Is it common for restaurants to have foreign waitstaff? Is it possible to get work visas for as "simple" a job as a waiter?

I've been to several Japanese restaurants where the waitresses seem to speak very good Japanese, but maybe they're actually Chinese?

I think almost all of the waiters at Bukhara are Indian.

Franck has a number of French-speaking white guys. I wonder how much they have to pay them?

Restaurants here will always try to save money by hiring locally and semi-local whenever possible. But in some cases they MUST hire staff that know the food and know western service standards. If you are serving French, Continental pan european or easily recognizable classics then you can hire Phillipinos, TW, Japanese or Koreans at times. Most operations here try to hold down the front-of-house with higher paid expat or half-pat staff and then use locals for everything else.

You can try to run a restaurant with all-locals if you have very strong supervision. But honestly it's usually a bit of a disaster. It's not they don't try hard in some cases. It's just unfamiliarity with the food, language issues and lack of knowledge about service standards. Thai and Indian places can usually get staff to come over and work on contracts that are not that much more expensive than local labor. Any extra that they have to pay is offset by the savings in training. Ironically, Indian food is extremely similar to Chinese food in serving style and presentation. But locals are baffled by Indian food in general. They seem to be under the impression that it is nuclear-grade spicy material. When I've taken friends out for Indian they nibble nervously around the edges of their naan, scoop the odd forkful of rice and studiously avoid anything that has any bright colours in it as it might be fissionable.

Unless you have very powerful guanxis, it is very unlikely to get a resident permit here as a foreign waiter as you will have a hard time to demonstrate to the labour bureau that this position cannot be filled locally. I guess those restaurants with foreign staff are actually declaring them as managers when doing the application, or maybe they just have F/L/student visas. Obviously there is a risk to that if you are found out.

There's a French waitress at Sushi Abuse. Maybe she's an intern.

Chavster wrote:But locals are baffled by Indian food in general. They seem to be under the impression that it is nuclear-grade spicy material. When I've taken friends out for Indian they nibble nervously around the edges of their naan, scoop the odd forkful of rice and studiously avoid anything that has any bright colours in it as it might be fissionable.

That's odd, never encountered it myself.

Are these the same people that would otherwise be chowing down on Sichuan with abandon?

I don't think it's the heat so much as the pungent spices.

Hot pepper and huajailo heat they can take. Tumeric, cardamon and cumin seem to cause problems. Probably the same reason why most of my Shanghainese or other South China friends don't really like Xinjiang or other northern spicy foods that much either.

Hachitaba wrote:I've been to several Japanese restaurants where the waitresses seem to speak very good Japanese, but maybe they're actually Chinese?

They are probably Chinese.

Chinese staff in Japanese restaurants can usually take an order in Japanese.


















Just like in the good old days, eh?

But Element Fresh and DTF's staff are comprised 100% of local Chinese yet they provide some of the best service here, in my opinion.

Their management is doing something very right...

The problem of many western restaurants with local staff is that they want to pay them 2k/month.
You get what you pay.