Leave it to the veteran Four Season Hotel food and beverages manager to dish on the wacky dining habits of the stars while remaining perfectly, inscrutably discreet.
Is TIFF the busiest time of year for you?
Absolutely. It’s a 10-day festival. It is kind of front-loaded in the sense that the first five days tend to be very, very busy for everybody and then it tapers off toward the end of the week. Controlled mayhem as we like to call it.
What are the biggest challenges to ensure everything runs according to Four Seasons standards?
I guess it’s the sheer volume. Obviously, we’re in a sold-out position and we have guests that are very demanding, but that’s our forte. When you have a full house of movie personalities — let’s call them — they have a lot of requests. And I’m sure you’re going to ask me what some of those requests are.
You better believe it.
Some of the requests are strange, but a lot of them aren’t. I’m sure you can imagine the whole organic movement — that’s very popular. We tend to see a lot of stars still on the health side. However, in room service, especially late at night, a lot of the orders are more or less comfort food. We do see the mac and cheese and pizzas coming through late at night.
Anything that’s unusual enough to stick out in your mind?
Now you put me on the spot! I’m going to say no, because we have so many different kinds of requests that nothing really seems strange to us, whether it’s one colour of jelly bean or Greek yogurt flown in from Greece. Those are the kinds of requests we get. But we’re typically given notice for that.
Would any of those requests seem strange, perhaps to the rest us mere mortals?
We can’t talk about the names, but some of our guests will tend to order half the menu in its entirety and then pick which dish they want when it arrives.
And what do they do with the rest of the food?
It will go to their staff, their handlers. It doesn’t go to waste. And I guess that’s a little unusual.
On that note, how many bottles of champagne do you think you go through during festival?
Between parties, bars, room service, about 1,000 bottles.
