Chefs For CALM Dinner

Tuesday I wrote my last post. I woke up to the news that missing Chef Kevin Boyle’s body had been found in a garden in south London, it had been there for sometime following his death at his own hand. As I said at the time I didn’t know Kevin or work with him but his story saddened me greatly. I had the day off, a rare and precious thing these days, so some work on the new spring menum an afternoon shopping with my girlfriend and a relaxing evening at home were on the cards.

The thing is I couldn’t shake the news about Kevin, that anyone should feel they could not turn anywhere for help and had no choice but to end their life is in itself tragic, the fact that his body lay undiscovered until many months later is truly heartbreaking. Through out the day my thoughts kept returning to Kevin and that evening when I returned home I decided to write a blog post on it. I just wanted to take what was in my head and commit it to paper (or in this case a screen). I posted it, I tweeted it and then it just sort of took on a life of it’s own. I was inundated with retweets and comments on Twitter, depression and suicide have touched so many people’s lives and people were glad that someone was willing to highlight it. I thought maybe something positive could come from this terribly sad end to a once bright and promising life.

From the first mention of this idea on Twitter there have been offers of help forthcoming. Chef’s have responded, in most cases simply with the words “I’m in”. Chef’s give their time to help any number of worthy causes, given the chance to help with a problem that exists within their own industry they haven’t hesitated. Cheffing is a tough job, we know that and we accept and in a way it’s what drives us. However we can not ignore that the stresses and the pressure it places on those who wish to succeed and reach the top.

Yesterday I met with Jane Powell the director of CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), a charity who work exclusively with men who are suffering from depression. Given that suicide is the number one cause of death amongst young men in this country there is very little help available for men to prevent them taking this drastic step. She told me about the work they do and the struggles they face to provide a desperately needed place for men to turn to. They operate on a very small budget, receiving some funding from The Lottery and Comic Relief to help them deal with callers under 25 but receive no funding what so ever that is earmarked to help men over 25, ironically had Kevin called CALM they would have had to fund the cost of handling the call from private charitable donations. Even then they can only afford to keep their phone lines and text support service open till midnight.

On the 30th of April we are going to hold a Chefs for CALM dinner in central London. Plans are still at a very early stage but we hope to provide 200 guests with the chance to enjoy an amazing meal cooked by the best chefs in the country and hopefully raise a lot of money for a cause that so desperately needs it.

We want to raise the money needed to extend the helpline and text service till 3am, given the hours that chefs work having those extra 3hours could make a very big difference to someone seeking help. We also want to work with CALM to help their counsellors better understand the unique stresses faced by chefs.

More than anything by having the very chefs that these young guys aspire to be cooking at the dinner and backing this cause we want young chefs to know that it is ok to admit you need help and that there is somewhere they can turn for help from someone who is familiar with what they are going through.

If you can help in any way then please email us at CalmDinner@Gmail.com

Please put the type of help you can offer in the subject line (e.g. Chef, Front of House, Supplier, Sponsor etc) and John Comyn (@CityJohn on Twitter) who is organising the logistics will be in touch.

Depression is not a sign of weakness, it’s just a sign that we have been strong for too long. -Elizabeth Gilbert

Over the last few months I have seen the campaign to help find Chef Kevin Boyle develop on Twitter and through other media, social and traditional. I have retweeted calls for help and checked the website http://www.FindKevin.Co.uk to see what news there was. I don’t know Kevin, I have never met him or worked with him, those who have speak very highly of him as both a chef and a person. His story caught my attention if I am honest because of his link to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver who mentored him on the first series of his TV show 15, when Kevin was one of the young people looking to train as chefs under Jamie’s guidance.

This morning it was reported that Kevin’s body had been found at the bottom of a garden in Coulsdon where it had lain for some months, his death is being treated as a suspected suicide. For some reason I simply can’t put this out of my mind, I can not simply get on with my day.

Suicide is the leading cause of of death for men under 35, think about that for a minute. Think about all the warnings you see to prevent you shuffling off this mortal coil, from what you eat, what you drink, how you drive, even warnings aimed at people who are attempting to prove Charles Darwin right and remove themselves from the gene pool by racing the lights on a level crossing. The government spends millions every year on campaigns to save people from causes which result in far fewer deaths amongst young men than suicide.

A number of years ago I suffered kidney failure, over night I went from being an extremely successful self made tribute to the Celtic Tiger to being an invalid who couldn’t get out of a chair unaided. As my illness progressed I watched the trappings of my success being taken away from me one piece at a time. I saw my business collapse, my car and boat being repossessed or sold to try and meet my obligations, with no sign of a cure or even a correct diagnosis as I got weaker and weaker. In the last few weeks before I was evicted from my apartment I would lie awake at night in total darkness (I was unable to pay my electricity bill but refused to actually move back to my parents house until I was forced to hand over the keys) and while I never thought of taking my own life, I did pray that maybe I wouldn’t have to wake up the next day. I could never have taken the drastic step, because I know how devastated my family would have been, but had there been a button to press to simply slip away in my sleep I can not honestly say I would not have pressed it.

This was never due to a lack of support or of people to turn to. Yes, there were so called friends who dropped away when the good times stopped but those who were my friends before the money and are my friends today were there throughout not only willing but begging me to let them help me. I refused, too proud, too stubborn but mostly too ashamed and embarrassed to talk about how depressed I was.

In today’s world men dare not show any sign of what they perceive as weakness for fear of being ridiculed or thought less of. In sport we laugh off our injuries, we make light of any pain and we “walk it off”. When we deny we are suffering when there are obvious physical signs how can we admit to suffering from depression which has no scars, no bruises no plaster casts of proof? For any man that is an almost impossible ask but for a chef it is almost unthinkable.

Cheffing is a macho world, it’s tough, it’s demanding and it has absolutely no room for weakness. Getting smashed on service and coming back for more is a badge of honour. You don’t show you’re struggling, you don’t ask for help, to do so is going to get you precious little in the way of sympathy and more likely a barrage of piss taking comments from your colleagues. While these are not usually meant with any bad intentions they will still be made. It’s what we do, we’re chefs. we are tough, we laugh at people who complain they are exhausted by the time Friday afternoon rolls round in their office jobs. We strive to show how tough we are in a kitchen “want me to do 4 doubles on the spin? Fuck it mate give me 6, make it interesting”. This is not in any way an indictment of chefs, the overwhelming majority of those I have met are great blokes.

The thing is when you look at it as a job choice, cheffing with it’s long unsociable hours, hot often cramped working environments, extreme physical demands, high pressure and low pay should stand out as an job that could (and should) trigger bouts of depression but Health.Com doesn’t even list it in the top 10 jobs linked to depression (although waiting staff do get a mention). Maintenance workers, teachers, sales assistants and financial advisors are all in there but not chefs! Why? Is it because flogging jeans at The Gap is more likely to cause depression than doing back to back 18 hour shifts in a kitchen? Of fucking course not, it is because CHEFS DON’T COMPLAIN. We bitch and moan constantly but about trivial and petty things, we will bang on about how some wanker split the hollandaise, how clueless our front of house staff are, what fucking twat on table 12 ordered the steak well done or any number of other things but you will never hear a chef publicly admit to his peers that he is feeling depressed and unable to cope. Why do you think so many people crash out of this game? It is because they never admitted they needed help before it became too much.

This must stop, this tragic story of Kevin Boyle must not simply fade from memory, something must be done to give people in our industry somewhere to turn before this happens again.

What a difference a year makes

I’ve just returned from a fantastic meal at The Ship in Wandsworth, that’s hardly surprising to any of you who have eaten there. What may surprise some of you is that almost exactly one year ago to the minute (11.20pm) I returned to my rented room in Tooting having completed my trial shift for a job as a chef there.

I didn’t come to London to be a chef, I came here looking for work in Event Management and hoping to further my food writing career. I had gotten to know Oisin Rogers (www.twitter.com/mcmoop) the GM at The Ship via Twitter and had even helped out with the outside food at his other pub The Orange Tree in Richmond during rugby international weekends. He suggested that I try my hand at cheffing, even if it was only to keep me occupied till I found a job in the events industry, he felt it may even make for an interesting piece should I choose to write about it.

I took the opportunity of the trial shift and haven’t looked back since. Have I loved every day of it? Fuck no!

I sat opposite the pass at The Ship tonight enjoying my meal and smiling to myself remembering my first night there, after I had done the jobs that Dave Faunch the head chef had set out for me he brought me up to the pass to watch the dishes get plated. He only did so to be nice and because he wasn’t really sure what else to do with me, I was there for 4 hours and had finished my allotted tasks with time left to spare. In the 20 minutes I was there I must have gotten in the way about 30 times, the more I tried to not get in the way the more I crashed around the place like a hard on sporting drunk elephant in a brothel. Dave sent me home early but I got the job.

I have been fortunate, very fortunate to get support and encouragement from people in all areas of the food community, I’ve also had more than my fair share of doubters. The thing is no one doubted me more than I doubted myself. This was madness pure and simple, who the fuck was I trying to kid? I was a month shy of my 35th birthday and I was entering an incredibly busy, high pressure kitchen and expected to keep up, with experienced talented chefs and keen, fit and youthful commis who were less than half my age. I lacked the knowledge of the experienced chefs and I lacked the physical stamina of these 17 year olds who haven’t racked up 2 decades of piss ups, curries, debauchery  and general fuckwittery that left me as an old Irish comic once said “temporary lazy and permanently tired”. I may have joked that my body was a temple but that was only because it was falling to ruins, full of spirits and I kept the boots on the outside!

The only 2 things in my favour was I wanted this, I really fucking wanted this, I have been consumed with a wish to cook for longer than I can remember and secondly I am even by Irish standards one of the most stubborn bastards walking the face of the Earth. In life when all else has failed me, ego, pride, brute force and ignorance have seen me through. I struggled a lot in the early days, physically I was a wreck, emotionally I was frail, I would lie on my futon in my rented room in tooting suffering aches and pains and sheer exhaustion and suddenly feel a wetness on my face and realise that I was crying, I don’t know why, I was usually too shattered to think, it was just my body’s way of saying “enough, please stop this, don’t make me go back there again tomorrow” but I did, and the tomorrow after that and the tomorrow after that.

I compressed about 3 years kitchen time into about 4 months, I looked to make every day better than the one before, I didn’t always manage it but on the whole I learnt quick and physically got to grasps with the job. After 5 months I made a move away from The Ship and went to The Engineer in Primrose Hill. If at The Ship I learnt the mechanics of a kitchen then at The Engineer I learnt it’s nuances. I studied head chef Ollie Prince with an almost stalkerish level on interest, here was a guy who made it look, if not easy, then certainly doable. His calmness was in stark contrast to the frenetic energy of Dave my previous head chef.  Job wise I guess I was treading water, Ollie had a fully staffed brigade and the battle to save the pub from brewery repossession meant that my planned career move was put on the back burner.

It was a chat with Johnnie Mountain that made my mind up, he told me point blank I needed my own kitchen, those of you who know or know of Johnnie will see him as one of the great culinary rogues, a gifted chef with little care or regard for how people react to what he says or does. If you get the chance however to talk to him at length you will discover him to be a thoughtful and extremely intelligent guy but being Johnnie that intelligence is accompanied by a brutal honesty. He told me I would always be as much of a hindrance as a help to a head chef, sure I could run a service and boss a brigade but I was always going to want more input than would be wanted from me.

The say that “God protects fools, drunks and children” and I qualified for at least 2 of those, 3 if you count mental age and pretty soon the chance to take on the head chef job at The Alexandra in Wimbledon came up. I met Mick and Sarah the managers and took the job when they offered it to me.

My first day as head chef at The Alex was every bit as nerve wracking as my first trial shift a mere 7 months previously.

I had put dishes on menus before, I’d written prep lists, I’d run services but now I was going to write an entire menu, detail every prep item and run every service. Trust me that’s a fucking daunting thought. The few days break I had before starting there were taken up with furiously writing and rewriting menus, trying to balance starters and mains, trying to make the whole menu hang together, trying to be original but not different just for the sake of it. My menu had to reflect my food but it also had to make people want to eat it. I agonised over the final draft and asked a few trusted friends who work in the industry for their opinion, they loved it (or at least said they did) and I proudly walked into the kitchen on my first day with a print out of it in my hand and promptly ripped it up.

I couldn’t change everything overnight, I had taken no real account of the people who ate there, the local food options, the lay out of the kitchen or the level of the brigade I was inheriting. I was also replacing a chef who may have been quite disillusioned but was also quite close with the rest of the gang in the kitchen. I wanted them to believe not only in me but in the food I wanted to produce, likewise I wanted Mick and Sarah to feel they made the right choice in giving me the chance. I also needed to get the punters to believe in what I was doing and to trust me to deliver good food for their hard earned money.

It hasn’t been easy and it certainly hasn’t been smooth sailing, I accept that at times I am impossible to work with, I accept that I can at times appear arrogant and precious about my food, I am, I have to be. I have to believe that every plate I put up is equal to or better than an plate of equal value put up by another chef with vastly more experience in this industry than me. Every part of me is tied up in the success or failure of my first head chef job. Should it all go arse over tit than The Alex will still be a massively successful pub. The one thing I will never let myself fail because of is lack of effort on my part, when I took over I worked 22 days straight without a day off and in the first 5 weeks I had about 3 days off in total and 2 of those were to attend a wedding. Mick Dore has on occasion all but physically ejected me from the building, despite working 3 50+ hour weeks while suffering from terrible sciatic nerve trouble in my back I refused to cut my hours until he ordered me to take a weeks holiday.

This week has served as time to reflect, it is the first week off I have had in my year as a chef, it’s the first time I’ve had a chance to look at what we have achieved at The Alex. Mick said early on that he felt we were recasting the dye in how food in pubs is done, we are not a gastropub, everything isn’t served in massive white bowls, there isn’t a designated dining area (no matter how much I kick and scream and demand one), you can sit anywhere and order anything on our menu. I believe we have reintroduced south west London to the bar snack, we have put on potted ham with home made piccalilli and braised ox cheek with roasted shallots in red wine gravy and we recently placed tied 5th in the Scotch Egg Challange, just behind Heston’s Michelin star pub The Hindes Head and ahead of a number of other equally rated pubs. Our menu reflects the best of traditional British food but done at a level that has been sadly lacking in most pubs for a very long time and it’s already being embraced by diners.

More than anything seeing the difference in the brigade I work with has been my most gratifying experience to date, to see an enthusiasm for the profession that simply wasn’t there in August is something I am very proud of. I said recently that everyone of them is a a better chef now than when I took over and someone joked about how modest I was being, the thing is all the help from me in the world wouldn’t make a difference if they didn’t want to learn or put in the effort to improve.

We have received some amazing feed back and write ups, people are seeking us out as a place to dine, they are trusting us to cook dishes that in my first week they would never have dared order. Are we the finished article yet? No, no more than I am the finished article as a head chef. There is so much more for me to learn and so much more for us at The Alex to do to take us to where, when reached I will be completely happy with. Am I going to upset some more people along the way? Without a doubt! Am I going to get more things wrong? Of fucking course I will. Am I going to put every ounce of my spirit, soul and effort into making it happen? What do you think?

To those of you who have supported me this past year, there is no depth of gratitude that convey how I feel about you all, through what may have seemed small actions or comments on your part you have help me achieve a dream that only 1 year ago was just that, a dream, you are my friends and you will always be so, thank you.

To those of you who have followed my journey I thank you also, and a year from now? Who knows!

Time to Serve up or Shut up!

Haven’t done this for a while so this may not be the shortest post!

It seems a long time ago that I left The Ship in Wandsworth to take the next step on my journey as a chef. Journey is the right word too as I accepted a job at The Engineer in Primrose Hill. For those of you who don’t know the area Primrose Hill is just on the outskirts of Brussels or at least the commute time makes it feel that way.

Leaving The Ship was a tough decision. I loved working there, the staff were more than just co-workers they were friends, Dave Faunch the head chef (despite our differences) was a guy who could really cook, his talent was evident in the quality of the dishes. The kitchen there was hard core, with little down time and constant pressure on service to produce the quality of food demanded in the volume that food that good will draw.

Going to The Engineer, which I have talked about in a previous post, is the type of kitchen that anyone looking to learn how to be a good chef should seek out and work in. I can honestly say that had I not spent those months working under head chef Ollie Prince I do not think I would have considered myself ready to take on my own kitchen. Ollie is the type of chef who has supreme confidence in his own ability with food, not in an arrogant way but in a way that he doesn’t need to follow trends or overly complicate dishes, in fact one of the most popular dishes there of spatchcock poussin consists of just 4 items on a plate, 2 of which are dressing and a garnish of pine nuts.

On my first day in the kitchen he showed me half a Tamworth pig and told me to pick what I wanted to make a dish from. My first thoughts were to go for the loin or the belly but I figured I need to prove to him that I could produce quality food without taking the easier routel of choosing fashionable cuts, so I asked him for the head, the hocks and the trotters.  I cooked the meat for 6 hours in St Peter’s Ale, with stock veg and some herb, allowed it to cool over night before pulling all the meat from the bones, then adding the raw kidney, some fresh herbs and the fat from the cheek and forming them into fish cake size  fritters. These were double paneed, deep fried and served on lentils that had been cooked in the beer the meat had been braised in, along with a cab sav and mustard dressing and at the suggestion of Chris Lyons (a former CDP at The Ledbury) a simple rocket and orange salad. It looked like this

And it tasted pretty damn good.

On a busy service The Engineer can match The Ship in terms of covers, but in a kitchen half the size. Tough as this was most days during the heat wave in June made it almost impossible, the temperature in the kitchen was never much below stifling. You know you’re in serious fucking trouble when the Algerian guy starts complaining about the heat! For fuck’s sake I’m Irish, I’m likely to burst into flames above 35degrees. In all the busy services I worked there I only heard Ollie shout twice, once because the same commis chef burnt him for the second day running and the other time because we were all fucking around in the kitchen at the start of service as he was calling out the first cheques.

In between these manic services it was a hugely fun place to work. The staff there look like they have been recruited from a mobile phone ad, a fantastically diverse group who suited the relaxed bo-ho air of the place. The Engineer is famous for the famous people who eat and drink there, the first week I was on service Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse came in for lunch, I had to pass their table to go down to the walk-in which is in the cellar, every time I passed I kept hoping Harry would ask me why I was making frequent trips to the cellar, I was ready with a zingy “well we have the Fritzls in for lunch and they are just happier down there”. He never asked, and a superb comedic talent went undiscovered. You know you really are rubbing shoulders with giants of celebrities when you hear the words “Adam Ant’s on the phone, is Tam around?”. I hoped he was booking a table, I prayed I would be on service when he came into eat, who know’s I may have even gotten to cook his dish but he never came, and I eventually guessed he never would and just wiped the red and blue paint off my face, took the ruffled collar off my chefs jackets and got back to cooking.

As part of Ollie’s policy that everyone gets to know the kitchen I had to spend some time working on the larder section, this is where cold dishes are plated, mostly salads and desserts. Everyone in the kitchen spends time on larder and it is seen as a nice break from the incessant heat of the hot section. Needless to say I wanted to prove that I wasn’t going to treat this as a bit of a holiday and set about making salads that were spectacular, colourful, pictures on a plate. The problem with this is that trying to build up plates with salad is like trying to build a house from lego when you only have those fucking L shaped blocks. You fuss over a salad and go to remove one piece to make it look more balanced only to discover it’s a load bearing avocado and watching the whole fucking thing collapse like a leafy Jenga tower.

The problem with The Engineer is that is in Camden and I live in Wandsworth, the commute was an absolute ball ache. Ewan McGreggor and Michael Palin both turned down the chance to make a documentary about the epic trek sighting a wish to not be away from their loved ones for so long. The London Underground may be a marvel of modern commuter transit but when you tend to use it to travel long distances in unsocial hours you soon realise that is the biggest collection of fast moving, mobile fucking nut cases in the fucking world. Leaving the house at 6am and mostly only making the last tube with precious minutes to spare I shared carriages with a veritable ensemble cast for a movie about a ship of lost souls.

Around about the time that the commute was starting to become completely exhausting (getting up at 6am and getting home at 1am the following morning) I was approached by Mick & Sarah Dore of The Alexandra in Wimbledon. They took over The Alex about 18months ago and had tripled the overall trade in that time. The felt the time was right to develop the food and bring it to the next level. We spoke candidly about my experience (or lack of it), I told them what I had in mind for the menu, what I felt I could bring to the table and the areas I felt I would need their support. I said I wanted to take the food in the direction of a Grill based menu. I think there is an opening not just in Wimbledon but in South West London for a really good Grill. We chatted about plans and a few days later I went down and did a trial shift after which they offered me the job as head chef.

Here I was, a little over 7 months since I started as a commis chef and I had just landed my first roll as a head chef. This wasn’t some nice little 30 cover restaurant but rather one of the top 3 busiest pubs in the Youngs chain. It was a gamble for Mick & Sarah to take but even more so it was a massive gamble on my part. I could have picked up a job in a kitchen closer to home and continued to learn other styles of cooking and of running kitchens, while finding the time to finish work on my book. It would be the sensible and safer option.

Instead I decided to put myself front and centre with no place to hide. Every dish that leaves the kitchen now is my responsibility, I don’t get the excuse of not having cooked something if it is brought back, every dish that crosses the pass it’s up to me to make sure it’s as good as it can possibly be. So far it’s gone very well, the menu is pretty much set, the FOH have stepped up their game to learn about the new dishes and the brigade have gotten behind what we are now doing in the kitchen. I am not going to pretend it’s easy, it’s far fucking from it, just getting to grips with the ordering system for a company the size of Youngs is like trying to wrestle an octopus that’s already wrestling an elephant. Putting rotas together, doing stock lists, following endless EHO regulations with their accompanying paperwork, planning a new kitchen layout and arranging a menu launch where some of London’s most influential foodies will be present takes a massive amount of work, in fact since getting back from a brief trip to Ireland my first day off will be Friday of next week which will be 22days since I stepped back into the kitchen.

When all is said and done it will be the quality of the food that will determine if I pull this off, like I said it’s time to serve up or shut up!

I will recap my first month as a head chef in my next post.

Engineering the Future

Everyone has one, a place that suits them, somewhere they feel comfortable, a place where they identify with. We search them out, when we find them, we bring our friends there, make it “our place”. Over time you get to know the staff, a casual “hello” develops into a brief chat and eventually a full blown conversation. Pubs that make you feel this way are hard to find, and getting harder every day.

In London everyone is in a fucking rush, doesn’t matter if they are the CEO of a major company, a minor flunky in an office or a bloke selling the Big Issue outside Sainsburys they’re in a rush, they have to be otherwise people won’t think they are important. Stop a homeless guy and he will most likely tell you that he hasn’t got time to talk he has to yell at the pigeons in Trafalgar Square in 15 minutes. Pubs and restaurants have adapted to this, they not only keep up with, but perpetuate the belief that everyone is so fucking important that if they spend more than 30 minutes eating lunch the world will fall off its axis as there is no one back at the office to put callers on hold and then forget about them.

I’m not one of these people, yes sometimes I am in a hurry but it’s only if I am running late, I accept my place in the world and I know that if I wasn’t here tomorrow things would carry on pretty much as normal. Well once they had demolished the Diana fountain in Hyde Park to make way for the Memorial Cork Gourmet Guy Cider Press & Swearing Academy. Because of this I like pubs and restaurants that don’t simply want you in and out and considerably poorer as quickly as possible, who don’t consider service to be that annoying time between ordering and paying for your meal. I like places where I feel the service is friendly and relaxed buy also professional. I don’t want stuffy, formal, starched linen service from android like waiters in priest creeper shoes (they are the ones that are unbelievably quiet and make no sound on gravel so it’s easier for them to sneak up on alter boys).

When I first went to The Engineer in Primrose Hill that was the relaxed, easy going atmosphere that stood out. Staff chatted and joked with customers but it was obvious that the customers were relaxed as they knew well that they were in good hands. I liked it a lot, and bear in mind this is  a pub that only concession to cider is some sort of cloudy stuff with not a bubble to be seen, so much in fact that over the next few visits myself and Ed discussed me joining the team. Initially on a temporary basis while waiting for a new venture which involves us both to start. I said yes, despite knowing the commute was going to be a fucking nightmare. I heard Ewan McGreggor turned the job down as he felt the trek was too arduous and chose in stead to unicycle over the Andes while being accompanied by Jedward.

Ok here comes the problem and it’s a big fucking problem! The Engineer is leased from Mitchell and Butler, a monolithic organisation who own such culinary wastelands as Harvester, All Bar One and O’Neills. To date they have been happy to accept their rent and leave us alone to do what we do, which is serve food consisting of fantastic ingredients cooked sympathetically and given their own chance to shine and be enjoyed. This works, it works very well in fact. The Engineer does extremely well, it is after all a business. Tam and Abigail (the owners) are not in this as a charitable venture, in fact despite his charity work Ed Francis insists on taking a competitive wage, as do all the staff so I am not trying to portray this as a sort of puppy & fireworks store, Willy Wonka style wonderland. The work there is hard, fucking hard in fact, this last weekend we got battered in the kitchen for 4 days straight. We did obscene amounts of covers on every service, most of which we were down staff for. Tempers got frayed and people yelled at each other, egos got dented, hands got burned (mine in particular) but we pulled through and then all laughed about it afterwards over a beer and a smoke.

Now Mitchell & Butler have decided they want The Engineer back. Why? Well they look at the figures, see the net profit and they want it, it’s that simple. They have refused to renew our lease, refused a very generous offer to buy the freehold and stood firm in their demands that we hand back the keys in September. The thing is that in a technical legal sense that is their right. However as so often is the case legal and moral correctness have fuck all in common. People have worked hard for many years to make The Engineer what is is today, they have put their heart and soul into the place so why should a massive corporation simply be able to swoop in and take it all away from them. There has never been an issue with paying the rent, we have been exemplary tenants from the start. They simply want to pad their books with the addition of a net profit they did fuck all to earn. They also want to hang out in the midst of the Primrose Hill set, they want to brag to their faceless, joyless friends that Harry Enfield was in again with Paul Whitehouse for lunch, or Lisa Snowden stopped by for breakfast. They want to bask in the reflected glory of the celeb set who treat The Engineer as their local. They won’t ever fit in there, I mean most of the guys with their interesting beards and professionally unkempt hair who look a bit like a Bo-Ho Jesus and girls who have spent hours perfecting their just rolled out of bed look are not going to be impressed when a set of Brummie accountants from M&B rock up for their team building lunch.

So what can we do about it? Well basically we can make a big fucking fuss, tell them that reaping the rewards they didn’t sow with hard work isn’t fucking on. They want a turnover like that and a net profit to match then do their own fucking hard work. We can tell them that it’s not necessary or okay to make money by simply choosing the cheapest supplier on every ingredient, if you’ve been unfortunate enough to eat in one of their many establishments then you know just how shit they are, if they can come in and impose those levels of food standards on The Engineer then they can pretty much do it to every unique, local and unchained pub in the land. The vast majority of pubs are lease holds, the free hold is owned by some brewery so no matter how successful or well run a place is, whenever a brewery wants they can simply take it back from the tenants. That can’t be fucking right, can it? Do we want to see all the efforts to produce top quality food punished for doing so successfully? Are we going to say to anyone with a dream of running their own place “yeah go for it, bust you balls for years and as soon as you start to make a bit of cash it will all be taken away from you?”.

Help us, help us draw a line in the sand and say “oi you, yeah you corporate twat, fuck off back on that side of the line”. Sign our petition here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/theengineer/, email M&B and tell them you will boycott their existing establishments (ok so thats no big deal to you but they don’t fucking know that). Annoy them, piss them off, be a nuisance, trust me it will make you feel much better. `

Join us at The Engineer on the 7th of June at 11am if you can make it.

“To the success of our hopeless task”

A Survival Guide to Cheffing

Over the years there have been countless survival guides covering everything from Christmas sales to Zombie attacks. Many people have indeed made successful careers from teaching others how to survive with their TV shows, there’s Ray Mears for instance who’s survival training seems to have taken place in the stock room of his local Greggs where through hard work and effort he made himself famine and drought resistant. Then you have Bear Grills who’s biggest survival tip appears to be make sure there is a decent Comfort Inn right next to the remote, desolate wilderness you are to be marooned in. In fact when Googling survial guides (fuck yeah I did my research, well just that really but still!) I saw one titled A Survival Guide to Midwifery! I would have thought that was a fairly short guide, Step 1: Wash your hands, Step 2: for fucks sake don’t drop it!

Recently I have met several people who are intent on abandoning perfectly good careers with decent money, reasonable hours and humane working conditions to become chefs. I thought for them maybe I could write this and give them the benefit of my experience on how to survive in a busy pro kitchen.

The very first piece of advice I have given them and anyone thinking of becoming a chef later in life is Don’t! Seriously don’t fucking do it, unless you spend more than half your time in your current job thinking about being or wishing you were a chef then you won’t hack it. That sounds like a very glib generalisation but it’s not. Cheffing is fucking hard, gruelling work and unless the wish to do it is almost all consuming you will crash out hard. I told someone that at my lowest point in a kitchen, when I came closest to packing it in, one of the reasons I didn’t was that if I had quit I would quite likely have never cooked again. That’s not me being melodramatic it’s the truth, I spent my entire life cooking and wanting to be a chef, telling myself I could do it, listening to others who told me I should do it and if I had failed I would have felt like a fraud. All the authority I assumed when talking about food would have seemed like complete bullshit if I couldn’t do the job. So unless you are totally driven by food and willing to take the risk that if it goes wrong your relationship and passion for food may be irrevocably changed then stick to enjoying yourself in your kitchen and impressing your family and friends.

If you are going to do it then remember these 3 key requirements, knife skills, knife skills, knife skills! They got me the job, and at times probably saved me from being fired from it. If you can prep veg at decent speed you are useful in a kitchen, if you fuck up on service you will get far less of a bollocking if you can be sent to prep something. When I did my trial shift at The Ship the head chef said he could not believe the level of my knife skills for an amateur and just seeing me hold a knife he knew I could cook. There is only one way to develop these and that’s practice , a lot. Go to your local supermarket, buy very large bags of carrots and chop them into a dice that’s roughly 1/4 the size of your baby finger nail. Do it lots, set aside an hour a couple of nights a week and do nothing else but chop carrots. Do it until your only vaguely aware that you are actually doing it, until the knife feels like an extension of your hand.

Try and take a couple of weeks off and use your holiday to work at a busy kitchen, offer to work for free, it will let you see a close up kitchen environment and see how chefs interact with each other. Some people I’ve talked to said they were going to look for mini stages on Fridays / Saturdays over a few months but to be honest this is a waste of time. You will most likely be ignored as the team will be far too pre-occupied handling busy services to pay you much time or attention. In a pro kitchen when you are starting out the best thing you can do when the shit hits the fan in a manic service is stay the fuck out of the way. In fact the first thing you have to learn in any busy kitchen is where not to be! I spent my first weeks on the pass crashing into everyone else, it’s a tight space and as anyone who has seen the brigade at The Ship will testify none of us ever met a meal we didn’t like!

You need to see a kitchen on a Tuesday morning, the weekend is over, triage has been preformed on the stocks on the Monday to make the place workable again. People are relaxed, new ingredients come in and you stand around discussing what new dishes should be created with them, or what changes to make to existing dishes. If you’re asked give your opinion but don’t get carried away, I know I did on occasion, went wading in throwing ideas for dishes about without thinking about how they would work on service or how they matched up with what the chef’s food philosophy was. The best thing you can do initially is to offer suggestions about a garnish or plating idea. That may seem a bit odd, to stifle your food creativity but you have to earn the right to get your dishes on the menu.

Earning that right isn’t easy, at some point if you are serious about staying on in this business it will become obvious to the chef at which time you will most likely be kicked around a kitchen. By now your novelty will have worn off and it will be time for them to test your mettle, it happened to me and it will at some stage happen to you. If you don’t come through it then you are never going to put your stamp on a kitchen. It will happen for 2 reasons, as I said the novelty will wear off (at least it did in my case), a head chef will be stuck with someone who has less kitchen experience than even the most junior commis but a level of food knowledge that is on a par with the more senior chefs in the kitchen and in a busy restaurant that isn’t really what he needs. Secondly and this is actually relatively a good reason, they need to know if they can trust you. If you go down on a busy service then you drag everyone else down with you. Kitchen brigades run at the speed of their weakest member, and that person can bring a whole brigade crashing down. For me, this kicking took the form of  doing 124hours in 10days, I survived…….. but barely.

When you do graduate to service the biggest threat and greatest ally you have is time. Fight for it, steal it, horde it, fear it, respect it and by any means necessary accumulate it. Read ahead on tickets, get things ready for the chef to call them away, grab yourself a few seconds on every ticket and it will buy you the minutes that turn a shit service into a good one. Watch everything, see where people are and be ready with what you need to finish a table, be it a garnish, a side or one of the simpler hot dishes. Understand the terminology of the kitchen. When the chef says “check on” it doesn’t necessarily mean “cook this now”, it means “this has just been ordered”. Even if it has as starter on the ticket that you are responsible for look at the pass, if the sous and head chef are plating mains for a table of 14 and you rock up holding your starter plate, it’s going in the bin and you’re possibly going in the fryer! Wait to hear if something is “away”, like wise if the chef calls for anything that is on your section and says “I need it now” he doesn’t give a fuck if you are doing another order, some prep or Kelly Brook, stop it and get what he needs and get it fucking fast. Be selfish but don’t be a prick, offer to help but make sure you are set up yourself first, on service make sure you have all the bowls, plates, tongs and all the other crap you need on your section before letting someone take something off you. When you do offer to do jobs don’t always accept the shit ones, think about what you’re being asked to do. I was once asked to check the labels in the walk-in (that’s the fridge that’s big enough to walk into) and thought to myself “sounds like a nice, cool, relaxing break”. It was in fact an interminably fucking long time, locked inside a very fucking cold room trying to make out the scrawled writing of someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language. I swear to fuck I was in there that long I half expected to see Ben Fogle come by with some Huskies and a camera crew filming some new Arctic adventure (Bear Grills wouldn’t take the job as there isn’t a decent Premier Inn in our walk in)!

Learn from those around you. Your head chef is going to be fucking busy, don’t piss him off with constant questions and random food musings (yeah sorry about that Dave I know I drove you up the fucking wall half the time), he has a million things that actually have to be sorted before he can even begin cooking. Your sous is mostly only interested in service, he will run quite a lot of them and will inevitably do certain things differently to the head chef if for no other reason than he wants you to know it’s his pass and it’s done his way. The person you need to watch closest and the one who can teach you the most is your junior or demi sous. I was blessed in this instance at The Ship, I had Damo as my jr sous and the guy is an absolute fucking legend. He thought me more in a kitchen than anyone else, a jr sous knows what its like to be on a section, he will most likely still be on one so he can give you advice and guidance on how to make it work. For all that advice, if you find that something else works better for you and still gets what needs doing done as fast, then set it up your own way. Everyone in that kitchen knows more than you about how the place runs so listen and watch them. Go for a smoke the same time as other chefs, get to know them and what they like about food, bear in mind that you will have eaten in more restaurants and probably have far stronger views on what food you like to cook so they can learn something from you.

Along the way you will get to deal with what I call “the others”, people who are in the kitchen but you are only mostly vaguely aware off, namely agency chefs and kitchen porters. Agency chefs are easy to explain, every single one of the will tell you that he has worked with Gordon, Marco and Heston, inspired Floyd, mentored Jamie and fucking invented fire! Yet oddly enough are happy to be dispatched to the 4 corners of the capital for £8 an houe, get confused by prep lists, lost in the walk in, surprised by tickets and generally be more of a fucking hindrance  than a help. These are the people you hand 60 soft boiled quails eggs too and say “do me a favour mate and peel them”. As for KPs a good one is worth their weight in vouchers for English lessons. Don’t dump crap on them, don’t treat them like skivvies, they have the hardest job in any kitchen and let’s be fucking honest you wouldn’t do their job in a million fucking years. Most chefs do treat them like crap so if you’re the one that doesn’t then when you do need them to do a job they are likely to do it right the first time.

Finally get your swagger on! When you have bust your balls, been smashed in service, worked the kind of hours that cause amnesty international to hold rallies in central London in support of you and earned the respect (even if it’s begrudging) of your senior chefs, start acting like you belong to be there. Kitchens are like the last cowboy outpost of the wild west, volatile, male orientated, testosterone filled environments where the weak are found out and mercilessly cut loose. There’s no place for you there if you don’t stand up for yourself, people need to know not to fuck with you and to treat you as an equal. You prove you can hack it and you will get the respect needed.

This may all sound a bit harsh and macho and many people will tell you that there is another way, do “lil stages”, find a genteel chef who will treat you with kid gloves, who will value your life experience and rely on your sage counsel, frankly that’s bollox, you know why because as nice as a chef may be it’s the public that will fuck you. They want food, they want it when they are hungry, they want it fast and they want it exactly the way the ordered it and when fucking loads of them turn up wanting all of that at the same time then you are going to get battered on service. Thing is, if this is what you want, if this is really for you then you will want nothing else. Everything you do in a kitchen is just crap you need to get out of the way before service. Yeah it’s fun and you have some great laughs when prepping in a relaxed kitchen, joking around and generally taking the piss out of each other but it’s service you live for. You want to get out there and smash it, knock the fucker out of the park, take on a hungry public and win. The buzz, the adrenaline, the feeling like you took a beating but came out the other side, that’s what you should do this for. You have to be wired wrong to be a chef at the best of times and to give up a perfectly good career to do it you have to be fucking nuts.

If you are that crazy, then my friend let me be the first to welcome you to the dark side and if I can help you in anyway then just let me know!

From there to here via KaiWeCare

I have put this blog off for a while, to be honest writing about Kaiwecare has been as daunting as organising it and this time I don’t have a core group of exceptional, hard working and committed (and to be honest there were times when they probably felt they should have been) people to help or a small army of dedicated professionals giving their time to make it a success.  More than anything it’s hard to write about it because it seems so surreal at times.

Last Tuesday (26th April) I, along with Mat Follas, went to meet John Key the Prime Minister of New Zealand at The Gherkin. We had been invited as representatives of those involved with Kaiwecare to come and meet him as a token of thanks for the work that was done and the money that was raised so far. It was a lovely, if unnecessary gesture. I got all gussied up in my suit, which was very well received, although I am not sure if I should be flattered or insulted that people seemed so shocked that I could scrub up nice, and met Mat at The English Pig run by chef / patron Johnny Mountain (you may remember him as the bloke that cried on a recent cooking show!). We had a wonderful lunch with Meemalee and TheCriticalCouple (I would include links to your twitter pages but I don’t actually know how to do that!) and then jumped a cab to meet the PM. The reception was on the top floor of the Gherkin, which is reached via 2 separate banks of lifts and a walk up a winding stair case to what I can only describe as a breath taking view of London. The room was populated by some high flying ex-pat Kiwi’s keen to shake the great man’s hand, a small barrage of tv crews and paps, folks from the embassy and a selection of people who’s vague job titles seem to demand a truly heroic intake of canapes. Then there was Mat and me, standing off to one side bitching about recent services and talking about food while I was trying to get as much swearing out of my system as possible before our promised audience with the PM. If you read this blog then you know I am fairly free and easy with the F word, not the show where Gordon Ramsay insists on stripping off while a song somewhat worryingly proclaims his love for his mother in the background, but the word “fuck”. While those who know me are used to it, there was a mild panic amongst them that I would swear in front of the Right Honorable Mr Key and spark some sort of international incident.

When he did talk to us he was exceptionally nice, very sincere in his thanks and extremely well briefed on who he was meeting, he congratulated me on winning Masterchef, said I was a lot taller in real life and asked Mat what part of Ireland he was from! We chatted for about 10 minutes and I didn’t fucking swear once, although I did manage to get “reach around” into the conversation! I said that Ireland and New Zealand were quite similar as we were both small island nations who’d had a big reach around the world. If Mr Key noticed he is far too good a politician to let on and if he didn’t and hears about it through this then sorry mate but there was a bet of a beer involved! As a Kiwi I know he will understand!

Ok now we get to why I have hummed and hawed over writing this. In that room were various people who are very senior members of very large charities (these would be the canape eaters). While the PM was an absolute gent, the New Zealand High Commissioner Derek Leask a charming and engaging host and Justine Arroll a credit worthy ambassador for New Zealand not one of the great and the good of the charities came within 10 feet of us. And you know what? That kind of fucked me off.

It got me thinking about all of those who sacrificed to help make Kaiwecare happen. Those who gave not only their time but a part of themselves to ensure it was a success. Yes me and Mat were the poster boys pushed out front, him because he is a celeb and a Kiwi, me because I was the fucking idiot who suggested the pop-up dinner in the first place but we were in all honesty only players in a team of often unsung heroes. The likes of Anny Baxter who managed what no other woman in 35 years has managed and kept me on the straight and narrow for a month while compiling numerous spread sheets and action plans and then pretending to believe me when I swore blind I had read them. She never once grumbled, she simply got on with things, who knew that stoicism could come in such a petite frame. John Commyn, the one person whose sanity more than any other I tested over the month, took on logistics who’s scale is normally only seen during sustained military conflict or an Elton John shopping spree. As John and I are mates I spent more time with him than I did with most involved and he was therefore the one who had to make sense of my half baked ideas. He practically melted his Oyster card traipsing around London and on the day in question had to climb into a white van and dash across the city to make sure we actually had food to cook with. He was joined in this frankly ball aching task by Huey and Nathan, two guys we had never even spoken to until the night before who turned up offering to pick up the rest of the food. We then handed them the keys to vans rented in our name and hoped they would return with said vans intact and a couple of grands worth of Michelin star prepped food. The did just that and were complete legends.

AngHarad Davies brought me a burlesque troop, for that I will be forever eternally grateful. She then wouldn’t let me within 10 feet of them, for that I will be forever eternally a little bit ticked off but she proved herself to be one of the most reliable, competent and selfless people I have ever worked with, she may have a slight Percy Pig addiction but she is a complete sweetheart.

Grant Hawthorne took on the unenviable task of bossing a brigade of 42 chefs and proceeded to give a master class in how to run a kitchen. Every course hit bang on, every element served in exactly the right manner, giving every dish and every chef who worked on it, along with every producer and supplier who donated the food to make up the course the chance to shine. I have no idea how he did, not only did I never hear him shout I hardly heard him speak, at a look people knew what he wanted for them. Honestly at one point I walked into the kitchen and saw 40+ chefs and thought “fuck this I need a smoke, I can’t look at this many people right now”. I went outside, calmed down, had a smoke and came back in…………..to be greeted by the sight of 50+ front of house staff waiting to be deployed. At that point in the day I resolved to never leave the building again in case more people rocked up while I was gone.

Front of house in itself was a massive undertaking. 9 course to get to 200 guests in 2 and a half hours with a team that had never worked together and in the vast majority of cases had never set foot inside the venue, even typing it now it seems fucking ludicrous that they even attempted it, no mind that they pulled it off with such spectacular professionalism. Headed up by Rob Berry (never say “nom” in his presence he will look at you with a blood chilling stare), Giancarlo Princigalli (who even by Milan standards is always a vision of sartorial elegance) and Phil White (who self-deprecatingly describes himself as some bloke who runs a pub in south London) with the help of Michael West and Martin Renshaw of Pollen Street Social and their entire front of house team which we stole for the night as well as my own team of Emma, Hannah and Charlie from The Ship these guys were flawless. Their service and professionalism more than did justice to the food prepared by the incredibly talented chefs in the kitchen. The were matched stride for stride by Ed Francis and his wine team, including Angus MacNab and Johanna Wimmer and prerequisite Kiwi Emma Shanks.

Not a wine fan? Well Melissa Cole had you covered with a full bar of beers, cider (cheers babe you have no idea how much I needed a glass of that at the end of the night) and spirits. We had bar tending legend Johnny “The Rocket” Knight bossing an all-star team of Joel and Aggy from The Green Man Putney, Alice Procter from The Nightingale in Balham and Ben from The Merchant & The Clarance (yes he’s that good he has two home pubs). A seemingly small bar crew to slake the thirst of 200 guests and 100 staff but they showed it’s all about the quality of the staff not the size of the crew.

I roped in countless friends and Twitter pals, Chris Pople and Hugh Wright greeted people on arrival and ensured they were made feel welcome from the start. Olympic level schoomzer and all round legend Oisin Rogers interspersed his lubricating people’s wallets to pull us out of the shit on more than one occasion. I even roped in my then very new landlady Kay and the lovely Holly from The Luxe Upstairs to register people on arrival. KaveyF (Kavita to her friends, superstar to me) took some beautiful photos of the night while the afore-mentioned Meemalee did what no other videographer managed on the day and caught me swearing on camera.

The food on the night was of a quality not seen outside of a Michelin star restaurant, and not seen in any Michelin star joint in those numbers was as good as it was not only because of the skill of the chefs but because of the quality of the the produce donated. It would take me an eternity to list all those responsibly so I will post a digital copy of the menu / brochure soon so they can all receive their deserved congratulations.

Mat Follas, MatKiwi if you’re on Twitter, did the most amazing job of promoting and pushing the event. On the night he was exceptional in his role as the ambassador for Kaiwecare, with Nick Coffer and Tim Hayward sharing the microphone duties ensuring that people knew why they were there, what they were eating, (thanks to Peter McCombie they knew what they were drinking too) and latterly why they were being relieved of large chunks of their cash. Through all the stress, all the panic, all the near disasters Mat projected an image of warmth and calm that kept people relaxed and enthused, he never failed to give anyone his time, to pose for photos, to share a word or a joke and deserves every word of praise he has received for his efforts.

So me? What did I do during all of this? Well I shouted a lot, I smoked a lot, I swore a lot, I pissed people off, I treaded on toes, I yelled at chefs, at the end of the night I yelled at guests and told them they hadn’t drank enough and I insisted they buy the remaining contents of the bar before I would let them go home and I generally made a nuisance of myself, but someone had to. When it was over physically I was a wreck, the adrenaline that had kept me going for so long left my system and I crashed hard. I knew I would, I had allowed for it, I had made a deal with myself that no matter what I would see it through to the end and when the end was reached my body called in my marker. Not only would I do it all again, us mad crazy bastards are already planning it.

note: To anyone who I failed to mention I am sorry, this blog is already way over sized and it’s now half 2 in the morning. The efforts of everyone who contributed were immensely appreciated and without every little bit of help we could never of achieved this, I thank you all sincerely.

Hello Sir remember me? I’m the chef you said I’d never be

Ok so paraphrasing a Robbie Williams song isn’t the coolest start to a much overdue blog post but it’s a line that is pretty apt. When I started this journey, this rapid decent into insanity as it could be termed, I received some amazing support, some puzzled looks and some rather direct comments that I would never make it. There have been times when I almost agreed with them, I would stagger from the kitchen battered and bruised not knowing how I would summon the energy to get home let alone come back the following day and do it all again. I would lie awake in bed literally unable to sleep despite my exhaustion because of how my whole body ached, even now there are nights when my hamstrings will tighten up to such an extent it causes me incredible pain, but I persevered.

When I was at my lowest, at the end of January / start of February, when the hours and work seemed endless, I was approached about a job as an event manager by a recruitment company. I did go and meet them and their client and they offered me about twice the money for half the work I was getting at the time. I didn’t go home and think about it, I went home and practiced what I would say to Osh at The Ship when I told him  I was leaving to go back to events. I knew he would be disappointed but Osh and I were mates before I entered a kitchen and we will be mates long after I have left it, I fervently plan to still be drinking with him while being wildly politically incorrect when we are in our dotage (to be fair it’s a mental state that’s not too far off for either of us), but I figured he would see it as I gave it my best shot. Then I thought, you know what fuck it, you haven’t given it your best shot, you’re still standing, you’re still breathing in and out so how the fuck have you given your all. When I woke up the next morning it was the girl at the recruitment company that I left disappointed. It was a decision that would have lead any psychiatric professional to measure me up for one of those long jumpers whose arms tie securely at the back but crazily it was the best decision of my life.

It’s a few months on now and so much has changed. For the first time since it all began when people ask me what I do I tell them simply “I’m a chef”. Gone is the long winded explanation about being a food writer who wanted to try his hand at it, gone is the humble shoulder shrug when people tell me how brave I am to give it a go, I’ve fucking earned the right to call myself a chef. I’ve proved to those I work with that I can be relied upon to get the job done, that I can be trusted and that no matter what it takes I will be standing at the end of service. I recently worked back to back shifts of 13hours without a break either day because we were in the shit, on the second day I insisted others take a break and I would work through, I smashed service on the busiest BBQ in London, I ran the pass and manned the grill and put up plate after plate of fucking good food. My head chef told me I was a soldier, a comment that nearly knocked me over, 26 hours of continuous work over 2 manic days could not put me down but that line nearly floored me. It was on the Saturday night during a wind down and a smoke and I had been rostered to be in at 8am the next morning. Dave turned to me and said that it was ok to come in at 10am and I simply said there was work that needed doing at 8am and I would be there at 8am and you know what? I was, and I worked straight through till 7pm that night to help out.

I’m not sure why I did it, I think in part it was watching the attitude of the chefs at the KaiWeCare charity dinner, they way the all pulled together (cue Johnny Mountain with a “soggy biscuits” joke) to get the job done. I saw the respect they had for each other, yes the piss taking was merciless and the winding each other up constant but there was an obvious respect that was ever present. It made me see my job and my profession differently, it made me realise that at times that respect was lacking on my part in the kitchen. I’m a cocky bastard, there is no other way of saying it, it’s not a boast, it’s not an apology, it’s simply a statement. I’m used to being my own man and adjusting to life at the bottom of the kitchen hierarchy was far from easy, in fact it was the toughest thing I had to learn and if I’m really honest I didn’t try as hard as I should have to learn it. There were times I should have bitten my tongue or simply kept my head down but I didn’t. When I went back into the kitchen after KaiWeCare I went in knowing that I owed it to the guys in there to do better, to show that while it took me 4 months I realised just how much I needed to show that I was grateful for the chance they had given me. Oddly enough, despite the array of Michelin Star boys and the countless rosette holders it was 2 guys I work with every day who brought it home to me. Damien “Damo” Perry and Jordan “insert cool nickname here” Hopkins  both from The Ship came to help out on the day and they were fucking superstars, no other word does them justice and that one actually falls short. The only thing they asked all day was what they could do next to help. They were the first in the door and they were the last chefs to stop working.

I had handed in my notice at The Ship before the event, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do, seeing all the talent on display in that kitchen made me think that if the reason I am doing this is to be the best then at 35 I simply didn’t have the years it would take to reach that standard. I also realised that I missed the buzz of the events game, it’s similar to cheffing but with far more fire fighting along the way, a 6am start and a 4.30am finish the following day seems an odd way to come to the conclusion you missed something but it’s how it worked. I intend to do a full post on KaiWeCare very soon (actually it will be after my tea with the Prime Minister of New Zealand this coming Tuesday as that seems the right place to reflect) so I will leave reference to it there except to say again, the the level of committment, the work load and the level achieved by everyone involved was as humbling as it awe inspiring.

I did decide that I would leave on a high note, and it’s been pretty much nothing but high notes the last couple of weeks. We’ve been busier than I have ever seen but I’ve been loving it. Oddly enough as my finishing day draws closer I know I will miss the place more and more. Instead of quite understandably marginalizing me due to my impending departure I have found myself with more responsibility and the acknowledgement that I have lived up to it. I don’t want to make this piece sound like an advert for the place but the people who turn up there to work day after day and do what they do are incredible. I have made friends there and I know if I ever wander down for a pint and see them getting hit on the BBQ I will be more than happy to pull on some whites and help them smash another service.

So what next? Well you’re going to have to wait a little bit for that, at least till the ink is dry on the paperwork but it’s as exciting as it is daunting, then again I’m the poster boy for “go big or go home” so I doubt you’re surprised.

And for those who said I’d never make it? What else would you expect me to say but “fuck you!”

KaiWeCare

I don’t have to remind people of the shocking and saddening events that occurred in Christchurch New Zealand on the 22nd of February last.

We all sat stunned as the pictures of the earthquake were broadcast round the world. New Zealand is a proud and prosperous country but in moments its second largest city, Christchurch was devastated. Its iconic cathedral lay in ruins, the proud symbol of the city reduced to rubble. As sad as it was to see, its a building, and buildings can be rebuilt, the lives however that were just as devastated may be far harder to repair.

Last Monday I was chatting on-line to Kiwi chef and Masterchef winner Mat Follas, it was just a general chat about maybe meeting up for a beer later than evening as Mat was going to be in London overnight. Needless to say we began to talk about the earthquake and I said if there was anything he was doing to raise funds then I was more than happy to help. The idea of a supper club was mentioned and we figured that we could do a supper club or pop-up for 20-30 people with Mat doing most of the cooking and me putting my event management background to use organising it. Then we both Tweeted the idea and everything changed beyond recognition.

Within 30minutes the 30 people idea was a distant memory, the numbers increased and the offers of help of all sorts flooded in. From chefs wanting to cook, to producers offering their best products to be used for the menu, to people who were happy simply wash up or wait tables.

I grabbed hold of a friend of mine John Comyn, who has kindly offered to take care of the admin on this, and we met up with Mat in a very late night pub in Borough about half past midnight to try and make sense of it all, the numbers were mind-blowing, the offers of help were humbling and the task facing us was daunting but one thing we agreed on was that we would take this as far as we possibly could and raise as much money as possible. I immediately recruited chef Grant Hawthorne to oversea the technical side of the meal and let us know exactly what was achievable with what time, personnel and produce we had to work with.

There is so much talk of social media these days and how it is changing the world and to be honest it is something I have always had a somewhat sceptical view of but now I see just how true it is.  Twitter has taken this to a place we never even dreamed of. From a 30 person supper this is where we now stand.

The date choosen was the 4th of april, this is the soonest we could pull this together but more importantly it is the last day of the tax year so the tickets for the event and the raffle can be written off against this years tax bill! You can also go nuts at the auction safe in the knowledge that if you don’t spend it the government would only waste it!

200 guests attending a 7 course dinner cooked by a variety of very highly rated chefs, including the likes of

DominicChapman, Head Chef at The Royal Oak and Michelin Star holder

Mark Poynton, Chef Patron at Restaurant Alimentum, 3AA Rosettes and listed in the UK’s Top 60 Restaurants

Russel Brown, Chef Patron at Sienna and Michelin Star Holder

Alex Wood, Head Chef at St Stephens Club London

Adrian Oliver, Chef Patron of Margot’s Padstow

Mathew Tomkinson, Head Chef at The Montagu Arms and Michelin Star Holder

Darren Goodwin, Head Chef at Losehill Hotel and Spa

Not only that but

Mat Follas and Dhruv Baker winners of the last 2 series of Masterchef will be cooking alongside these guys

Just like Steve Groves winner of Masterchef The Professionals and now working alongside Toby Stuart at Roux Parliament Sq.

We even have Celebrity Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner and Master Chef Judges Jon and Gregg on hand to help out on the night.

I can’t even begin to list the prizes that will be auctioned or raffled on the night, full details will be on the website soon but if you have been following us on Twitter @KaiWeCare then you know there are some truly amazing things already offered by so many generous people.

We plan to stream the auction and raffle live as well as make the raffle tickets available to those who won’t be able to make it on the night.

The ticket price will be £150 per person and include wine.

A full menu will be up on the site in the coming days once all the chefs have had a chance to swap ideas and steal the donated ingredients from each others courses!

We will also show the incredible quality of the produce and who so generously donated them.

The auction too is surpassing all expectations and a catalogue of items and those who were wonderful enough to give them to us will be available to view so you can be prepared to get your wallet out on the night. We are hoping to allow people bid via Twitter who are watching the live stream

Vanessa Kimbell contacted me and insisted that she be allowed organise the raffle, those of you who know her know how hard it is to say no to her and those of you who don’t just take my advice it’s pointless, just buy the tickets, it will be far easier and the prizes which will be announce shortly will be mind blowing.

What I ask now is this, those of you who have blogs will you please reprint this on your sites and put the links there for those who wish to contact us.

Twitter @Kaiwecare hashtag #KaiWeCare

Website: http://kaiwecare.weebly.com/

email: kaiwecare@gmail.com

Thank you all for your help and amazing support, it is ye who have changed this and helped make it what it is, Mat, John, Grant and I have merely tried our best to cling on.

There will be far more to follow but for now all I can say is that we are staggered and humbled by the out pouring of generosity

Regards

Dave Ahern

Aka @CorkGourmetGuy on Twitter

The Last Man Standing

I haven’t written a blog piece in a while, I should probably have written something directly after the Irish Times did a piece on me but I was too busy looking a gift horse in the mouth! For those of you who missed it, if you live in Cork it’s probably because my Mother bought every copy you can read Marie-Claire Digby’s article on me online at this link http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/0205/1224289009251.html

Through this blog I have been fortunate enough to come into contact with like-minded (or warped minded) individuals who have decided to try and grasp a life long dream and embark on a career as a chef. One was Lennie Nash the other was Lesley Connelly, both like me left very different careers to enter the kitchens and both like me blog about their experiences. Lennie’s blog can be found here http://chefsandwich.blogspot.com/ and Lesley’s here http://www.okbaybach.blogspot.com/ both are very worthy reads and provide insight into this surreal world of professional cheffing (both also contain considerably less swearing than mine does).  Despite never meeting in person we have formed a sort of ad-hoc support group, basically we bitch and moan about the hours, the pressure and the pay and then try and convince each other it will all be worth while.

Lennie had taken a break from the kitchen when we struck up out first Twitter conversation but was planning an imminent return to the kitchen (well as soon as he is done eating his way round south-east Asia) and Lesley was toiling away in one of New Zealand’s top restaurants. She like me had developed the habit of going in early and working through breaks to try and keep pace with a busy kitchen. So last week when she told me via Twitter that she had decided to leave the restaurant I was stunned. She is not giving up her culinary dreams but has decided to take a different direction and has accepted a job offer as a chef on a small cruise boat in the south island cooking for 16 passengers, they will be very lucky to have someone with her passion for food preparing their meals and I have no doubt that her food will become a major draw for returning passengers.

So that just leaves me as The Last Man Standing.

Since the last blog post business at The Ship has continued to increase, we no longer have quiet nights and weekends are barely controlled mania in the kitchen. It is getting to the point that it is barely possible to prep enough stuff to get through the weekend. I’ve made more fucking burger mix than McDonald’s (better tasting too) and seen more buns than a proctologist and seen them all run out before service ends. This generally leads to a mad scramble in the kitchen to get more made. Of course when you run out of burgers and chutney at the same time at it seems the national association of burger eaters have turned up looking to be fed you have 2 choices, you get smart or you get fucked!

Now let me explain chutney, or at least chutney at The Ship. It’s a labour of love, it involves slow cooking onions to release their sweetness before adding peppers, 3 different forms of tomato, spices, the finest vinegars and lots of dark brown sugar. From start to finish it can take 8 hours or more! Yup that’s right 8 hours for that little ramekin of dark red delight that you dip your chips in and think “mmmm nice” before going back to demolishing your burger. Last Sunday week less than 30 minutes before evening service kicked off we had run out of chutney and burgers. This isn’t down to bad organisation or poor planning, plenty of both were on hand when we started serving diners we just got smashed during lunch.

I calmly turned to Damo and said “I can give you chutney in 15 minutes”. He looked at me in disbelief and said it simply couldn’t be done. I assured him it could, no it wouldn’t as good as our usual chutney but it would be a fucking damn site better than the chutney we didn’t have. I then told him that he might want to leave the kitchen so as to maintain plausible deniability on this one. When he left I grabbed 2 large tins of tomatoes, opened them and chucked them into a colander to drain off the excess liquid, I then grabbed some tomato puree, dark brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and erm…….. Branston pickle (don’t worry it was the small chunk variety, I may be a cowboy but I am not a Philistine) and chucked the whole lot into a saucepan. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and a pinch of chilli powder and put the whole thing on the heat to cook out the sugar and vinegar and added a healthy amount of Heinz ketchup before giving it 1o minutes and then slamming the lot of it in the blast chiller to cool it down in time for service. To coin a phrase “It’s chutney Jim but not as we know it!”

Over the last couple of weeks a few more of London’s foodie elite have passed through the ship. Andre Dang and Rachel McCormack were in for dinner, I only found this out when Osh popped into the kitchen and asked me to do an assiette of desserts for Rachel. Now I am known for many things but my skills as a pastry chef are certainly not amongst them. None the less I was determined to make a good impression so I quickly googled “asseitte” and then just pretty much made mini portions of 4 of the desserts on the menu and put them on a plate with some small scoops of ice cream and delivered it to the table myself.

I have this week being doing quite a lot of Tristan Welch style dining room schmoozing, well sort of like Tristan Welch if he had gained weight and fallen on hard times but schmooze none the less I have done. I spent some time on Thursday chatting to Masterchef winner Dhruv Baker and Lee Behan of Friday Food Club fame, I even got to cook Dhruv’s main course and was thrilled to see an empty plate in front of him when I walked over to chat. Lee for those of you who don’t know runs one of London’s finest supper clubs. Supper clubs intrigue me, I love the idea of cooking great food for an intimate and appreciative audience of diners and getting to chat with them as they enjoy the food. I want to cook at them, I want to do pop up restaurants fuck it I want to have a BBQ on an upturned oil drum in the middle of Leicester Square on a Saturday afternoon. Trust me I am a god on a BBQ, I will take any chef on a BBQ. I recently made a challenge to Chris Pople, one of London’s most prominent and respected food bloggers that I would attempt to usurp The Meat Easy as the maker of the best burger in London and will give details on that soon, I am looking forward immensely to putting my money where my mouth is.

Don’t get me wrong I love my job at The Ship, I am extremely fortunate to have been given the opportunity and I work my ass off every fucking day to pay back the chance I have been given but I don’t to lose the side of me that turns an old metal watering can into a smoker or who puts 8 house bricks in a roaring fire for 2 hours then pulls them out to use as a make shift flat top. The more I adapt and understand the structure of a kitchen the more I want to indulge the wild side to my love of food, the side that does a cappuccino as a starter or a margarita sorbet with a pop rock rim on the glass. I want to continue to work at The Ship but on my off days I want to try new things, I would love to hear from people who have ideas or options that could help me do this!