Silver Service Restaurant

[Flowerpower70]

When I was 15 I had a Saturday job working as a silver service waitress at a local hotel. It was 1995ish and paid £5 an hour so I'd earn £20 plus tips every weekend which was quite a bit money back then. It was mainly weddings with 3 course meal then coffe and mints:
Soup / Melon
Roast Beef / Turkey Dinner with potatoes and veg
Trifles/ Apple Pie/ Chocolate fudge cake
Cheese and biscuits (Sometimes)

I must have waited on hundreds of weddings

All very 1970s style with folded cloth napkins paper doilies on plates etc.. it was quite ''posh'' in it's day..

Food was served with silver spoon and fork and served/ plated by hand. Everthing cleared by hand then tables stripped and rearranged for night wedding do.

I've never seen silver service since.. has it died out or still around? How things have changed.

It’s common here still for weddings and Christmas parties and so on.

Most starred restaurants would have this level of service / arrangement

Lovely I liked working there and though it mat have disappeared over the years I live where the restaurants are mostly chains and have been to a posh restaurant in years

I used to work in a silver service restaurant too. Gosh….35 years ago? I can’t remember the last time I ate in one. I don’t know of any.

my first shift, I was sooo nervous I’d drop the green beans on someone’s lap!

Stakis?

The hotel I worked for was family owned by a woman and her son.
The first time served I was so nervous I too might drop something.. I once remember that one of the lasses split soup on the brides dress - the bowls were red hot and she was so nervous the soup slopped when she put it down. Said dress was paid to be dry cleaned afterwards poor lass was mortified.

True silver service can be difficult to find (in the UK) but is still taught at the best catering colleges. If you take advantage of the colleges open evenings, which are usually great value, it will probably remind you of your old job.
If you are close to London https://oslocourtrestaurant.co.uk/ is a great example of true silver service as it used to be.

I worked in a hotel that done silver service some 40 odd yes ago.

I'm glad I was kitchen staff it looked fiddly AF .

They really don’t nowadays! (And thank goodness, no-one enjoyed getting peas dropped on their laps 😁)

Me too! 33 years ago!

It’s quite old fashioned and not very typical these days.

Does anyone else remember restaurant cars on trains. They were silver service.

I worked in a hotel in Switzerland as a student in the 80s and we did silver service. Back in the UK it was sometimes done at big events, but increasingly they just brought the food out on plates - i used to go to a lot of industry dos at the big London hotels and it had faded by the mid 90s.

Silver service is pretty much dead, thankfully.

If you are anywhere near London, you might enjoy Oslo Court….

I qualified in Hospitality Management and was in catering throughout the 90s and 00s.
Silver Service used to be the only way of serving up huge quantities of freshly cooked food to hundreds of guests. Technology improved circa 2000 and now you have massive high tech steamer ovens (Rationale is the most popular brand) that can accommodate racks of pre-plated food, ready to serve. So Silver Service has become pretty obsolete.

I was a silver service waitress back in the 1980s. I once silver served a whole lemon sole onto a womans lap. It was bizarre when I think back, the whole concept of bringing out an empty plate and then dishing the food onto the plate with just 2 forks or a fork and spoon or whatever!

One of my first jobs as a teen and opened my eyes to the other side of life.

Just looked and it still going, hotel now owned by the national trust and still looks very much the same.

It was wasn't it having to put red hot empty plates on the table then serve food such as potatoes one by one.. and having to serve meats covered in gravy without spilling a drop.. we had to polish th silver afterwards too!

Once I waited on a wedding and a little old dear asked if I was a 'servant' she said ''oh you're young'' ''Do you have to clean all the fires dear''? I politely said no but she gave me £20 and said to treat myself... I politely refused and she went straight to the manager bless her and asked him to pass the money to me as she said I was sweet and kind. I shared the tip with my colleagues but I never forgot her kindness and sweet nature.

A very long time ago I got a job in a new restaurant that was about to open. All the waiting staff were taught how to do silver service, with varying levels of competence. I'm the end they decided just to put serving dishes of veg on the tables rather than doing silver service. That is the way I prefer to eat. I am autistic and it is awkward to have to ask waiting staff to put my food in a specific order and I like to choose my own quantities. I dislike having my food plated as well as I end up with food I don't want touching or piled up on top of each other and either too much sauce or not enough sauce in the wrong place. However I have now become confident enough to be able to say that I am autistic and that I don't want my food piled, and I would prefer my vegetables and sauce to be in separate dishes. Most good places will accommodate this.

Well, that’s what silver service restaurants were intended to duplicate — being served by servants, as in a grand country house.

I love that she thought you were a housemaid, though, dashing about on the backstairs bringing coal up for the bedroom fires!

I went on a steam train last Saturday and it was silver service. I suspect more due to the fact they couldn’t plate up in a small train carriage.