‘Excellent,’ he says, taking a sip. ‘What do you think?’ he asks me.
The last thing I want to do is starting drinking vodka at four fifty-two. I have eaten no breakfast, no lunch, I’m starving and the last time I did a vodka tasting with Martina we ended up sitting at the back end of the bar doing the ‘dentist’s chair’ – mixing shots in our mouths and swallowing them back in one. That girl has a stronger head on her shoulders than any rugby club boy I have ever met. I went home feeling like I was on a cross-Channel ferry and spent the evening with my arms wrapped around the lavatory bowl like it was my best friend in the entire world. I think she carried on and went out to dinner.
‘I think it’s great.’ I nod, giving it a sniff and just wetting my lips.
‘We’re doing well with it,’ she says. ‘It’s Latvian and gone into three bars in Soho in the last week.’
‘You have anything a little more left field?’ asks Adam. He’s never been keen on the idea of following others.
‘We’ve got a coffee liqueur from Mexico,’ she suggests.
‘Don’t you just love the drinks trade? Two shots of alcohol, some colour, some flavouring, stick a name on it, add some sexy girls with their tits out – no offence, Martina – and you’ve got yourselves a drink. Baileys? Sheridan’s? What the fuck are they? Brandies, vodkas, gins? They are completely shagging made up.’ He pauses and knocks back the Latvian vodka in one. ‘Go on then – what are we supposed to do with it?’
She brings out a large black rather phallic-looking bottle, called Cafta. ‘I was thinking Espresso Margarita?’
Adam approaches the bottle with care. ‘Really?’
‘It’s quite sweet,’ she says.
‘Oi, Damon!’ shouts Adam to the bar. ‘Didn’t you spend some time in Mexico?’
A tall blond bloke in his mid-twenties ambles over. His hair is stiff with product and his trousers are slack with attitude. Fortunately for him he is not wearing trainers. He takes one look at the bottle and laughs.
‘I’ve had that.’ He nods. ‘It made me barf on the beach.’
Adam laughs. ‘Barf on the beach – that’s a good name for a cocktail.’
‘It’s not quite the image we’re after,’ says Martina. ‘The liquid is good,’ she continues. ‘Try some.’ She pours out a small shot in each glass and hands them out to the three of us. I take a sniff and it doesn’t smell too bad so I knock it back.
‘It’s tequila based,’ says Martina.
Too late I think: I can’t abide tequila.
‘Oh it’s good,’ says Adam with rather too much relish. He pushes his glass towards her. ‘Hit me.’
‘It is good,’ acknowledges Damon. ‘That’s half the problem. The stuff is lethal!’
‘I like it,’ says Adam, his eyes watering slightly after he’s downed his second shot. ‘We could do a party with this. Sponsor an event?’
‘Do you have an events manager?’ asks Martina, who I notice has yet to sample her own wares. So that’s her trick. To look like she’s knocking it back but actually not. Although I do distinctly remember her actually being in the dentist’s chair; I can’t have imagined that?
‘I do all the events managing here,’ says Adam, leaning in. ‘If Karl Lagerfeld wants to hire the place for £100,000 he has to talk to me.’
‘We could do some sponsored events during Fashion Week? That’s always good,’ she says, nodding.
‘The only thing is, fashion people don’t have any money,’ says Adam.
‘That’s OK. We’ll pay for the party, give you the stock, and we’ll get some nice photos out of it.’
‘Cool!’ agrees Adam. ‘What d’you think, Boss?’
My phone goes. It’s Caz.
‘Darling! Darling! There you are!’ She sounds like she’s been scouring London on her hands and knees looking for me, instead of just picking up the phone. ‘Pippa’s rushed off her feet and we’re both wondering when you’re coming down to the Bring Your Daughter to Tea at La Table?’
‘Oh, Christ! Is that today?’
‘Fuck yes, buddy. Right here. Right now.’
5–6 p.m.
Ten minutes later and I’m walking down the street to La Table. Outside the brasserie, in the dying light of the day, I can see two freezing, shivering blondes, wearing pink glitterball head boppers, each holding a clipboard. There are two large bunches of shiny pink helium balloons tied to the planters, blowing in the breeze, and a short strip of red carpet rolled over the pavement going into the entrance.
‘Hiya!’ smiles one blonde, the pink glitterballs on her head waggling from side to side. She looks like she’s having as much fun as the designated-driver on a Hen Night. ‘Welcome! Is your name on the list?’ She smiles at me; her pink-frosted lips have turned a pale shade of blue in the cold.
I must have been mad to agree when Caz suggested this as an idea. Firstly, all the pink is clashing rather heavily with the carefully chosen red leather for the brasserie banquettes and, secondly, I am not sure the idea of having two shivering women doing meet-and-greet on a door is anyone’s idea of fun.
‘Why don’t you two girls come inside?’ I suggest. ‘It’s far too cold to stand outside.’
‘God, we’d love to,’ replies one of the girls. ‘But Caz says we’ve got to stay out here till the owner comes.’
The other one laughs. ‘Yeah, just so he can see he’s getting value for money.’
‘Well, I am the owner.’ They both look stunned. One of them covers her mouth with her pink-tipped nails and the other pulls an odd gurning grimace like she’s got a knife stuck in the toaster.
‘Darling!’ comes a hiss/bark through the doors. ‘Get in here, right away! Half the women are leaving! Honestly,’ says Caz as her skinny, clawed hand reaches out into the street and snatches me in, ‘I don’t know why I bother organizing a brilliant B to C event when you can’t even be bothered to show up.’ She is talking out of the side of a rictus grin as she pushes me towards an explosion of pink that seems to have overtaken my restaurant. ‘They’ve been here for an hour. The fairy entertainer has done her job, we’ve done the face painting and all you needed to do was show up … Here he is!’ she announces in a loud voice, pushing the small of my back towards what must be at least Dante’s first circle of hell, if not the second.
There is glitter, pink and princess shit all over the place. There are fairy cakes, cream cakes, a big bloody pink cake, and glasses of pink champagne scattered everywhere. There are streamers and balloons and bits of shiny pink stuff as far as my slightly screwed-up eyes can see. I must have been completely drunk when I approved this.
‘Ladies!’ I smile, opening my arms out wide trying to appear generous and ebullient. ‘I hope you are having fun!’
For the next fifteen minutes I am passed from one frown-free skinny woman to another, as they each in turn thank me profusely for my hospitality and confess to having eaten ‘far too much’. I am then introduced to an infinite and varied collection of daughters who are all entirely clad in that pink shiny material that shouldn’t go near a naked flame and who all appear to be called something ending in ‘a’.
‘Where are the boys?’ I finally manage to ask Caz, before she shoves the small of my back towards another group of women.
‘It’s an all-girls school over the road,’ she growls in a voice laced with jaded incredulity.
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, fucking “Oh”! Do your homework, A-hole … Here he is!’ she announces, smiles and shoves. I can tell she is rather enjoying herself. There is nothing that Caz likes more than being totally and utterly in the right.
And she is. This place really needs some help. It was supposed to be rather like Tom’s Kitchen is to Tom Aikens’s Michelin-starred place around the corner. It wasn’t supposed to cost me a huge amount – we’re using the same suppliers, the same laundry company, all that sort of stuff. And we are supposed to be able to turn tables all day. The takings are not what they should be and I am a little
worried. I am wondering if I should replace my maître d’, Kim. She is a nice enough girl. But is she nice enough? I remember speaking to Russell Norman who is king of the packed, popular, delicious, fast-moving local, where people queue up to sit down. In his collection of six and counting (Polpo, Da Polpa, etc.) he doesn’t appear to have a weak link. His secret? He said it was being nice. The key about making a good local work was having charming staff. Good food was a given, but they all have to smile, they have to look after the regulars, they have to get them coming back for more. Getting them to come back again, and again, is crucial.
Talking of nice and charming, I look around the room for Pippa, hoping she’s forgiven me for foisting a pneumatic Scandi on her at such short notice. Finally I spot her, hovering just outside the kitchen. Dressed in whites, her cheeks are flushed, her face is shining in sweat and her dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She gives me a brief smile.
‘I am very sorry,’ I say, walking over and giving her a kiss. She smells of cake.
‘Next time don’t send me your sexual conquests and ask me to find them gainful employment,’ she grins. ‘Do I look like I run a lap-dancing club?’
‘She’s not a lap dancer, she’s a waitress.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says her, she worked at Noma.’ I lie a tiny bit.
‘Noma, my arse. The only thing she’s ever foraged is a tenner out of her knicker elastic.’
I laugh. ‘Anyway, how’s it going here?’
‘Busy,’ she confirms. ‘Busier.’
‘Really? It’s Christmas, I suppose.’
‘No. Caz is doing a good job. These women will come back.’ She looks across the room as the skinny frown-free women all appear to be kissing each other goodbye and gathering together their pink children. ‘They’ve crossed the threshold. They’re not scared to come in. People are often wary of new places.’
‘These woman aren’t scared.’
‘You’d be surprised.’ She shrugs. ‘Are you hungry? I’m just making a quick beetroot salad.’
Beetroot? I’m ravenous but I daren’t tell her that I can’t stand beetroot and haven’t so much as let one of those purple bastards pass my lips since 1976. I follow her into the kitchen. The atmosphere back here is in complete contrast to the all-cocks-drawn tension at Le Restaurant. I am not sure whether it is because it’s simple brasserie food without any critical expectation, or whether it is because Pippa is on the pass, that makes it less fraught. But it is actually rather nice and relaxing to hang out here. Four commis chefs are chopping and slicing, sorting their mise en place for this evening. They are slowly working their way through the evening prep list, otherwise known as ‘the road to freedom’.
‘You’ve met Alison on veg,’ says Pippa. She taps a young woman on the shoulder; she turns to look at me. Her dark hair and blue eyes are stunning.
‘Evening,’ she says.
‘Your very best beetroot for the boss, please.’
‘Right away, chef,’ she replies. I don’t have the heart to tell her I’d rather eat a turd sandwich.
‘Roberto?’ asks Pippa. ‘How’s that new pudding idea going?’
‘What’s that?’ I ask, feeling my stomach rumble.
‘A new salted caramel ice cream with a vanilla panna cotta.’
‘It sounds delicious.’
‘It should be,’ she smiles. ‘I nicked the salted caramel ice-cream recipe from the River Café.’
Pippa worked all over London before I managed to prise her out of Jason Atherton’s kitchens. She very much cut her teeth during the hot, steamy days when chefs never saw daylight and would barely be bothered to keep a flat as they spent so little time in them anyway. She did once explain to me that being a woman in what was essentially a man’s world only made her work that much harder. She said you have to be tough, you have to make sacrifices, because it’s rare for female chefs to fit in getting married and having children, and these are things you have weigh up and work out on the way. You have to cope with the banter, you have to prove to those chauvinist shits that you can hold your own in the kitchen.
She always says that women are not ambitious enough. She told me the story of Angela Hartnett calling Marcus Wareing within twenty-four hours of him losing his head chef and asking for the job. ‘Not enough women do that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘How else are we supposed to get ahead?’
But it is an industry full of contradictions. I remember hearing that Gordon used to remark hilariously that women could only really properly work for three weeks out of four and yet at the same time he wouldn’t let any of the women who worked for him ever clean the stove. By far the shittiest job in the kitchen was reserved for the blokes.
‘I do think it is all really rather ridiculous,’ Pippa once said to me. ‘All the shouting and screaming and slapping and hauling around great sides of beef and all we are really doing is making people’s tea.’ She laughed. ‘It’s just a bit of tea.’
‘Here you go,’ she says now, handing me a plate of beetroot and feta salad. ‘Have some vitamins on a plate. KP, silver!’ she shouts and Omar, the KP, brings over a knife and fork. She puts her hands on her hips and stares at me.
‘Are you not having one?’ I ask.
‘No. I made it for you.’
‘Oh, right, thank you.’ My mouth goes suddenly really very dry. I pick up the fork and play with it a bit before steeling myself and digging in. I pop in a small mouthful and chew.
‘Well?’
‘It is delicious! It is completely delicious!’ It really is. I can’t believe I have been such a baby not to have eaten a beetroot for over thirty years. Like the last beetroot I had in 1976 bears any resemblance to this. That one was soggy and pale and doused in vinegar. This one is fantastic, properly sweet and delicious. ‘Wow!’
‘He likes it,’ shrugs Pippa.
‘Like it, I love it!’
‘Let’s put that on the menu.’
I spend the next three minutes shovelling in Pippa’s food quicker than an extra in Oliver Twist. I can’t believe how fabulous it is.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I feel so much better.’ It’s true, I do; my hangover is almost clearing. My mobile goes. I am definitely ditching that bloody tune.
‘Hello?’
‘Stay away from my site.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Stay away from my site if you know what’s good for you.’
‘What site?’
‘The old Greek on Charlotte Road.’
‘Is this Pete?’ I start to walk out of the kitchen, giving Pippa a little wave.
‘I don’t know who you mean.’ His voice sounds deep and wheezy, like he’s just tried to the catch the bus or stubbed out his twenty-sixth cigarette. ‘I am just delivering a message.’
‘Or what?’ I’m not sure what I am doing; perhaps the vitamins have gone to my head. But I am not a man to be bullied. I haven’t worked this hard for this long to be cowed by an idiot with emphysema. ‘Or what, mate? What, exactly?’
‘I’m just delivering a message,’ he huffs down the phone. ‘Stay away from the Greek.’
‘Who do you think you are? The Krays? Piss off! Fuck off! Do you hear me? Do you? Do you? FUCK OFF!’ There’s nothing but silence. I look at my phone and realize I’ve been cut off.
‘So there!’ I shout at the phone, only to look up and see Caz, Kim and three flicky blonde women looking at me. Fortunately my phone goes again. ‘I’m sorry, I must take this.’
It is Steve, my old mate, who’s invested a bit of money in the business and who rather fancies himself as the Chief Financial Officer of the company. He isn’t, but every few months or so, when he’s bored with working in the City, he’ll ask to have a look over the books on his way home, while helping himself to a few drinks. And by the sound of his voice he’s been helping Martina with her spirits.
I walk into Le Bar to find him sitting on a stool, sipping a worryingly dark looking cocktail.
‘There you
are!’ He waves. Completely bald, with a round stomach poking out his navy suit jacket, Steve already looks pink-cheek pissed and remarkably uncomfortable perched on something so precarious. ‘How are you?’ His small blue eyes are a little watery.
‘I’m fine. And you?’
‘I’m drinking some sort of fantastically strong coffee margarita cocktail. I had a one-bottle lunch and this has just about finished me off.’
‘Has Martina gone?’
‘Do you mean the pretty girl with the curls?’ I nod. ‘About ten minutes ago.’
‘Adam is sorting a few things with her, I think,’ chips in Damon from the other side of the bar.
‘Right,’ I reply, slightly annoyed at his joining in the conversation.
‘Can I get you anything? A coffee margarita?’
‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I think I might just have a cleansing lager. It’s about that time.’
‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’ Steve belches into the back of his hand as he pushes his glass away. ‘I’ll have one of those, Damon.’
‘Two lagers,’ replies Damon, before walking down the bar.
‘You’ve broken twenty-five glasses this month,’ begins Steve, tapping a bit of paper with his porky index finger. ‘That’s a lot of glass. Seventy-five pence each.’
‘Not personally, I haven’t.’
‘All the same.’
‘We haven’t broken them to annoy you, Steve.’
‘I know but we need to get some more money through this place. Get the big spenders in. Go after the Russians.’
‘Really? I tell you, I’m not that keen on the Russians, they don’t know how to behave, they click their fingers when they want to be served – I can’t abide that.’
‘I went to a Russian place the other day and it was amazing – they had brass at the bar!’ he chortles.
‘That’s the oldest trick in the book getting prostitutes at the bar.’
‘I know, but the place was packed. Thursday night.’
Thursday night is business night. It is the major night of the week for corporate entertainment. There are business dinners other nights of the week, of course, but Thursday’s the night when the boys in suits go out and they are in the market for whores. Friday night is a friends and family night, it’s not really for meeting or work, so the whores are much less in evidence at the bars of swanky restaurants. Monday night is usually quite quiet. Tuesday is always surprisingly busy, almost in a way to make up for the boredom of Monday. Wednesday and Thursday are working nights in every true sense of the word, and everyone knows that Saturday night is amateur night. It is bridge and tunnel. It is the toughest night of the week. They are the people who complain the most, the customers who question everything, and the ones who are most worried about being taken seriously or not being treated correctly, because they don’t go out much. The only good thing about Saturday night? It is usually pretty brief. The men drink beer, the women have a Pouligny-Montrachet spritzer (which is such a waste of good white wine) and they usually clear off by ten thirty as they have to catch the train home.
Restaurant Babylon Page 13
