Warm hospitality the missing ingredient

Four Australian restaurants made it to the World's 100 Best list this year. Three expat chefs made the top 50. And in the 100 best across the world, Aussie accents are everywhere. A local restaurateur - fanatical restaurant-goer - gets home from an Amex-singeing trip and writes in an email to a particular chef: "I've had MANY meals (up to 60) over the last five weeks travelling through Italy, Paris and London. The meal we had on Saturday rated in my top five."

At the risk of sounding myopic, restaurant cooking in this country is special. And Australian restaurateurs know how to package it: create an experience worth paying for. Notice anything missing? The word hospitality, perhaps?

A restaurant, by definition, restores. Hospitality is, or at least should be, the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors and strangers. But I don't always get the kind of reception hoped for. Given I'm paying, that is.

As a generalisation, you see, I just don't think hospitality is something Australians do particularly well. We are not a nation of servers and warmth generators. Too often, we do so begrudgingly.

A bold sign on the counter of a local restaurant: "Do not move the water jugs."

Er, please?

The customer in a top place who asks to move tables only to hear: "Why? Do you want to be surrounded by people?" The waiter who demands attention table-side while you're clearly attempting to tell a story. The restaurant without a wine list that charges corkage per person and then more to decant. Or another that starts the clean-up process while you're still eating.

Not just examples of poor service; rather, anecdotes - and real ones - indicative of a fundamental lack of hospitality in restaurants across the land. Staff, and hosts, oblivious to the notion of putting a guest's needs first.

People go into these businesses for a variety of reasons and few of them are because they have an ingrained desire to host. It shows. Yet this is a nation of too many restaurants and cafes. Trouble is, most are opened for the wrong reasons. Too many want to be "celebrity" chefs (hello MasterChef, Jamie et al); too many want a tax-deductible drink. It's too easy to open a restaurant.

And then they find business so tough that it's hard to keep the smile. No wonder the launch and failure rate is so high.

And it goes beyond service, although you can, up to a point, teach service.

We just don't, as a national trait, think hard about making guests welcome and relaxed. You see it across the spectrum; equally, there are plenty of magnificent exceptions to this generalisation. Sadly, I think they prove the rule.

So, are the wrong people in the game, both at management and front line?

We Australians are known for our welcomes ... Why isn't that translating to our restaurant environment? Are Australians bad or difficult restaurant customers who bring some of it on themselves? And why does this matter?

Because, ladies and gentlemen, while cooking in this country is great, eating out in this country is hugely expensive. Ask anyone who travels. Ask a visitor. Australia's restaurant prices are getting talked about abroad as a reason to go to Spain, Greece or the US instead.

Great cooking with great produce isn't going to be enough if tourism numbers dry up further.

For most people, an acceptable meal with great, generous hospitality and service focus trumps stunning food and a lifeless interpersonal exchange that does little to transport the customer every time.

And if Europe goes tits up, economically speaking, and we catch the disease too, I can tell you which restaurants will be left standing at the end.

Source: The Australian, 2 June 2012