In service

It may well have been the Fat Duck but anyway it was a posh restaurant.

A friend had been invited there. He said that the food was good but that the service was better - the waiters were at his elbow a second after he realised that he needed one.

Like most things in life Spanish waiters follow a normal distribution. Some are terrible, some are superb and the vast majority do a good enough job. Customers need the waiters in Spanish bars to be more attentive than their British counterparts because the culture of table service as opposed to bar service puts the onus on them to spot you. Generally they do, generally the service is quick enough and generally the relationship between customer and server is neutral.

By neutral I mean that the service is neither toadying nor overly friendly. That can be a difficult relationship to maintain. Generally that's how I remember being served by people in the UK but the last time I was in England I noticed a couple of times that servers were behaving as though we were potential friends. By all means a comment on my Ferrari key ring on the table but not a full length inquisition about the how, why and when of my Ferrari ownership. Neither does a waiter need to know my name nor other details of my personal life. I didn't like that over friendliness. I want a business relationship with a server not an overly chummy one.

We've just been to Sri Lanka. Read one of the TripAdvisor type sites and lots of people comment on the "friendly service." Generally I thought the service was dreadful. On more than one occasion I temporarily abandoned eating whilst the "yes sir, no madam" waiter bustled around. In one place pouring the wine became almost painful. I seem to remember that our table waiter had to call in reinforcements. The consultant waiter took ages to make a hash of cutting the foil from the overpriced bottle of wine we'd ordered then he wanted us to check the seal, sniff the cork and go through goodness knows what other ritualistic mumbo jumbo. He spent ages padding from our left to right shoulder rearranging sideplates to make room for slightly greasy wine glasses before finally leaving us the terrible tasting French plonk dressed with a little napkin scarf to keep it from the winter chill.

It was great to get back home. "Hi, black coffee when you can, please." Two or three minutes later one black coffee delivered with no fuss, no coffee bean roasting ritual and no judicial enquiry into the state of my children and their health.