"When you're in the restaurant business, you're cooking for someone else. And I always felt that the idea of cooking for someone was to get as close to them as possible," Marks said. "And there is no way to get closer to them than preparing dinner right at the table."
Tableside cooking, as performed by Marks and a long line of hotel-and- restaurant captains, maitre 'ds and waiters, should not be confused with such culinary performances as teppanyaki, the Japanese art of tabletop cooking. Tableside preparation has more to do with ambiance than with theatrics.
So is it old hat? Pete Bordi thinks so. He heads Pennsylvania State University's Hotel and Restaurant Management School in State College, Pa. But he also believes that if there ever was a time for bringing it back, the time is now.
Maybe, maybe not. One local chef said that the staffs at the few restaurants that do tableside cooking are fooling themselves.
"Nobody really appreciates it," he said after being given a promise of anonymity. "It's a lot of effort, a lot of labor cost. This is a remnant of an era of the great hotels. It has gone by the wayside, just like putting your shoes outside your hotel room. This is grand service that is not with us anymore. It's nice, but it takes a lot of training."
Marks and Bordi would be the first to agree that a lot of training is involved, but they also say that the evolution of tableside cooking goes beyond skills.
"First," Bordi explained, "you must understand some of the history of food serving. Most food was served cold until the 1800s, and the best food in Europe and America was always served in wealthy homes. It was the social elite who employed all the great chefs."
