Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

Lotje Deelman was editor-in-chief of ELLE Eten, has been working for Allerhande for almost 15 years, and worked behind the scenes on television programmes such as MasterChef, de Worsten van Babel On Tour and De Nieuwe Lekkerbek. She ate pig’s trotter with Anthony Bourdain and flirted with Gordon Ramsay in his Aston Martin. Lotje is the (co-)author of more than ten cookbooks and is never too reluctant to set something alight in her kitchen in the Drenthe countryside. On FavorFlav, Lotje shares what occupies her every week. This time: the featherweight finesse of the maître.

“I would not recommend it ma’m”, says the waiter who serves me every evening in the restaurant of a hotel in Rajasthan, India. I am making a report in a place where there is nothing apart from this hotel, so every evening I order something different from the menu. Tonight is the final evening and with this dhal made from two types of lentils, I have eaten my way through the menu. Until the waiter puts up fierce resistance.

A very dry item

I would still really like to try it, I say. “It is not a suitable dish for you ma’m”, he insists. “It is in fact a very dry item”. Now it becomes a matter of principle. After tossing the ball back and forth for a few minutes, he lowers his head and says resignedly: “Actually m’am, it is not available today.” So that was that. I feel a little guilty, because I denied him the chance to save his professional honour. He simply did not want to sell me a no.

For the first time, I am working on a television programme in which not only cooks, but also maîtres, compete against each other. An old-fashioned word, maîtres, by the way, but service staff or host or hostess or (god forbid) black brigade is not much better. I understand what you can test cooks on, but the people in front of the cameras in a restaurant? What are they like? What do they actually do? What makes them tick?

Cappuccino

I myself am not cut out for it. I am more like the brother in the film Big Night, who is insulted to the core when a guest orders a side-order of spaghetti with the risotto. When I once got the chance to take over an ice-cream parlour in Amsterdam’s red-light district and had already invented 27 new ice-cream flavours, one day working in the service put an end to the dream. Hey. If you know so well how you want your cappuccino (not actually lukewarm but above all not too hot, an extra half-shot of espresso, do not tamp it too firmly, absolutely no UHT milk, two biscuits and in that slightly wider cup from last season), then just make it yourself. Jerk.

Threat

It is more my style to demand an explanation at the table. I always had to do that in the eatery where a French chef who later earned a Michelin star worked in the kitchen, with a sous-chef who now has three. The kitchen was upstairs, behind a glass wall, and if a guest did not eat everything, the service staff were sent in. Me. “The chef would like to know whether there might be something about the veal piccata Milanese that you are not happy with.” I always added a little extra menace to my voice, which, combined with the chef himself looking down from above at the table in question with his arms crossed, ensured that everyone neatly emptied their plate.

Featherweight

I can recognise when someone else is good at it. Eyes in the back of your head, zooming in and then immediately zooming out again, with the motor skills of something between a featherweight boxer and a ballet dancer. Effective and elegant. Present when necessary, absent when possible. And genuinely kind, with and without a camera. Every now and then you come across someone who can do all of that. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Respect. That must be such a wonderful feeling.