HASCurrently in the grip of a serious shortage of labour, the catering professions do not forget to have fun. In Limoges, Saturday September 17, will be held the eighth edition of the National Race of waitresses and waiters, a kind of French championship of the profession. Coming from all over France, around fifty participants in aprons and city shoes will compete over a distance of 4 kilometers, a tray in hand, trying to spill the drinks placed on them as little as possible.
Hassen Mejri is one of the favorites of the event, if we can speak in resolutely sporting terms of this event that is steeped in corporate folklore. Coming second, in 2018, recent winner of two local races organized in Orléans (April) and Le Mans (August), the waiter at the Bistro du lac, in Saint-Avertin (Indre-et-Loire), has everything a fierce competitor. “I’m going to win”he said.
Aged 33, Hassen Mejri practices the discipline – the origin of which dates back to the beginning of the XXe century – for six years. He was then working in a Marseille establishment, on the Old Port, when colleagues, gauging his dexterity on the terrace, strongly suggested that he register for the local event. Victorious for his first attempt, the young man was awarded a nice prize: a vacation in Cuba.
Many other prizes in kind will gratify his “career”, thereafter: clothes, gourmet meals, hotel nights, a beer pump, a coffee machine, a foot reflexology session, another karting session, a magnum of anisette, a jeroboam of rosé… In Le Mans, at the end of August, the owner of a brasserie in the city center even offered him a job, which he politely refused.
Infallible technique
Hassen Mejri is also swift on the urban cobblestones under the foliage of the Bistro du lac – an outdoor restaurant, as its name does not suggest. “I like the shot, running flat out from table to table for an hour and a quarter”entrusts the one for whom “Restoration is a long-distance race”. The back and forth in the kitchen and the slalom between customers (one hundred and ten covers) make him travel about twenty kilometers a day, according to his connected watch, which he activates during lunch and evening services. All his art, exercised in tourist establishments in recent years (in Grand-Bornand, Chamonix, La Baule, Argelès-sur-Mer …), is based on the number of plates he is able to carry one hand: four. His dream ? Participate in a test which would consist of “serve a table of fifteen people as quickly as possible, while positioning the dishes perfectly”.
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