Learing to Serve

The question which Tony Mirabelli presents in “Learning to Serve” is clearly dealing with menus within privately owned restaurant and how an individual can have a understanding of them. On page 544 of “Writing about Writing” Mirabelli ask, “What is a menu and what does it mean to have a literate understanding of one?”

While Mirabelli was studying the literate understanding of a menu he used several methods of collecting data such as: participation, observation, documents, tape recordings interviews and transcriptions. Due to the fact that Mirabelli was a waiter himself created and edge to his study that was beneficial and invaluable.

            From Mirabelli trying to understand the literate application of a menu I gathered that his biggest finding is that a menu is far more complex than the simple text which it is organized into. Rather, menus are a tool and an invaluable facet that connect cooks, waiters/waitresses, and customers together into a woven team for the benefit of the costumer. The ability of a waiter or waitresses to read between the lines of a menu and present the customer with what they desire and still keep that presentation within the feasibility of the chef ability is mind blowing.  The menu can be looked at as a lock pick to the mind of the customer. With this lock pick the waiters/waitresses opens the mind of the customer and extract the information they need in order to create a tasteful and satisfying meal.

In conclusion I would have to say that Mirabelli’s collection of conversations between the waiter/waitresses and costumers is his strongest form of data. With this one can get a strong sense of the situation, tone, mood of the costumer and much more. From this Mirabelli can draw conclusions about the complexity of the discourse that comes from simplicity of a menu.