Paris race celebrates waiters, waitresses in the run-up to the Summer Olympics
Usain Bolt’s sprint world records were never in danger. Then again, even the world’s fastest-ever human would likely not have been so quick while balancing a tray with a croissant, a coffee cup and a glass of water through the streets of Paris, and without spilling it everywhere.
France’s capital on Sunday resurrected a 110-year-old race for its waiters and waitresses. The dash through central Paris celebrated the dexterous and, yes, by their own admission, sometimes famously moody men and women without whom France would not be France.
Hundreds of aproned waiters surged through the medieval streets in the one-of-a-kind race held for the first time in 13 years and designed to show off the profession months ahead of the Olympic Games.
Men’s winner Samy Lamrous and top waitress Pauline Van Wymeersch walked the 2km route in 13 minutes, 30 seconds and 14 minutes, 12 seconds respectively.
The first waiters’ race was run in 1914. This time, a couple of hundred waiters and waitresses dressed up in their uniforms — with the finest sporting bow ties — and loaded up their trays with the regulation pastry, small (but empty) coffee cup and full glass of water for the loop starting and finishing at city hall.
Van Wymeersch, 34, who started waiting tables at 16, said she cannot envisage any other life for herself.
“I love it as much as I hate it. It’s in my skin. I cannot leave it,” she said of the profession. “It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It’s demanding. It’s 12 hours per day. It’s no weekends. It’s no Christmases.”
However, “it’s part of my DNA. I grew up in a way with a tray in my hand,” she added. “I have been shaped, in life and in the job, by the bosses who trained me and the customers, all of the people, I have met.”
She works at the Le Petit Pont cafe and restaurant facing Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral. Lamrous waits at La Contrescarpe, in Paris’ 5th district.
Their prizes were medals, two tickets each for the July 26 Olympic opening ceremony along the River Seine and a night out at a Paris hotel.
A jury was waiting at the finish line to judge contestants’ times and how much of their beverages might have slopped over an unbalanced rim.
Hundreds of spectators lined the route or applauded from roadside cafe tables as the servers, jaws clenched, piloted their trays through the streets, seeking to keep the precious cargo intact.
Joshing as they went, some pulled off acrobatic movements with their trays as they slipped through a gap to overtake.
“My thighs are a bit strained, but it’s mostly a question of concentration,” Lamrous said.
“You have to keep it balanced with all these people cheering you on. In the end, I managed to come back from behind, Paris style,” he added of his first-place victory.
Although all smiles on this occasion, competitors acknowledged that is not always the case when they are rushed off their feet at work. The customer might always be right in other countries, but the waiter or waitress has the final word in France, feeding their reputation for being abrupt, moody and even rude at times.
“French pride means that in little professions like this, they don’t want to be trampled on,” said Thierry Petit, 60, who is retiring next month after 40 years of waiting tables.
“It’s not lack of respect, rather it’s more a state of mind,” he said.
Switching to English, he added: “It’s very Frenchie.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said that cafes and restaurants are “really the soul of Paris.”
“The bistrot is where we go to meet people, where we go for our little coffee, our little drink, where we also go to argue, to love and embrace each other,” she said. “The cafe and the bistrot are life.”