A Profession in the Midst of Change : New Roles Threaten the Power and Position of the Restaurant Maitre D’

He stands as the essence of elegance, graft or both, parceling out tables that shape the fate of tabloid romances and high-level corporate life while pocketing more than $100,000 a year for his favors.

He is the maitre d’, a fixture in virtually every posh restaurant in the United States and, of course, in Europe. He is a living representation from the Old World of everything rank, money and privilege have to offer.

Yet his is a profession in the midst of change. Little by little, the weight of European intrigue and sheer clout is being edged aside by the well-scrubbed American efficiency of the professional manager.

The evolution is so pervasive and so powerful, in fact, that few maitre d’s can avoid filling both traditional and new roles every working day. This means increased demands in a job that has seldom been anything less than high-stakes.

Good Memory Is Needed

“An excellent memory is very important,” said Benito Sevarin of Cafe Pierre on the posh Upper East Side of New York. “You must remember faces and names, even voices on the telephone. And you must remember what people like to eat and drink and where they like to sit.

“A maitre d’ has to know everybody.”

In a sense, Sevarin offers the classical job description--and he represents the traditional rise to prominence. A grueling apprenticeship in Italy landed him on cruise ships, and cruise ships deposited him in the United States. The rest was care, luck and plenty of hard work.

There is a new sort of maitre d’ in the United States, however. Young men (and sometimes young women) are attracted to the field not only by its surprisingly lofty earning power but by the chance to break into restaurant management.

“The toughest thing is getting people seated where they want to be seated,” said Michael Cox of the trendy Routh St. Cafe in Dallas. “And that includes separating the smoking and nonsmoking sections, with nice border tables in between.

“It’s hard to ‘build’ the dining room sometimes, with the proper number of tables for two and tables for four. This table shift can be really tough. There’s a true finesse to it.”

Intriguingly, though the two types of maitre d’ travel different routes to their positions, both admit the job increasingly blends two quite different skills.

At one level, maitre d’s in the fanciest restaurants along the East Coast find themselves called upon to serve as the ultimate Social Register in their cities.

Knowing who’s in, who’s out, who made a killing, who lost his shirt, who became a father and who got caught with a mistress could set the tone for the maitre d’s approach. Correct and current information can prove crucial--lack of it can prove disastrous.

With this in mind, it should not be surprising maitre d’s are often self-described “media junkies,” at least as far as current events affect their business. They read any newspaper or magazine that keeps track of their clientele.

Increasingly, though, the emphasis in the United States is on management skills rather than smooth sailing through every conceivable social situation. In the nation’s heartland and on the West Coast, in fact, the European concept of maitre d’ is being replaced with “house manager” or “dining room manager.”

This is more than late 1980s word play. It communicates a shift that requires the person holding the title to hire and fire personnel, devise and administer training programs, even supervise activities from serving food at the proper temperature to making sure credit card imprints are properly taken.

The change in duties and image is what is finally opening the doors of this lucrative career to women. European tradition has long been more than enough to close out or scare off most female aspirants. Now, however, women’s increasingly recognized managerial and personnel skills are slowly propelling them into a job long dominated by sheer masculine presence.

With so much knowledge essential to his duties, the maitre d’ has picked up a certain clout simply by knowing all the dirt. Whether it is which show business celebrity is on a diet or which promising politician is dining with someone other than his wife, the maitre d’ is often among the first to know.

For the most part, though, he isn’t letting on.

“There are many things that happen here, secrets customers confide in me,” said Oreste Carnevali, who runs the Pool Room in Manhattan’s power-packed Four Seasons. “But I will never unveil them.”

According to Carnevali, the Four Seasons is built on such a tangled pecking order--and such a make-or-break configuration of dining--the toughest part of his job is making sure no one is seated next to anyone he or she should not be.

Competitors are never placed side by side, making someone like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger likely to be spotted between architect Philip Johnson (whose creations include the Four Seasons) and designer Bill Blass. From Carnevali’s point of view, serious disagreements on policy are unlikely among three such disparate individuals.

At some restaurants, everything depends on the maitre d’s memory. At others, charts from simple to elaborate track the fortunes of customers and attempts at ingratiation.

Engagements, births, adoptions are noted, ripe for the congratulatory note or phone call. In more business-oriented restaurants, promotions fill a secret book, especially those to chairman of the board and celebrated expensively in the dining room.

For all the intimidation of the maitre d’ himself, few subjects in a restaurant seem as unapproachable as what, how and how much this important person is paid.

Tipping the maitre d’ seems virtually a given at the very highest levels. Regular clients tend to treat such tips as gratitude for past favors and hedges against future needs.

For Services Rendered

The palmed bill might be a $5 or it might be a $100, depending on the level of service rendered and the degree of fiscal thankfulness.

Below that top level, maitre d’s often get no tip at all. Diners increasingly choose to focus on the job’s managerial side and presume (almost always correctly) the salary should suffice.

Then, finally, at the lowest level are inexperienced diners who know only what they’ve seen in the movies. These people tend to feel pressured to tip and generally tip more than they feel they’ve received, just to keep from seeming cheap.

Most maitre d’s take the money in stride and style, while a few like Carnevali press it gently back into the customer’s hand with a whispered, “It is not necessary.”

Between salary and tips, estimates of a maitre d’s take in a fine big-city restaurant run higher than $100,000 per year. With the presumption that large chunks of this escape detection by the IRS, the spending value could go as high as $150,000 to $175,000.

A Controversial Compensation

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of a maitre d’s compensation is fading quickly from the U.S. scene, driven out by charges in the profession itself it amounts to unethical kickbacks and even extortion.

Traditionally, in some restaurants, waiters gave the maitre d’ a portion of their tips at the close of each evening.

Given its happiest face, the practice represented a grateful sharing of the wealth. More realistically, it was either an effort to woo the maitre d’ into steering high-rollers a waiter’s way--or pay a kind of “protection” against his maliciously directing them elsewhere.

The idea of protection and bribery would surely occur to any outsider sitting with a maitre d’ as his waiters cross his palm one-by-one with homage.

Now, however, most maitre d’s insist they would never take such a payment, no matter how traditional. They say the impact on staff morale would be disastrous and that any maitre d’ not satisfied with his salary and tips should find another line of work.

The Greatest Frustation

Ultimately, maitre d’s from coast to coast said their job’s biggest frustration is closely related to its greatest satisfaction. It is the feeling of being at the heart of things, of being involved, of being essential.

From Routh St. Cafe with its 14 diners per hour to Brennan’s in New Orleans with its 1,200 elaborate Creole breakfasts in a single morning, the maitre d’ considers himself a necessary bridge between the high-pressure labors of a restaurant’s workers and the leisurely enjoyment by its clientele.

Once tasted, whether as a 14-year-old Italian apprentice like Severin or as a 30-plus retired ballet dancer like Ken Woodson of Brennan’s, it’s a tough fascination to shake.

“This morning,” said Woodson, “a tour guide brought in a party of 44 whose reservations had not made it over from his office. They had to be out in one hour, and they couldn’t spend more than $9 each.

“Well, there’s no way, even with all that, I was going to send away people who’d been promised Breakfast at Brennan’s. So I got with the chef and we worked it out. You know, if your staff is happy and everybody’s making money, they’re going to work to make our customers happy.”