More and more Michelin-starred restaurants have women as hosts: “You’re my first girl in the dining room!”

At the Michelin-starred Bootshaus restaurant on Lake Traunsee, an all-female service team now welcomes the guests. “It just happened that way,” says Heike Herkenrath. Why it happened this way, she cannot really explain either. No one discussed it, still fewer rebelled against it, and yet it had long been an unwritten rule that women in fine dining were not allowed to serve guests.

This is not the memory of an elderly woman looking back to the interwar or postwar years. Herkenrath is recalling 1990, when she was in her mid-20s and took a job as a waitress on a cruise ship. “Of course I would have liked to work in the restaurant, but we women were only allowed to serve the cabin guests,” recalls Herkenrath, who is now 60.

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It just happened that way.

The contrast helps explain why the team at Bootshaus is more than an incidental staffing detail. In the restaurant’s service operation, women now occupy the front-facing roles that were once denied to them in upscale hospitality. The article frames that shift as a sensation on closer inspection, while also stressing that the all-female team is not a coincidence.

Herkenrath’s recollection captures how recently the old rule survived. In 1990, serving in the main restaurant was still treated as work for men, while women were directed to cabin service. At Traunkirchen’s Bootshaus, the arrangement has turned around completely, with women responsible for welcoming and serving the guests.

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Of course I would have liked to work in the restaurant, but we women were only allowed to serve the cabin guests.