Tableservice : the show must go on (the table)

Dessert carts, cuts in front of customers, cocktails prepared at the table or ice cream served with a spoon: long considered obsolete, show service is back in force in restaurants. From Paris to New York, restaurateurs rediscover the virtues of staging. For the pleasure of customers, but also for the algorithms of Instagram and TikTok.

"If someone needed to go to the bathroom, they would have to wait. We were too busy getting served." This is how an American journalist recounts her dinner at Adda, an Indian restaurant in New York, in an article published by Eater. That evening, it’s a real traffic jam in the room: a waiter presents jars of Indian pickles while a seller of chaat (the famous snacks of the subcontinent) circulates between tables with his tray of small bites, like a travelling merchant in the streets of Delhi. The star attraction? The Butter Chicken Experience. For about thirty minutes, a chef intervenes several times in front of the guests, who choose the wood to smoke their chicken, then one of the three homemade butters that will enter the sauce. To accompany this great Indian classic, you can even order a cocktail served... in a carafe shaped chicken.

Welcome to the world of table service, as the Anglo-Saxons say. In other words, everything that is prepared, cut, ignited or ends directly in front of the customer. In recent years, these rituals have been making a comeback in restaurants, after several decades during which white hats monopolized the light. The chefs have become the stars of the restaurant, to the point of coming themselves to present their dishes to customers, as at Noma in Copenhagen.

There was a time when the maîtres d'hotel and restaurant managers were (almost) as famous as the cooks. Albert Blazer, who reigned at Maxim’s from 1931 to 1959, was nicknamed "the maître d'hotel of the princes and the prince of the maîtres d'hôtel". He served the Tout-Paris, from crowned heads to Hollywood stars. We can mention other legends of restoration, from Claude Terrail (La Tour d'Argent) to René Lasserre (Lasserre), through Jean-Claude Vrinat (Taillevent). A time when customers admired, in front of them, the raised fish, the cut poultry and the flambé pancakes. Further still, at the Tour d'Argent, Frédéric Delair, maître d'hôtel who became owner of the restaurant in the 19th century, had popularized duck cutting on the fly, with a fork, without poultry touching the dish. With the advent of the Nouvelle Cuisine in the 1970s, chefs wanted to control their creations down to the last detail. The plate fully prepared in the kitchen has gradually replaced the service on the main course or at the side table. And the heads of hotels have lost part of their role.

Those who frequented the great restaurant of Paul Bocuse remember with emotion the arrival of multiple dessert carts, including that of pies and that of ice cream molded with a spoon. A few years ago, at the chef Olivier Nasti’s place in the Alsatian village of Kaysersberg, marshmallow strings were cut with scissors in front of the guests.

The current phenomenon now extends beyond large French tables. In New York, The Grill revived an old press dating from 1901, unearthed by the restorer Mario Carbone at an antique dealer in New Orleans. A waiter introduces the bones and poultry carcasses, then turns the crank to extract the juices that will be used to make the pasta sauce in the press, which is what makes the reputation of the place. And also his box: according to the media The Infatuation, the server in charge of this operation uses the press between 40 and 60 times per evening.

In Chicago, the Ukrainian restaurant Anelya, opened in 2023, has imagined a spectacular zakusky cart. This rolling tower loaded with small traditional preparations, from pickles to cold cuts, circulates between the tables. A way to discover a little-known gastronomic culture through a convivial ritual. On the west coast of the country, in Los Angeles, the Baltaire steakhouse has made the buzz with its still lukewarm XXL cinnamon roll, whose preparation ends in a copper dish, under a generous layer of cream cheese glaze poured in front of customers. Even ice cream can turn into a number: near Parma, the I Due Platani trattoria accumulates hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram thanks to its imposing dome of vanilla ice cream, reminiscent of a large lump of butter. The waiter shapes the portions with two spoons and accompanies them with generous ladles of sauce. On the side of Annecy, the starred chef Yoann Conte brings his pastry cook behind a wooden cart specially designed for ice cream. A moment he wants "filled with the atmosphere of the fairgrounds of yesteryear", he who says he never could attend them, since he has always worked evenings and weekends.

Today, we can therefore reserve a table because we saw on TikTok a video of giant ice cream or brioche drowned under the icing. The indoor show has become a commercial argument, a way to excite the client, but also the future client, at a time when you always have to do more to exist. But in wanting to turn each service into a show, some establishments border on the gadget. In Paris, Ora, installed in the old fire station of Château-Landon and closed since then, had pushed the staging to remove the plates. The chef prepared his vegetarian preparations directly on a large paper tablecloth covering the table, as if he were painting a canvas.

This return could above all have another virtue: to restore their letters of nobility to professions less valued than those of cook or pastry chef. There is still no Top Chef in the room, but as a sign of the times, M6 launched last October 15. Hotel alert: 30 days to restart everything, a new show in which Fred Sirieix, a French maître d'hôtel who became a star of British television, and Pauline Petta come to the aid of hoteliers in difficulty. A kind of kitchen nightmare applied to the hotel industry. For once, it’s not a chef who plays the leading role.