A Regular at a Neighborhood Restauant

Service

    I’ve become a regular at Gypsy Fish¹, a seafood restaurant, near our house, but just sufficiently far so that I can consider the walk there and back a reasonable portion of my (mostly) daily exercise walk. But even more important, I very much like seafood, especially shrimp and other mariscos. And the restaurant is decent, fairly large and neat, has a longish menu and is not overpriced.  Moreover, they take my MasterCard which does not charge extra for purchases in Mexican pesos.
   All of that is important, but since some months ago, a feature has been added that makes Gypsy Fish more unique than most Mexico City restaurants. (Forgive me, Great Grammarian in the Sky for positing what isn’t: degrees of uniqueness.)  Even though there is no bar, they are perfectly welcoming when a companion and I come by and tell them that we’ll just have a drink.

   And the reason for having a drink in a restaurant specializing in fish is that Patrik, my past companion for quite some time (and now back in Belgium) taught them my recipe for martinis.

   It’s not a common drink in Mexico, so instructions from a yanqui are advisable. I’m a four-to-one person: four parts of gin and one of dry vermouth. (I actually like martinis, so I was mildly surprised when I sat for lunch at a small bar in a busy San Francisco restaurant who filled one order from waiters for martinis after another, without using a drop of vermouth. “That’s how they won’t complain it’s not dry enough.”) Four to one is OK by me, though I also drink gin on the rocks.

   But back to Gypsy Fish. Anina, my companion on that occasion, and I went to eat there and were received with friendly greetings as usual.  It was earlier than the typical time for lunch here, so the waiters were not yet busy. They—men and women—are not uniformed, but they are clearly professionals. They are not students serving as waiters to make a buck, but people who seem to have chosen their roles as a career—perhaps faut de mieux.

   The capo, I think of him as maitre d’ or headwaiter, greeted us in his usual friendly way and made sure that a martini and a margarita (for Anina) would be promptly on its way. Anina and he then engaged in a lively conversation (he doesn’t speak English and I have only a trickle of Spanish) about which I was given a brief report. He informed Anina that he was waiting for an order he had placed in my behalf—a cushion for my chair.

   A while back, I had asked whether I could get a pillow on my chair. The chairs are fine, but my behind is not, just about lacking all padding. A cushion was soon produced, borrowed from a sister restaurant across the street. My friendly maitre d’ had taken note of my need—or, at least, desire—and that I came often to their establishment.

  This is service beyond anything I would ever expect. But it is in no way a function of servility. Rather, it is a professionalism that, in my experience, is unlikely in America until you get to a “higher”—read more expensive—establishment. In Mexico (understand always “in my limited experience”) people take pride in the fact that they perform their jobs well. There is obeisance to what the philosopher F. H. Bradley called “my station and its duties.”

   I am fully aware that there are very serious disadvantages to this essentially class-ridden picture of society, but it is a great oversimplification to suppose that it is inferior to the quasi—as well as often phony—egalitarianism of the United States. At some point I’ll have more to say on that subject.

   P.S. A couple of days after I began a draft of the above, friend Mathias and I went again for (martini—just for me) and lunch. At that time I was presented with a soft blue cushion, with a broad smile and a deep bow. My unpadded behind and I thanked him, reciprocating smile and bow.

¹It’s on the corner of Holbein (pronounced Holbayne) and Rodin (spoken as Rodeen), in the heart of a district in which the streets have the names of artists from everywhichwhere.