A side order of traditional room-service

Anyone who has ever worked in the hotel management industry is aware of the basics of service. However while the fundamentals are understood and similar in all spheres of the service industry, there are some new additions to traditional room-service that are being adopted by some of the best hotels in the world with more emphasis placed on the menu. Studying event management courses and hospitality management courses in South Africa will give you a great head start, with in-depth market knowledge allowing you to see and deliver the kind of food and service that people want.



Chefs are becoming increasingly popular with many of them presenting TV shows and publishing recipe books – a market that was previously inundated with very traditional cooks like Julia Childs. Now a day chefs are in constant competition with one another to improve traditional meals and present them in ways that are more outlandish than the next.

It’s due to this constant pushing of the proverbial ingredient filled envelope that many hotels and lodges are turning their attention to the food on their room-service menus. Many hotels are now offering food straight off the menu of their in-house restaurants, forming a synergy between the two menus. This move is giving many chefs the opportunity to put a gourmet spin on traditional room-service classics and giving guests the chance to enjoy more of the hotel from the comfort of their rooms.

This also means that many firm favourites and comfort foods that many travellers enjoy due to their propensity for reminding them of home and family, are revamped and reworked to be the same traditional meal but with a gourmet flavour, look and feel. Especially desserts which have seen a comeback in recent years as chefs turn their attention to them, mixing flavours that wouldn’t normally be considered in traditional cooking of the past.

However while comfort foods are popular in the world of room-service, people are becoming more concerned with where their food comes from, how it’s made and what effect its production has on the environment. This ties in with many hotel’s commitment to turning to greener methods to clean, grow food and reduce their overall carbon footprint. The Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town is one example of this as they were one of the first hotels in Africa to set up a worm farm in Africa.

As many more hotels offer in-house restaurants with a famous chef attached to them such as chef Nobu and Reuben Riffel for example at The One and Only, the room-service menu’s are getting a piece of chef’s artistic flair as they become a prominent component of a hotel’s offerings.

Original Source: Smaak Hospitality