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Vancouver Would Be Cooler If It Had A Restaurant Staffed By People Over 50

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by Andrew Morrison | I had a nice two-birthday, three-bottle lunch with a couple of friends at Hy’s Encore last week. The server was incredible; a seasoned veteran in the trade but still “new” to Hy’s in that she’d only been working there for five years or so. In contrast, several of her co-workers could count their years of service at the Downtown institution in decades.

She made us table-side Caesar salads and expertly carved/plated our Chateaubriand right in front of us. Two of the three bottles required decanting (the 3rd being Champagne), and this was done without drama despite one stubborn, disintegrated cork.

The food and the service were so impeccable that the latter was only really noticed with concentrated afterthought, as in, “And you know what else? Our server took really good care of us, like a real pro…”

I was reminded of the experience this morning when I read a story in The Guardian about a bar in Barcelona that only hires servers in their 50s:

“I was looking for waiters who are over 50 because I knew they’d be fantastic and because society has unjustly pushed them out of the job market,” says the bar’s owner Kim Díaz. “These guys have 20 or 30 years of experience, a lifetime. Here the waiter’s profession is in decline but the people I’ve employed see it as a vocation.”

Of course, Barcelona and Vancouver are very different cities. Our unemployment rate is much lower, for instance. People of all ages can afford to be a lot choosier here, while Spain has an estimated 50% of its youth unemployed and over 2 million of its citizens between 45 and 64 out of work (half of them going without a paycheque for over 2 years). Over 800 people applied for five open positions at Entrepanes Díaz, the Spanish joint in question. Vancouver restaurants would be lucky to have a dozen applicants.

Our hospitality cultures are also world’s apart. Old school service is no longer sought or valued by a seeming majority of diners here. We line up for tacos and ramen, get our wine from taps, and suffer scripted robots who only ever appear to care about our First Few Bites. Service in Vancouver is a means to an end for a lot of people. Lifers have been in short supply for a very long time, making meals at old school joints like Hy’s Encore stand out in bold relief.

It would be cool if we had a place that only hired veterans with 30+ years of experience. Of course, this being Vancouver, there would be cries of “reverse ageism”, but if we tacitly tolerate establishments that only hire attractive women in their 20s as a matter of policy, then seeking out capable, dedicated people with decades of experience doesn’t seem so offside.

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There are 2 comments

  1. It’s really interesting how you point out that being a server is a means to an end in Vancouver because the truth is that’s what it is for the majority of servers in Vancouver. The cooks however, not so much. Yet restaurants take such good care of their servers while leaving their cooks making near minimum wage.

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