as an enemy of his kitchen. Customers created problems that his line had to solve. If there was a problem with the food he cooked, fault belonged to the whistle-blower. Atif would fix a diner’s dish, because he was a smart man who knew how to cook, but he would roll his eyes while he did so.
I idolized Atif. Community Table is not The Bear; Atif was never “Chef.” He was Atif, and we blasted 2000s-era R&B while the line cooked and I worked expo (I organized and called out tickets as they rang in). When Atif was angry — which was not infrequent — I hid in the walk-in, but otherwise I mostly brought him cranberry lemonades from the bar and sang Jeezy lyrics louder than necessary. For better or for worse, I thought my chef the coolest guy in the world, and wanted to emulate him.
So I learned the hard way how the “kitchen versus everybody” mentality does not work as a recipe for restaurant success. Atif, burnt out and angry, left Community Table a little over a year into my tenure there (nobody, to my knowledge, has seen or heard from him since). Management was largely relieved.
Just a handful of months away from graduating high school, two years into my job at the restaurant, our general manager, Andrew, announced mandatory hospitality training for everyone who worked front-of-house — which I only did occasionally, and largely against my will. At the training, Kelleanne made the whole staff listen to a TedTalk about Georgian hospitality (the country, not the state), where hosting apparently takes precedence above all else. She told the story of a cafe where she once ate, and where she cried because her server was so kind and attentive. I found the speaker relatively obnoxious, but nearly three years have passed since I listened to her speech and I haven’t forgotten much of it, so I suppose it’s fair to say that she made quite the impact.
Strangers are no less rude than they were when I was 15, but my understanding of what qualifies as “rude” in a service-industry setting has certainly changed. When a guest points out that her food should be warmer, she isn’t high-maintenance, she simply expects the experience that an establishment has promised her. Most of the time, if a guest draws the kitchen’s attention to something wrong with their food, she is doing the line a favor. The kitchen wants its food enjoyed; if it’s not above par, nobody is going to patronize the restaurant. The same goes for service: Nobody wants to eat food served by reluctant hands.
The summer following my freshman year at Duke, Straight Wharf Restaurant, a bastion of fine dining on Nantucket Island, took me in. If I ever said “customer” instead of “guest,” anyone within earshot — line cooks, hostesses and bartenders alike — corrected me. “Make it nice or make it twice,” my chef, Kevin, often chirped. Kevin made me taste every lettuce leaf I dressed, every vegetable I seasoned, anything that touched a plate. “Would you want to eat that?” he’d ask, watching me plate a tiny taco or assemble a crostini. It took me some time to understand why he cared so much.
Kevin has devoted his life to cooking, a practice made meaningful by consumption. Without guests, his food falls flat. It serves no purpose. And guests, whether they know it or not, can taste when a chef makes food with love.
To love your guests and love your food — that is hospitality. It makes all the difference.
QR codes, currently fighting to replace physical menus, do not belong on dinner tables, because phones should stay in purses and pockets during a meal. Hostesses should smile, and mean it, servers should know their menus; your water glass should always be filled and your food should arrive aesthetically assembled on your plate. Chefs and cooks should look at a plate and care about it, care about the taste, the texture, the heat, care about the stranger sitting hungrily in her chair, hoping for a meal that someone made with at least a little bit of love.
I have worked in kitchens for years now; I care deeply about good food. But I would take a simple meal cooked with care 100 times over an extravagant dish assembled as if by instruction manual. I would wait an hour longer for a plate of food brought to my table by a friendly face than I would for a quick meal dropped off without a word, just like I would rather eat a bland meal my mum made more than I would eat a feast cooked by an indifferent stranger.
If you really stop and think about what matters to you, I bet you would too.
