US News

BIAS ON THE MENU? SOME TOP EATERIES HAVE NO WAITRESSES

A WOMAN’S place is still in the kitchen – and not the dining room – at some of Manhattan’s toniest restaurants.

At top-rated Le Bernardin, chef Eric Ripert said the reason he doesn’t get job applications from women seeking to join his all-male 35-member wait staff is that females don’t want to carry heavy trays.

“The way the food leaves the kitchen is on silver trays,” Ripert, 35, said. “It’s very physical in the dining room.

“It’s very rare when we have a female application.”

Apparently, last week’s headline-grabbing sex-discrimination settlement between the state attorney general and Harry Cipriani’s Fifth Avenue and downtown restaurants hasn’t yet sent the shock waves through the restaurant industry that the state intended.

Cipriani, which had been hiring only male waiters, agreed to start hiring women for the posts, which at some of the most expensive places in town come with an annual salary of $40,000 to $100,000 a year.

Tim Zagat, who publishes the Zagat Survey of restaurants, said eateries that don’t hire waitresses are engaging in double-talk and are breaking the law.

“You’ll hear some French and Italian restaurants say, ‘I can’t ask a woman to carry plates,'” Zagat said. “But you can go to Tabla or the Gotham Bar and Grill. They have no trouble finding women and hiring women, and some of their best employees are women.”

Mike Cetta, the owner of Sparks, which serves the best-rated steak in Midtown, according to The Post’s Braden Keil, said the longest-serving member of his wait staff is a woman.

Then again, she is the only woman on the 56-member wait staff.

“The big problem today is that they work lunch and dinner,” Cetta said. “It’s long hours. Most women don’t apply for those jobs and wouldn’t want to put in those hours.”

He said he’s “not the least bit threatened” by the Cipriani settlement.

“When we had split shifts, almost all the day waiters were girls, but that’s 24 years ago,” said Cetta, 71.

THERE are many forms of discrimination and alleged discrimination that persist in Manhattan dining spots – some in very surprising places.

The enduringly popular Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem, a famously successful African-American-owned business, has even been charged with racism.

In April, a former waitress filed suit in Bronx Supreme Court, charging that the owners and managers of Sylvia’s discriminate against West Indian employees.

The former employee, Manita Mills, who is of West Indian heritage, charged that the restaurant’s general manager, Clarence Cooper, once told her to pick some papers off the floor, then stepped on her fingers when she complied, and threatened to fire her if she complained, according to court papers.

“Defendants were biased against persons having dark skin color and favored white or light-skinned black and Hispanic employees over dark-skinned employees,” the suit charges.

Cooper said Sylvia’s lawyers have instructed him not to comment about the suit against the restaurant, where most employees are black.

“If you know about our restaurant, use your imagination to see if that’s the case with the employees we have, but that’s all I can say,” he said.

Then there are the top-notch restaurants where diversity is seen as a strength.

“The only thing that’s important to us is hospitality,” said Danny Meyer, the 42-year-old owner of Tabla, Gramercy Tavern and 11 Madison Park. “And I don’t think hospitality is relegated to one gender or another. Hospitality knows no gender or race.”

The general manager of Jean Georges said his Central Park West establishment was one of the first fine French restaurants to hire women for work in the dining room when it opened in 1997.

Now, five of the 20 very diverse wait staff are female.

“It’s pretty mixed,” Patrick Gioannini, 35, said.

“We have people from Africa, from Japan, from America. One of our waiters is from Bangladesh. One of our captains is Brazilian.”

FOUR out of every five diners who fill out Zagat surveys say they believe male customers are treated better than women.

Tim Zagat said this may be partly because waiters believe men pick up most checks and decide how much to tip.

“The waiter, obviously, is likely to cultivate the person who they expect is going to pay the bill,” he said.

Other industry observers say groups of women are rarely given the best tables because maitre d’s believe they will eat less, drink less and, thus, run up far smaller tabs than groups of men.

In a rapidly expanding industry with a shrinking labor pool, restaurateurs who don’t look to women or minorities when hiring wait staffers cut themselves off from desperately needed talent.

“Recruiting and training are some of our most challenging tasks here, as it is for all restaurants,” said Restaurant Daniel spokeswoman Georgette Farkas.

“We have a booming restaurant industry in New York, and we have to go out and compete for the best. Daniel hires based on ability and experience and demeanor and professional comportment.”

That, of course, happens to be the law.

Sparks’ Cetta, who says he hasn’t had an application from a woman looking for a wait-staff job in years, admits it’s tough to find good help.

“If anything, we scrape the bottom of the barrel,” he said.

“You try to train and do the best you can with what’s out there. It’s not like there’s superqualified help out there looking for jobs.”