Second Course

The Food, call it the software of the enterprise. Applause in the dining room rewarded the unqualified success of self-taught Blossom.

A couple of examples of Blossom's menus.

However, we also employed at various times, to rest Blossom, some very expensive top chefs. These mostly came to us via agencies except two who walked in asking for jobs.

The first one, living locally, said he was tired of the commute to London. £28k a year minimum was his demand. We hesitated but thinking he would bestow prestige and attract a clientele willing and able to pay for an eating experience, we took him on. The experiment failed.

We thought the wine was going into the cooking until the morning came when he reported late for work, explaining that being 3 times over the limit, he’d written off his car on the way home damaging several parked vehicles in the process. He presented a doctor’s certificate and went home.

Maybe three weeks later he came in with his wife and new-born babies, begging to be sacked so that he could get extra state benefits for a while.

Legal advice had said don’t do it, so we didn’t. Eventually he handed in his notice.

As well as being a plonky, the plonker had been in a tangle with the youngest chambermaid.

One agency chef came fresh from the Bahamas and a billionaire’s yacht. This character’s food was so incredible he had chefs from other local hotels coming to us for dinner. Even so, we didn’t boom.

We went to Australia on a visit to family leaving this chef in charge, confident that nothing could go wrong with the food in our absence.

It was 2am in Brisbane when we received the phone call. Our ace chef said he hadn’t been paid by the agency because we hadn’t paid them. Therefore, he was leaving right then in the middle of serving lunch. There was nothing we could do about it. He wouldn’t believe the agency were lying, and half a world away we couldn’t prove it.

On our return we received a demand from a debt collection company but proved to them with bank statements that all the bills had been paid on time and we heard no more.

So much for nouvelle cuisine.

Our next professional was a local girl with a reputation. We had heard of her and when she walked in one day with a CV it didn’t take long for an interview to result in an arrangement.

We offered her a small wage and a half share of any profits she managed to generate.

She thought £300 a week was a small wage and even though what I had in mind was a lot less we agreed to her terms, and she started.

Straightaway we advertised her appointment in the local paper and the result was astonishing. The dining room was full to overflowing.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last and after she left, we found half-empty wine bottles in all sorts of awkward corners in and around the food prep areas.

She’d been on the dole when we took her on, having been sacked from her last job for having attacked the kitchen hand. Prior to that she’d gone bust in at least 2 locations where she’d operated Restaurants as Owner/Chef. Not long after I believe she went to jail for stealing.

Like the man said, “Hell is other people.”