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Restaurant Services
My fieldwork duty was to go off of a team members field work and compare it to something in New York. To follow up on Illya's and Amilya's fieldwork observations on restaurant services in Barcelona, Spain I compared their findings to restaurant services in New York, USA. With these major differences and similarities you can see how each places strives in the restaurant industry in their own different ways.
Reading my fellow teammates reflection on how the restaurant services were in Barcelona, I was able to spot some main differences with the restaurants in the states. Starting with the cultural differences, My teammates state, "Services provided in the food and restaurant industry in Barcelona are a large part of the culture, where as in America, it is more so a profitable venture". I agree with this with an example , I went to a restaurant in Manhattan, named Thai Villa. This restaurant strayed away from their normalcy and added spunk to their culture. This Thai restaurant was filled with loud music, beautiful lights and chandeliers which is opposite from the usual quiet sit down restaurants. There was a bar incorporating many different drinks to serve to guests. I feel this restaurant took this approach to attract maximum amounts of people, resulting in revenue. Whereas it seems in Barcelona they keep in touch with their roots.
Another observation after reading their blog post they state, tipping in Europe isn't as prominent as it is in the U.S. I found this interesting because in the states, it has become a big deal with how much one should tip and even if you are dining with a certain amount of people a tip is even required. That goes to show that the money again is an overriding factor over culture and the actual joy of food. Whereas in Barcelona the pure enjoyment of the Catalan Culture is what matters.
Overall, Barcelona Food services differ widely from those in New York, with different foods, aspects, and purposes but they both share the common factor of serving one enjoyable cultural food. Barcelona may have more cultural, relational, and authentic aspects to their restaurant services while New York takes the modernized way, keeping culture close in mind.
