Opening a restaurant in Bray
Busy opening Bray
Why does our memory fail us when we have good ideas for new projects – why don’t we remember the pains and stresses of putting ideas into practice. Like giving birth, we forget the process and remember only the joy of the result the BABY. Co-incidentally similar to the word BRAY and just as scary.
We are currently opening a restaurant (feels like we are having a baby) in Bray in Berkshire. As any business unfolds and deadlines are not met we feel the hopelessness of not being in control. Why does the world go away in August, could they not stagger their holidays over the summer months so that they don’t all abandon me in my moments of need. Don’t they care that I have left it far too late to order crockery, cutlery, glassware and signage (God, we have no ladies and gent’s signs) because I too took annual leave. Of course not, they are sunning themselves on a beach while I am dusting off attic finds to provide glasses for our opening, getting our seven year old to draw a man and woman to stick onto the loo doors, borrowing tablecloths to make do before the Italian beautiful cloths arrive after the long holiday!
Our Head Chef, Gregorio, between dusting his new kitchen is preparing dishes to put on the new menu. Today was the day of three main courses, steak, veal and an unusual lasagna. The steak and the veal are on – so tasty and moreish. He likes spotted sauce on a plate and I want it by the ladleful (like my mum’s gravy) so we have to reach a compromise. If something drives me mad about modern restaurant food it’s the stupid amount of sauce you are given to go with meat or fish. I don’t want to look at it I want to bloody eat it.
Anyway the lasagna needs work, it is something we ate in Tuscany and God it was lovely, the best lasagna I have ever had, we want to do our version of it, so four lasagna’s later we are still trying and my new black trousers are straining at the fly – but so what, its all in the name of research.