Waiting in the Restaurant

Chapter 3 focuses on the waiter, exploring the reality behind his representation in popular culture as marginal, disenchanted, and melancholy. While real-life waiters were often keen to share a variety of grievances about their working conditions, they were not universally degraded victims of exploitation. Some waiters were able to capitalize on the open and dynamic nature of the restaurant service economy, which created opportunities for mobility and reward. Tipping, which remained an ongoing bone of contention, for both waiters and those they served, could prove to be an important source of supplementary income. For all the idiosyncrasies of the waiter’s position, he represented the broader significance of the service sector in the shaping of London in this period. The extensive public attention given to foreign-born waiters and (newly emergent) waitresses underlines the heterogeneity that characterized, not merely the restaurant, but the wider metropolitan culture in which it was located.