Photosales
niJobfinder
niCarfinder
Home Delivery
Propertynews
Joris Minne: The Academy
Friday, 13 March 2009
More pictures
They may be just learning their craft, but The Academy’s students could teach some restaurants’ staff a few things about service
Ever wondered where waiters and waitresses come from? Waiting on tables is a hard job that requires the diplomacy of a UN ambassador, the dexterity of a circus acrobat and the staying power of a nurse. Those who take the job seriously are good at all three, although too frequently are we exposed to the ruder sort who haven’t a clue about any of these skills and just think the whole thing is beneath them.
Some waiters and waitresses are between jobs, most typically in sectors such as musical theatre, nuclear physics and law. These resting actors, scientists and legal eagles are usually among the best waiters because they have a broader outlook, they know a thing or two about people, they are able to make quick judgements and they are not short of confidence.
But there is another stream of restaurant staff including chefs, pastry chefs, cooks, maitres d’hotel and waiters who actually start life wanting to do nothing else but work tables, cook, co-ordinate, host, and generally be part of a business whose heart is food and ambience.
Going for lunch in The Academy at the University of Ulster in Belfast (‘tomorrow’s chefs cooking for you today’) reveals the starting point of restaurant careers of hundreds of young people who see a qualification in the hospitality business as a passport to international travel.
The Academy is also like an incubator. Here, the restaurant’s floor staff are like bright-eyed and eager hatchlings getting to grips with their brand-new environment, moving slowly and a little uncertainly between the tables where kind and patient paying diners nod knowingly as menus and meals are shakily brought to them.
There were no spillages the day I was there and watching these first-year catering students I wondered which ones among them would one day end up running the great restaurants of the world.
All good things start somewhere and it’s a blessing that Belfast’s University of Ulster campus at York Street is confident enough to open the doors of its beautifully simple and elegant Academy restaurant during term time to diners willing to pay for food prepared and brought to them by very young students.
The most striking feature in The Academy is the fresh-faced earnestness of all those working there.
If you like your waiters and waitresses polite, accommodating and a tiny bit wobbly, this is the place for you.
If, on the other hand, you blast your horn, swear and give the fingers to learner drivers when they stall at traffic lights, you should stay well away.
It’s not that you need patience, it’s just that you have to be slightly parental and encouraging — you’re part of the learning process and there’s no point giving off about anything because these young ones are genuinely doing their best to get it right. Not like some places.
The restaurant itself is a bright and cheery place that overlooks Buoy Square just beside St Anne’s Cathedral.
If you look discreetly up from your table at the waiting staff you can detect an air of suppressed giggling and stifled classroom exuberance as if somehow, these students, trying to come to terms with the fact that they are actually working in a real restaurant are also aware they are being monitored and supervised by their lecturer, Martin Caldwell, who doubles up as the manager.
But there are lovely old-school features in this modern environment that remind us of the skills that make a good waiter: silver service (totally unfashionable and pointless but charming), white linen tablecloths and napkins, starched uniforms, one hand behind the back when pouring the wine, well designed and printed menus and so on.
Old-school it might be, but also mildly glamorous and a hint of what used to be. Which may explain why the average age of the diners was slightly above 50 the day I went.
The other attraction is the price: a-la-carte four-course lunch for £11.50 or set-menu four courses for £10. There is also a business lunch promotional menu for £10. I think this one is for those in more of a hurry.
The fully licensed Academy is not the restaurant equivalent of a hairdressing school where you can get a cheap (and sometimes free) haircut as long as you don’t mind putting your good looks into the hands of a novice who doesn’t know which end of the scissors to blow into. The Academy is a pukka restaurant whose food stands up to pretty close scrutiny and passes easily.
The lunch-time menu included four starters such as cream of cauliflower soup with croutons and sliced marinated duck breast. For main courses there was a choice of five dishes among which there was a sauté supreme of guinea fowl filled with bacon and wild mushroom stuffing served with puy lentils, lasagne and char-grilled mushroom caps and supreme of salmon with red pepper coulis and braised leeks.
Soups are deceptively hard to get right. There’s a fine line between an ok soup and a great soup, yet while the ingredients, preparation and the seasoning might be the same in both, it’s the fine tuning that make the difference. The flavours in the cauliflower soup served here were wonderfully rounded and the texture smooth without being over-processed.
The guinea fowl, a bird that usually works best slow-cooked and in a stew such as coq au vin, was surprisingly tender and juicy. Generously packed into the fillet, the stuffing added depth and earthy flavours without making it heavy-going. Nicely offset by the lentils and their citrus jus, this was an excellent lunchtime call.
As was the white chocolate mousse, which was small but ample. In fact, on close inspection, the lunch menu, despite having four courses, is completely well considered and is presumably created on the basis that some of us have offices to go back to and an afternoon’s work to do.
With the new generation of restaurant staff receiving such thorough training and education (and exposure to real paying diners) in all aspects of the business, there will soon be no excuse for poor service anywhere.
The Bill
Bottle sauvignon blanc: £11.80
2 soups: £5
1 Welsh rarebit: £6.50
1 guinea fowl: £6.50
White chocolate mousse: £2.50
Fresh fruit meringue: £2.50
Total: £34.80
- Text Size
