In the end, a banquet restaurant is a banquet restaurant, whether it's in your working class hometown in the USA, or your working class hometown in China. Sure the food is different, but much is the same: the huge quantities, the hordes of staff, the maze of rooms with so many parties celebrating family events, the loud,corny DJ/MC conducting the rituals of the particular celebration, the backroom management, the sales pitches to prospective clients -- very familiar material if you ever worked in one of these places yourself.
TBCRITW maintains a sense of detachment, and thus come off as a documentary of operations at the most factual level. Add the personal story of the owner, a sharp, pragmatic, tough woman who tolerates no nonsense, and it is a decent portrait of a mammoth, family-owned and grown 'hospitality' business -- for better and for worse.
I felt sorry for the workers who seemed stuck, like any worker in a low-paying mass production facility. I'd love to see the same story, perhaps the 'real' story, inside this restaurant, from the folks who do the most basic functions of cooking and serving. That would be the really interesting, forbidden couterpoint to this story.
TBCRITW maintains a sense of detachment, and thus come off as a documentary of operations at the most factual level. Add the personal story of the owner, a sharp, pragmatic, tough woman who tolerates no nonsense, and it is a decent portrait of a mammoth, family-owned and grown 'hospitality' business -- for better and for worse.
I felt sorry for the workers who seemed stuck, like any worker in a low-paying mass production facility. I'd love to see the same story, perhaps the 'real' story, inside this restaurant, from the folks who do the most basic functions of cooking and serving. That would be the really interesting, forbidden couterpoint to this story.
