Thankfully, things have changed since then. It’s much more difficult to employ people illegally these days, mainly because Immigration like to pop in for a little bit more than a cup of tea, on a regular basis.
Working hours are also radically different from what they used to be. The old double shift, seven in the morning to midnight, six days a week, meted out by most of the top joints, is unsurprisingly not that popular with the new sort of softer, gentler, metro-chefs who are coming through. The old cojones-of-steel approach, needing less sleep than Mrs Thatcher, drinking nothing but espressos, doesn’t go down well with the under twenty-fives. So most places, like mine, use a rota system where you do four full days, so eight until midnight, and then have three days off. It doesn’t cost dramatically more, my books just about balance, but I don’t pay overtime and I don’t get extra staff in to cover holidays. You step up to the mark or you piss off. It works out as a little bit longer that the thirty-five hours a week dictated by Europe, but thank God for the opt out.
Travel through France these days and it’s hard to find a restaurant that is fully operational seven days a week. Joel Robuchon obviously is, but there plenty who are not. Thousands of them find it hard to stay open for more than three or four days in seven. Some of them, particularly those in the countryside, only open for a long weekend. Others no longer do lunch. It is hard to keep costs down when your workforce is only allowed to work a full two and half shifts a week.
‘What’s all this?’ I ask Manu, lighting up a cigarette and inhaling like an oxygen-starved deep-sea diver.
‘Oh,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘those stupid bin men.’
He doesn’t need to say any more. Our love/hate relationship with the fine bin men of Westminster Council is one of life’s long-running sagas. They are supposed to come twice a day, every day, to take away our rubbish, which is rather plentiful. And it is not nice. It is the sort of stuff that rats and mice gravitate towards and, given half a chance, they’d move into at the drop of a bin lid. So we pay our business rates which is about a third of our rent (£60,000 a year), our refuse collection fee which is another £800 or so, plus we pay £64.50 every couple of days for fifty refuse bags, then we give the nice boys from WC enough whisky to drown a shipload of sailors at Christmas, plus endless tips, the odd £50 here, the odd bit of beef there, a bottle of vodka … Frankly, they could open their own bloody off-licence the amount of treats we give them. And still they refuse to collect our rubbish.
Either our bags are too heavy – anything over five kilos is too much for their delicate backs to contend with. Or we haven’t sorted it properly – they’ve got this new thing where they recycle food waste but we have to divide the meat from the veg, and the fish, and the bones. It is one of the top jobs in the restaurant; a pleasurable thing to have to do after a twelve-hour shift at the coalface of culinary excellence. And then some other restaurant or business decides, as they have today, to dump a whole load of shit in our backyard. And unless we sort through it, we’re the mugs who get fined.
‘What did they say?’
‘One hundred and fifty pounds on the spot unless we bag this up properly,’ Manu replies, sifting through a bag full of old plate scrapings.
‘Where’s that from?’ The sweet smell of rotting food is making me feel nauseous and my cigarette taste revolting.
‘L’Italiano, I should think,’ he says. ‘Plenty of spaghetti.’
‘They’re a bunch of bastards, that lot. We are always giving them milk and bread and butter when they’ve run out. We’re nice to them.’
‘Not always,’ replies Manu. ‘Andrew told them where to go the other day.’
I roll my eyes. That man can’t leave soon enough. What he fails to realize is that the restaurant world is a small community, which is also part of the greater community. If we live and work in Mayfair then we have to be part of Mayfair. We help each other out when we’ve run out of stuff. We give leftover food to the local Christian charity group, and we also leave stale bread outside the back door for the couple of local tramps whose faces we know. What we don’t do is pick fights with the local Italian, particularly if that Italian has been on the street for over twenty years and has no visible clientele. It is clearly a front for laundering something, because that place can’t be doing any real business. You’d need to sell a hell of a lot of carbonara and garlic bread to cover his £200,000 a year rent.
‘Do you need any help with that, Manu?’ I ask, inhaling the last of my cigarette.
‘Don’t worry, Boss,’ he says as he pulls out a handful of what looks like chicken bones. ‘They’re a man down in the kitchen already. I’m sure I can cope.’
‘If you’re sure,’ I say, feeling more than a little guilty about not putting a pair of gloves on and helping him myself.
‘No worries,’ he replies.
I hesitate for a second, but then my phone goes. It’s Adam from Le Bar.
‘All right, mate,’ he states, rather than asks. ‘Just calling to say the toilets are fixed. The big-bird basin is back on the wall. You can use it, but not sit on it just yet because the putty’s got to dry.’
‘Good work.’
‘Shall I put a no shagging sign on it just in case someone else fancies a go?’
‘I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?’
‘You never know!’ he laughs. He’s been in this business far too long. ‘The cleaners are on the water so we should be OK to open.’
‘I’ll come over and check in an hour or so.’
He hangs up and I step back inside the kitchen. Everyone is hard at work. We have five main sections in all: meat, also known as sauce, fish, larder, veg and, of course, pastry. Each of these is headed up by a chef de partie. Matt is on meat sauce. The most senior of the chefs de partie, he has the most important section. He has been with us for just under six months and came to us via the three-star Michelin chef Hélène Darroze at the Connaught. A Kiwi in his late twenties, he is brilliant, organized, unflappable and rather overqualified for us, but I think he is enjoying himself. Although it’s hard to say as he’s not a Chatty Cathy type. He’s in, out, and back on the tube to Barnet every night. He’s not a bloke who likes to hang around. Alfonso, who’s on fish and been with us for two years, is brilliant with salmon. He can fillet the whole thing in just over five minutes, which includes removing the pin bones.
We have Davide on the larder, which is effectively anything cold – confits, terrines, salad. He’s Andrew’s Gallic sidekick with a vicious temper and a face full of sweaty blackheads. I fully expect him to walk when Andrew leaves next week and I have to say I’ll be quite chuffed to see the back of him. His attitude stinks as much as his breath, and his teeth are black from the amount of coffee he imbibes on a daily basis.
Giovanna, our pastry chef, is as delightful and as charming as she is round. And there is Barney on veg, the lowest position in the kitchen hierarchy. He is legumes. But he is a nice legume, an enthusiastic legume, who has the kid charm of Jamie Oliver.
As well as the chefs de partie we have, or should I say had, three commis chefs. Stacy, straight out of college and a nice, jolly girl from Bristol; Andrea, a taciturn Italian from Bologna, and there was Sean. These three are supposed to float around the kitchen helping the chefs de partie and doing what they are told. But what usually happens is that Stacy spends her whole day making ravioli or fettuccini and popping them into the boiler. Andrea is usually on sauce or jus, and Sean spent most of the time putting small bits of cabbage into blanch or puréeing the potatoes, parsnips or swedes. I am not sure I can see Oscar filling in for him.
‘Everything OK?’ I mumble as I walk through, hoping for the path of least engagement.
‘Um, excuse me,’ pipes up Oscar. My heart sinks. ‘Can I have a word?’
‘Absolutely, whatever you want,’ I lie. Fortunately, thankfully, my phone goes. It’s Pippa over at La Table. ‘Sorry.’ I nod to Oscar. ‘I’ve got to take this.’ I step through into the dining
room.
‘Hi there?’
‘Morning,’ she replies. She is sounding a little circumspect and not her usual ebullient self. ‘Um. I have a girl here,’ she says. ‘Her name is Gina.’
‘Gina?’
‘She says she knows you and she says that you offered her a job?’
‘Oh! Gina! Right, shit! That Gina.’ I pour myself the remainder of the bottled water at the round table.
‘Yes, that Gina,’ continues Pippa who is perhaps not quite as au fait as Jorge, or indeed Adam, with my management techniques. ‘Well, what do you suggest that I do with her?’
10–11 a.m.
I can tell that Pippa is less than impressed with my peccadilloes. Every one of my helpful handy serving suggestions as to what to do with the delightful Gina is met with a stony silence. Waitress? On reception? Cleaner? Nothing. So I talk to Kim, the maître d’ at La Table. Even she’s not terribly impressed and she’s worked for me for a while.
‘Maybe Adam could use her in Le Bar?’ she finally suggests down the phone, her voice dribbling with sarcasm, like golden syrup running off a spoon.
‘No, no, that’s a fate worse than death,’ I laugh. Silence. ‘Send her over here then,’ I say. ‘I’m sure Jorge can think of something.’
‘I am not sure he bats for her team,’ replies Kim.
What a humourless bunch. I think I am going to rethink my unusually radical move of employing as many women as possible. What’s the point of being at the vanguard, if the vanguard is so bloody grumpy and deeply ungrateful?
I mean, I have always been very pro-woman (probably a little too pro) and I have always thought they had no problem cutting it in a professional kitchen. In fact, most of the time they are better organized, more creative, more charming and a hell of a lot tidier than their male counterparts. In short: a joy. Pippa would never dream of turning up for work stinking as if she’d spent the night in a Soho latrine the way Andrew does more frequently than I care to remember. Cleanliness aside, some of the best food in London is being cooked by women at the moment – Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, the fantastic Angela Hartnett at Murano, Clare Smyth at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and the pulchritudinous Florence Knight at Polpetto. But according to the Office of National Statistics, of the 187,0000 chefs currently working the UK today, only 20 per cent, or some 37,000, are women. That’s a slightly higher percentage than female directors of FTSE companies but not much. And listening to some of my colleagues chew the cud on ‘girls in the kitchen’, it’s easy to see why. It’s like the seventies’ women’s lib movement passed them by. I remember Marco once saying that women ‘lack the physical strength of men and men aren’t going to work for a woman, are they?’ Like it takes bulging Arnie biceps to chop parsley and sear a scallop? Granted, they might find it tricky to butcher the hind leg off a donkey but I am sure they could always ask a nice bloke for some assistance.
In the olden days Gordon was equally as enlightened. During the glory hours of Aubergine, where the working conditions were so tough, so steamy and so butch it was once described as ‘Vietnam’, he was in a quandary about what to yell at the young Hartnett. He shared that he couldn’t call her a ‘cunt’ (which is what he called everyone else) as she had one. So in the end, after much umming and ahhing, he decided to simply refer to her as ‘bitch’. Amazingly, they are still good friends, so it must have all been ‘banter in context’.
Anyway, I could do with a bit more humour in my employees this morning, and for them to be a little less judgemental. As if I haven’t got enough to worry about without the good opinion of Pippa also being on the agenda.
‘Was it fun, ladies? Was it fun?’ quizzes Jorge, as he walks over to meet and greet the slowly arriving gaggle of his front of house staff. There are a few ladies on the team. And pretty gorgeous ones at that.
Well, I only employ good-looking people in front of house. There! I said it out loud. We all do, and anyone in the industry who tells you otherwise is lying. They’ll deny it until they are blue in the face but all you really need to do is take a look around the gaff/caff to prove them wrong.
Personally, I always ask for an up-to-date photograph on the CV, otherwise they don’t get a look in. It is illegal, but who cares? Good-looking people flirt. Good-looking people are up for it. Good-looking people engage, they get eye-contact, they are more extrovert, they are more confident and, most importantly of all, they make me more money. If ugly people made me more money, I’d employ them. But you are much more likely to buy another bottle of wine or order the overpriced champagne cocktail if it’s suggested to you by a pretty waitress. I remember one of my wives accusing me of only employing good-looking women during some annoying row and I told her she was wrong. I employ good-looking men as well.
Your front of house has got to be fun, it’s got to look attractive, it’s got to lure people in, make them want to hang out, spend some time there. It has also got to sell all that food your fabulous chef has been working his or her arse off to prepare. No one is forced to eat out. No one must go to a restaurant as a matter of life or death. It is discretionary spending. It is a luxury, and in times of austerity, luxury has to be worth it. So the staff have to engage with the customer, make them feel special and get them to spend their money. It’s a dance. It is not hard, but so many places get it wrong. They’re hot – and then they’re not. It’s quite easy to get someone into your place once, but getting them to come back is a different matter.
When I interview my staff I am not that interested in their experience, or what they’ve done before; I want to know their hobbies, what they can talk about, what they like doing, and what they are actually like. Some of these Russian Natashas look fantastic, but do you really want to spend any time with them?
Equally, they do have to be able to do the job. But I often find that a certain amount of staff self-selection goes on. They have to work as a team, so if they’re not good enough at their job and everyone else ends up carrying the shift, it doesn’t take long for them to be ‘moved on’. If you’re not bringing in the tips, they’ll get rid of you. If you’re not nice to work with, they’ll get rid of you. If you piss people off, they’ll get rid of you. The team can and does find itself and its own sort of equilibrium.
However, it is very difficult to find the right people. I remember when those wise bastards Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell opened Morgans, the Royalton and Paramount hotels in New York, they recruited as many attractive out-of-towners and wannabe actors as they could. They wanted an energetic, vibrant staff, with a positive, upbeat and friendly attitude, which are clearly not the outstanding qualities of your average New Yorker. So they made a terrific effort to look elsewhere, and it paid off. They had the shiniest, happiest, most beguiling staff in town.
I have to say us Brits, especially Londoners, are also not greatly in demand in the service industry. Large companies like Soho House have been forced to look as far afield as Australia, sending their recruitment team out to Sydney in order to get their charming, easy-going staff.
Most of mine at Le Restaurant come from eastern and southern Europe. In Le Bar it’s mainly Aussies and Italians, but that is obviously due to Adam and his Antipodean connections. La Table is almost entirely Polish.
‘So was it fun?’ asks Jorge, as the gang of seven gather around the bar to the tune of Berocca plink, plinking and fizzing into their glasses of water. ‘Wow,’ he says, watching the bright orange vitamin C pills dissolve in a flash of bubbles. ‘That much fun?’
‘Nothing a vitamin won’t cure,’ smiles Anna, a very pretty blonde Ukrainian girl who’s been on my front desk for just under a year. Slim, clever and twenty-seven years old, she has a linguistics degree from Kiev University. In fact, I am fairly sure it was her arrival that sent Sketchley over the edge. Not that I’ve got to any base with Anna, although not through lack of trying, I assure you, but she is engaged and has been for five long years.
As they chat and drink their orange fizzy drinks, I gather they a
ll went dancing last night after work, and it turns out that Mikus, one of the Polish waiters, pulled the girl that Luca, a slight, sweet-looking chap from Naples, had his eye on. Discouraged and disheartened, he’d drowned his sorrows in vodka and fallen over outside the club. Nice. It sounds as though they all crawled home at about two, which is not something I am particularly pleased about. The only person who behaved himself was Michelangelo, the sommelier. But then he’s not a great drinker. He loves wine, he really does, but only in moderation. He’d much rather nurse a big Barolo all night than chug back six vodkas and a jägerbomb. God, I feel a little nauseous, what on earth was I doing drinking one of those?
‘Morning, Michelangelo,’ I say, walking past the front of house team as they slowly disperse.
‘Morning, sir,’ he nods. He is standing behind the bar, checking on the stock.
‘Did you have fun last night?’
‘It was OK, sir, not really my thing.’
Michelangelo is obviously not his real name. He was given it by Jorge about two years ago and it stuck. I think his real name is Paolo, or something quite ordinary, but Jorge was teasing him about being ‘a true artist when the rest of them were mere piss artists’ or some late-night gag like that, and that, as they say, was that. The poor sod now has it on his name badge next to his little bunch of golden sommelier’s grapes.
Restaurant Babylon Page 5
