On Your Marks, Get Set, Serve!

An expert waiter is both gymnast and poet. One’s a fast talker with fancy footwork and a steel-trap memory. Another can dodge a pushed-back chair, martini high overhead, without spilling a drop.

On Sunday, about 50 professional servers came from around London to compete in an annual waiters’ race through the heart of Soho.

This was no ordinary footrace. Speed mattered. But panache, pizazz and an essential and ineffable waiterliness mattered much more.

“This is about style as much as it is about going fast,” said the organizer, Takashi O’Rourke.

The waiters had to get around a course lined with drunk and (for the most part) orderly crowds as quickly as they could. But they also had to look the part, which meant wearing waiterly — or at least waiterly adjacent — outfits, carrying a tray laden with an ashtray, a napkin, a wine glass and a bottle of fizz.

And, oh, did we mention the one-handed thing?

“This is a special race to test your skill as a waiter,” the rules decree, “not just your skill as a runner.”