The chefs. The good, the bad and the downright crazy

A lot has been said and written about the temperament of chefs and I’ve got a few tales of my own to tell. Never have I worked with a crazier bunch of characters, sometimes ‘good crazy’, sometimes not so much. You need a good chef in the kitchen of any restaurant, of course you do, and you need them on your side. When the chef loses confidence in you you’re in trouble and as we have established, I was a rubbish manager, so I saw a good bit of trouble inside our kitchen.

First up needs to be my first chef. He was incredible. I got lucky here, I truly did. I found him on what must have been one of the first ever ‘social networking’ sites, Jake, set up by Ivan Massow. It was pretty basic by today’s standards but it was a place to chat and meet people with the emphasis on business and not the other thing. I posted up somewhere that I was looking for a chef to come and work in my new little restaurant and this guy got in touch. At the time he was working at Claridges under the Ramsay regime and he was a bit of a star. He was young, hungry and so incredibly talented I couldn’t believe my luck. We snapped him up paying a bit more money than he got in his old job. He was tempted by the opportunity to be a head chef so he left the safety of the big kitchen and got stuck in to transforming this tiny Italian kitchen into his own domain. And he did it well.

This chef was superbly talented. His food brought compliments from every single customer and he ran the kitchen all on his own. Feisty but fair, he wasn’t a scary shouty chef, he just wanted things done right. His catch phrase was ‘make it happen’, and I liked that. He made it happen every day and his food was faultless. Of course, when you’ve got a talent like that in the kitchen and you’re not even paying him 20k you’re not going to keep him for long. A regular customer of ours who came maybe two or three times a week and spent a fortune was secretly plotting to tempt him away. And she was successful in that. Four months after we opened he handed me his notice. That was a devastating blow. He was irreplaceable. She offered him a business opportunity he couldn’t turn down. Double the covers, full control of the kitchen and all food receipts. I couldn’t compete with that and of course he had to go and do it. I think I actually cried when he handed his notice in.

Where is he now? Oh, you know, he’s a millionaire. He eventually left the kitchen to become an Internet entrepreneur and he was on ‘Secret Millionaire’ a few years ago giving away thousands of pounds to good causes. That man was always going to be successful at whatever he did and he certainly did ‘make it happen’. As for my kitchen, that was left in disarray and I endured a run of really difficult characters.

The French Chef

I genuinely cannot remember this guy’s name, which is okay because I wouldn’t print it anyway. He wandered in one day asking for a chef position. He had a reasonable CV and I was looking for a replacement for ‘Super Chef’ so I gave him a trial. He was French, how bad could he be? It turned out his food was pretty good, his temperament, however, was something I had never encountered before.

Have you ever met a man that is so miserable, so grouchy, so unbelievably bad tempered that he yells at you for offering him a coffee? He didn’t like coffee, apparently, and he told me this on his first day. On his second day I made the error of offering him a coffee. The barrage of abuse and disbelief I faced was unyielding. “Why would I want a coffee? I told you I do not drink coffee! I cannot believe you asked me!” All in a thick French accent with hand gestures that could break your jaw. I stepped away from the kitchen back to the safety of the bar and my beautiful coffee machine. Every single thing I said to him got a similar response. I couldn’t say a thing right to him and he never held back on his opinion on everything from the front page of the newspaper to the fact that I had even bought a newspaper. He didn’t stay long.

The Spanish Chef

This guy was a proper piece of work. When he came to do his trial he was incredible. His food was wonderful. He understood budgets and cost and didn’t like to waste a thing. Not bad qualities in a chef. Sure, he was a bit crazy with a wild stare and hand gestures that could smash windows, but I liked his food and he worked hard. After his week’s trial I kept him on. He was delighted. And then he changed completely.

He smoked almost constantly out the back door to the kitchen walking through blowing smoke still as he came in. I had to tell him about this constantly. He didn’t take too kindly to being told to do anything. His screams of ‘no waste!’ got a bit tiresome and his meals started to look shoddy. Where was the beautifully presented food he had turned out time after time on his trial? He started calling me Jefe, pronounced Heffa, which genuinely means ‘boss’ in Spanish but I always took the other meaning. Maybe I was being too sensitive but I found this guy absolutely terrifying.

One day a customer asked for a portion of chips. We were one of those ridiculous places that didn’t just serve a plate of chips. They came with the burger and with the steak so we had them, we just didn’t sell them on their own. Now, when I was on the floor if a customer requested them as a side dish I would absolutely serve them, you aim to please and all that. One day when I was having a rare day off one of our lovely waiters asked him if he would do this plate of chips a customer had requested and he absolutely exploded. He thought this was the biggest insult he had ever been paid in his entire crazy life. Screaming, spitting as he did so, that we do not serve chips all through the little door to the kitchen and in full view of the unfortunate customer, I soon got a teary phone call from the waiter. He had called the waiter a faggot. Now, you crazy Spanish chef, you should know your audience. I was not having that. He had to go and I called my biggest, burliest employee to come with me when I sacked him. He did not go quietly.

I paid him what he was owed and he demanded the holiday pay he accrued even though he only worked for me for 10 weeks. I didn’t want to give him a penny more and he became quite threatening. He would sit across the road staring in at me, sometimes with a group of friends trying to intimidate me. My last dealing with him was when he was spitting in my face as he handed me a childish scrawled threatening letter and screaming ‘see you in court.’ I never did hear from him again.

The Australian Chef

Not much to say on this one except a lovely Ozzie woman came in to do a week’s trial and almost all she cooked was aubergine. I’m a big fan of aubergine but we needed a bit more variation. She didn’t make it to the next round. She is a lucky, lucky woman.

The quiet chef

I was beginning to learn having a quiet nature was a rare quality in chefs. So when this young woman in her mid twenties answered the ad for a chef and walked in timid as a mouse I was quite taken aback. She was Ivy trained and the kitchen smelt incredible when she started her trial. This girl could cook even though she didn’t say much. She was very softly spoken and I’m hard of hearing so conversations between us weren’t all that easy. Still, her food was good and she knew her way around a kitchen. We developed a menu and she got the job.

After hiring the quiet chef we experienced a few weeks of calm after the craziness of the Spanish guy. Her food came out looking good and within time scales so everybody was happy. Until eventually, lo and behold, things began to slip. She was having problems with her girlfriend. They were falling out a lot and her time keeping became a bit of an issue. Restaurants don’t just open their doors and start serving food. There is so much prep to do, especially at weekends when our popular breakfasts were followed by an equally popular Sunday roast. There’s a lot to do! Every time she was late there was a long, drawn out excuse and she got quieter and meeker as she delivered it to me. I just wanted someone to turn up, cook well and get paid. This was causing me problems.

Now, I’m sympathetic to people’s problems and of course I was concerned about her situation, I say through slightly gritted teeth, but I couldn’t have this any longer. I read her the riot act and told her what was expected and that if she was late again I would have to let her go. Come the following Sunday I opened up at 8.30 and waited for her to arrive. No sign of her. We opened at 10am. By 9.15 I was beginning to worry so I started the breakfast prep, which is not something I am trained to do but I knew my way around well enough. After opening people start coming in and there’s still no sign of her. Orders start coming in. No sign of her. I got the first couple of breakfasts out and then we started to get busy.

This was terrifying. There was just one waitress on the floor because I was meant to be working with her but I had to go into the kitchen. Not one staff member answered their phone to come in and help. It was just me and the Portuguese KP in the kitchen and he spoke not one word of English. Talk about adrenalin. I yelled at him to pass me a box of eggs and he ran up behind me with a loaf of bread. I could have cried. There was no time for that, though, with orders stacking up. I got my head down and delivered the breakfasts as best I could. No complaints came back, which is unbelievable, maybe they were too scared of the shrieking, crazy woman in the kitchen. As breakfast slowed down and I began on the roast prep, getting the meats in the oven.

In between throwing breakfasts together I was leaving regular messages on the quiet chef’s voicemail. They were getting more and more frantic. It started off, ‘hope you’re okay, let me know when you can come in’ and spiralled into ‘how dare you leave me in this shit what the hell do you think you’re playing at’. I must have called her 14 times. That’s 14 increasingly frantic, bordering on nasty, messages. Finally, at about 1.30, she very meekly walked into the kitchen. She lifted up her t-shirt to show me little bandages all over her stomach and back. She had been out the night before, gotten a bit drunk and decided to walk from Clapham to Brixton down the back streets at 4am. Some guy had roughed her up, stolen her money and stabbed her lightly several times so she had been in hospital all morning. I just. I. I. urgh.

Confidence tricksters

This is an anecdote that still boils my blood when I think about it. Actually, there are two. One when I got well and truly duped, helped along by my own ego and another when my then partner got sucked into a, ‘nice guy’ act and trusted him enough to hand over cash from the till even after my protestations. It’s a story I’m quite embarrassed to tell, but here goes.

The first time I was ‘confidence tricked’ was during a quiet time of the day at the bar shortly after opening up. This jolly, short little man with dirty hands and dirty overalls came into the restaurant as bold as brass asking for ‘boss man’. This got my goat a bit. There was one member of my team who used to think he ran the place. It always niggled me. This particular guy always referred to it as his bar and would march about like he was the manager. I suppose really I just didn’t like the guy, he rubbed me up the wrong way I felt that he undermined me a lot. I shouldn’t have kept him on so long really but he cleaned the bar like a demon and was excellent at making cocktails, so he stayed.

When this cocky little thing strolls in asking for boss man I instantly assume he is asking for this guy, let’s call him Keith, and he had told him he was the boss. I asked him to describe who he was looking for and he put his hand up high to indicate his height. ‘Boss man, tall guy, works here. He said you had a problem with your toilets’. Well, what restaurant or bar doesn’t have a regular problem with their toilets? I even prompted him to get the colour of Keith’s hair and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s him. He said he was the boss and asked me to come fix your loos.’

‘I’m the boss’, I told him, incredulous, but by now I was so mad with Keith for taking over yet again that I was doing nothing but grumbling to this stranger about how he isn’t the boss and this is my restaurant and oh I went on and on. Anyway, this guy told me he had to go buy some special something or other to pour down the toilets to unblock them once and for all. ‘It’s £27’, he said, ‘if you can spot me that I’ll go now and get it and we can get it sorted’. Still grumbling I went to the till. We didn’t have any £10 notes. Just two £20s, so I gave him that them both and off he went. Within seconds of him leaving the front door I knew just what I had happened. I never saw this scruffy little man or those two twenty quid notes again. And the loos were still blocked.

I couldn’t be angry with anyone but myself. I couldn’t even be mad at Keith because he really had had nothing to do with it. My own egotistical idiocy over who was called the boss got in the way of any shred of common sense I might have had. We were £40 down before even serving a single customer. I’m even getting mad now, writing about it more than 12 years later. Grrrr…

Part two

Would you believe me if I told you it happened again? Yes, you probably would, given previous decisions and behaviour. It wasn’t directly down to me this time but I was there. I could have stopped it. My then partner, let’s call her Sam, was working in the bar on the afternoon shift on a Monday while I did a bit of admin. That’s probably not true and it was more likely I was flapping around worrying and being completely ineffective. When I came into the place at about 2.30 she was happily chatting away to a friendly looking middle-aged, working class sort of man drinking beer at the bar. We didn’t get many blokes like him in Ah Bar, largely because a bottle of beer was £3.50 and you could get a whole pint for a pound less 10 metres away at a proper pub. He seemed like a lovely man and Sam was laughing away at his jokes, the two were getting on great guns.

I went out, flapped around a bit more and came back an hour later and he was still there. He kept knocking back the beers and Sam kept throwing back her head laughing. He was a real comedian, this one. Then his phone rang. He looked at it, said he had to take this call as it was his daughter and he went outside to chat to her. He came back in and his face had changed. He looked worried. ‘It’s my daughter’, he said, ‘she borrowed my car and it’s about to get towed because she parked on double yellows’. He looked a bit distressed. He kept saying his wife would go mad with him and his daughter, as he wasn’t supposed to lend her the car. He went on and on. He looked at Sam and said straight, ‘If I can get £45 to her she can pay the fine and they won’t tow the car away. I’ve only got a tenner on me, could you lend me it and I will bring it right back? She’s only down the road’.

I felt a bit sick hearing this with the ‘overall boss man’ incident still fresh in my mind. I said no. Trying to be as friendly as I could, I said, ‘no, I’m sorry, we can’t lend any customers money’. He pleaded towards Sam, seeing that she was the softer one. I told Sam that if he doesn’t come back she has to pay the money back into the till. We were partners. This wasn’t just a working relationship, so I didn’t feel like I could pull rank, although strictly speaking I could have done. It was my name above the door and all that. I didn’t want to cause a scene and just kept repeating myself quietly, which was very unlike me.

She was convinced this bloke was the real deal, a straight up geezer that she wanted to help. You’d think they were related, so good was his technique, and she went to the till and got him £35. He thanked her and explained that he would be back in half an hour at the most and not to worry, we can trust him. Do you think we ever saw him again? Of course we bloody didn’t. Not even after a frantic search of the local pubs to see if he had gone to spend his earnings nearby, probably with the bloke in the overalls from last time. Goodness knows what we would have done if we’d found him. The only consolation I had was that the amount of beers he paid for almost covered the money he took, meaning we broke even, but that’s not really how a business works is it?

What not to do notes:

·       Never lend money out to people you don’t know

·       Don’t let your ego get in the way

·       Ask for a business card or form of ID if you feel unsure

·       Always use credible businesses preferably recommended for work on site

·       Just don’t bloody fall for it like we did. TWICE!

Would you like chlamydia with that?

You know the sort of people who work in bars and restaurants? They’re young, vibrant, up for a laugh and some extra money along the way. Not like in Europe where these jobs are perfectly acceptable careers. In the UK restaurants have a fairly high turnover of staff and it can be quite a transient profession. For the people that worked for me, this was not a career choice it was just a happy little stopgap. The team at Ah Bar was primarily made up of young 20-somethings and they were in the prime of their life. And being in the prime of your life also means you might be a bit quicker to have some fun and a fumble with someone of the sex you happen to be attracted to. The young ones at Ah Bar were no different. They were most certainly having a good time with each other. Until one day an ex-employee I had had to sack after a dramatic potato gratin incident walked in with some news for a handful of them.

This particular employee was only around 21 and she was a fantastic waitress when she wanted to be. When she was on top form the whole place bounced and ran like clockwork. She was witty, hardworking and a laugh a minute. She also had an eye for the boys. Let’s call her Vicky (this is not her real name). Vicky started having a fling with one of the chefs. There was nothing wrong with this.  They were young, free and single. It didn’t bother me one bit so long as they could still work a shift together and not let it get in the way. She even asked to do a couple of shifts in the kitchen to be closer to him. She was a fast learner and a good worker so I scheduled her in for some kitchen shifts and all was going swimmingly, until one night after an argument with him she threw a massive dish of freshly made potato gratin on the floor in anger, minutes before a busy service. Do you know how long it takes to cook the perfect potato gratin?

The kitchen was a mess and the floor was dangerous to walk on as it was covered in slippery, but very tasty gratin. The time and money wasted on throwing the whole evening’s portion of one of our most popular side dishes was incalculable and I just couldn’t have someone that unpredictable working for me. I had no choice but to ask her to leave there and then. It was the first time I had ever sacked anyone, ever. I yelled at her, Ramsay style, and told her to get out of the building and not to come back to work here again. I did wonder if she might lamp me as she left she was so wound up but she didn’t. We were left to wonder what the hell just happened and clean up the mess at the same time as thinking of a quick to cook side for the popular chicken dish. 

Things calmed down a bit after that and Vicky could often be seen walking past the restaurant on the other side of the road but never coming in. Until one day she sheepishly walked up to the bar and asked me if she could talk to the chef she had been seeing. I called him out and said she could take a seat. The two of them had a private chat in the corner and he put his head in his hands. He wasn’t enjoying whatever it was she was saying. I could only speculate. The chef walked back into the kitchen with his head down. Vicky walked back to the bar and I wondered what she was going say. Perhaps apologise for the gratin incident? Oh no. She wanted to see the Sous Chef as well. I called him out and they had a very similar chat at the same table, him with head in his hands and her with her head down. After this chat he slumped back into the kitchen and she walked up to the bar to ask if another staff member was in. He was not. She said she would call him. She then walked out of the bar without looking back.

It turned out, they explained, that she had found a job working overseas on a cruise ship somewhere and rather sensibly went for a sexual health MOT before leaving. This is where they discovered she had chlamydia. She had come into the bar to tell the people she had slept with so that they could get themselves checked out as well. They both had it. Nice. This is something no business advisor or bank manager will ever tell you when you’re setting up a business. Staff sleeping with each other can cause you to lose valuable time, money and potato gratin. They are young adults and short of putting condoms in with their wage slips there’s not an awful lot you can do to stop them.

What not to do notes:

·       Hire a mix of ages - experience has MUCH to offer

·       Don’t give in to requests for loved up staff to work together

·       Don’t get involved, keep it professional and ask staff to do the same

·       Have a back up plan for side dishes*

·       Give staff feedback on how they work so they know what’s expected of them

*This shouldn’t actually be necessary, should it?

Cheesecake and Witchcraft

One Sunday, just after brunch and lunch had died down, I was working the floor on my own. A man walked in. He had a look of Richard Thewlis with a wispy moustache and thinning tousled hair. He came to the bar and asked for a latte with milk and a piece of cheesecake. He had an odd manner. It’s hard to put my finger on it but he was just a touch peculiar, nothing wrong with that. This was Brixton and we were used to quirky characters in the bar, I positively encouraged it. He went outside and sat at a table on the terrace. I took his drink to where he was sitting and he was perfectly polite and lovely, so far, so ordinary.

Another couple walked in and asked if they could have lunch outside. They sat down at a table next to our man, who by now was rocking gently back and fourth muttering to himself and reading from a tiny book. The couple sat down, took menus, made drink choices and I went back to the bar to busy myself making their drinks. By the time I came out this guy was chatting to them. I noticed the book on the table. It was the A to Z of Witchcraft. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Wanting to enjoy a quiet meal with a friend then some ever so slightly odd person wants to chat. The customers, a father and daughter I had figured out, looked up as I placed their drinks and asked if they could sit inside after all. I knew what they really meant. ‘Please let us sit somewhere we won’t be forced into conversation with someone reading the A to Z of Witchcraft and rocking quite forcibly now’. Fair enough, I thought.

I gave them a sympathetic look to show them I understood why they wanted to move. I helped them with their drinks and walked them to a new table inside. As I placed their things down I said, ‘I think he’s harmless, that guy, just one of the funny characters you get around here.’ Expecting them to nod and agree, the woman looked confused. I repeated myself only louder and now I was saying things about how I know he is a bit odd and it’s fine to want to move tables, I don’t blame them. Oh, I went on and on. Her eyebrows knitted further. The man just waved his hand casually, telling me it’s fine. What’s fine?

“Dad, did you hear what she just said?” I’m the one who’s confused now. The atmosphere totally changed. This woman was mad at me. I was completely lost but could sense I had done something really wrong. “That’s my brother!” She was yelling a bit now. I wish I could tell you something clever about how I handled it but honestly, I can’t remember past uttering an apology and pretending I was needed in the kitchen. I went to the alleyway at the back of the bar and crouched down, head in hands. How could I serve them now? I couldn’t stay hidden here. Their lunch was almost ready and I was on my own apart from the Portuguese KP and the part time chef. With still red cheeks I took their plates out and said I hope you enjoy your meal. The Dad was the one to give me a sympathetic look now. The daughter was still raging at him about how outrageous I was.

She was right to be outraged. I was utterly appalled at myself, totally and utterly. I still am when I think about it. Over time this has turned into one of those stories friends request when we’re with someone new. “Go on, Helen, tell them that story about the rocking man with the witch craft book”. So I do and it always gets a good laugh but look under the table and you will see my toes curling as I tell it. They didn’t leave a tip and I never did see them in Ah Bar again. Funny that.

What not to do notes:

·       Never make assumptions about your customers

·       Never make assumptions about your customers

·       Never make assumptions about your customers

·       Never make assumptions about your customers

·       Never make assumptions about your customers

·       Never make assumptions about your customers