Part 111 Curtains

Flavoured butter, tablecloths and a kettle

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Hello!

So, last week we talked about bread, and leaking toilets, not our toilets, someone else’s toilet. Let’s follow on from that today, but without the toilets.

The bread experiments were going well, but they were going well, without me.

You see, as we became busier, the more I was pulled away to do other tasks. Michelle PR was still ringing us to do interviews and write recipes for magazines. The busier we became, the more the admin piled up.

The busier we became, the more things were broken, especially things in the toilets, mainly the women’s toilets.

As I screwed toilet roll holders back onto the walls, I often wondered if the same thing happened in their houses.

“Jim, the toilet roll holder just fell off the wall.”

“Bloody hell Jean, that’s four times this week, what do you do in there?”

“Don’t blame me, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Well there’s only you in there.”

So all I knew about the bread was that Ritchie had managed to make it very light and soft. He’d removed some of the strong flour from the mix and replaced it with plain flour. And he calculated an amount of time to knead the dough, which was less than usual, therefore the gluten wasn’t activated as much. And oil was added to the mix instead of butter, this gave a better shortening affect than butter.

Ritchie brought a result into the office. This was a small, elongated bread roll with a little point on one end. The crust was thin but had flavour, and this little bun tore apart very easily to show an interior which was soft, light and easy to eat.

But Ritchie wasn’t happy, “I’m concerned that the flavour may be a little too subtle.”

“Yea I get you Ritchie, but if you add another flour, like wholemeal, then we lose the lightness.”

“Yes Andrew, my thoughts exactly.”

“Hang on Ritchie, we’re thinking about this all wrong. Why don’t we decide that the delicate flavour is actually a positive thing.”

“And the reason for this Andrew?”

“Because of the butter Ritchie, the butter.”

“Can you elaborate Andrew?”

“Yes I can, why don’t we start to flavour the butter. I know it’s Maldon sea salt at the moment, but I heard of some restaurant doing Marmite butter. Yea we can’t copy them, but we could flavour our butter with something or other. Then that way, having a subtle flavoured bread would allow the butter flavour to be more prominent.”

Ritchie liked this, “Yes, I think a more strongly flavoured bread would compete with the butter. Keeping the bread soft and subtle allows the flavoured butter to shine as the main flavour, while still providing a light, delicate base.”

And off he went, he gathered Emma and Bobster together in the kitchen to start chatting about butter.

Next, Donna asked me to go upstairs to look at the diary, “Andrew, look how busy it is next week, the bookings just keep coming in.”

Donna wasn’t kidding, it was looking very good.

Then Donna came up with a crazy suggestion, “I think it’s time we took the white Ikea curtain down.”

“What? Do you think so?”

An update, we curtained off part of the restaurant to make it look smaller so we looked fuller, you would know this IF you’ve been reading these Posts.

So that’s what we did. We took the curtain off the hooks, bundled it up, and stuffed it in a black bag. And there it was, the final part of the restaurant was now in use. There were tables and chairs in this section which hadn’t been used, well, we all used them to have a little break, but they’d never been part of the restaurant. We now had a full restaurant to use, it seemed a bit odd.

Tina Terminator came upstairs carrying a tray of polished cutlery, “Guys, are we using this section at last?”

Donna turned, “We are Tina, more tables to set.”

“Yes, and we need more table numbers.”

Of course, Tina was right, the table numbers stopped at number 12, we were now adding seven more tables. This meant that front of house would be coming to the kitchen and shouting, “Check on, table 19.”

However, and if you ever visited the restaurant, you probably wouldn’t have noticed this, we left the hooks in the wall, just as a little reminder of how much we had struggled over the last two years.

But just as I was about to walk back to the kitchen, Donna had another suggestion, “I was also thinking, you know how people are always calling us a fine dining restaurant, why don’t we remove the tablecloths, just stop using them altogether?”

“I like that, yes, but wouldn’t we need something on the table, we can’t just put the knives and forks directly on the table.”

“That’s a point, I’ll have a look online, maybe we can buy some kind of fancy table mats. And actually, if we stop using the tablecloths, we’ll save money on the laundry bill.”

A day later Donna found some fancy table mats, so fancy that a Michelin star restaurant was also using them. But I was in a bit of a huff because they were twenty quid each.

“Twenty quid! For one table mat? Our Mam had a set of cork table mats with horses on them, and they probably cost a fiver. And you got the coasters with them.”

“Yes Andrew, but they have to look high end, and they’ll pay for themselves because the laundry bill will be so much less.”

If you think we deserve a cup of tea for writing this, you can buy us one using this button.

There we go, another step forward. And the funny thing was, whenever we changed things like this, it seemed to motivate the team. They were just little changes, but they seemed to create a buzz.

And this time, we had added tables to the restaurant, took down the Ikea curtain, removed the tablecloths, added the fancy table mats and introduced softer, lighter bread.

Big Sophia was nearly impressed, “It looks like a different restaurant.”

Tina Terminator had her opinion, of course, “Yes, much better, I never liked those tablecloths.”

Making the team feel good was a nice feeling, there weren’t many of us in this team, maybe this was why we felt so close.

But sometimes it works the other way. Like this.

Tea!

Fern, you remember, the lass from Canada who worked front of house, well, she loved tea. She enjoyed trying the different varieties she found in the supermarkets, and she would bring them to work and drink them all day. And she would give us a run down of her favourites.

“Hey guys, I found this brand called Yorkshire Tea in Tesco, it’s very good. You guys love black tea don’t you?”

However, Fern was always moaning about the hard London water, she said it affected the taste of the tea. To be honest, I didn’t really listen to Fern and her tea talks, or her whinging about the amount of calcium in the water. I wasn’t too interested in tea, and what could I do about the hard London water.

But we had this little kettle in the room where the glasses were polished and the coffees were made, it was never used, it was just there, hanging around. But because Fern made herself multiple cups of tea, she used this kettle a lot.

And Fern was always going on about this kettle, she said it didn’t boil properly because it was too scaled up and the tea had a strange taste because of the water. But she was the only one who used it, so nobody really listened.

“Hey Andrew, you know this little kettle is pretty scaled up?”, and she showed me inside the kettle.

“Yea, terrible Fern, I’m shocked to the core.”

But one day, Fern took things into her own hands. She came to the kitchen and asked for some white vinegar.

Emma was a little confused at this request, “Yea cool Fern, what are you doing with it?”

“I’m going to descale the kettle.”

Emma gave her the white vinegar and waited for her to leave the kitchen, “Ritchie, you’re Canadian, are you all obsessed with kettles?”

“Not as far as I know Emma, it seems that it’s only Fern. I’m not sure how she’s going to descale the kettle with some vinegar either.”

I was sceptical also, “Can you actually descale something with vinegar? If it was that easy everyone would do it.”

Bobster shrugged.

Anyway, I forgot about the bloody kettle, until later that day when Fern collared me.

“Hey Andrew, would you like to see the kettle? I’ve descaled it.”

Oh my god, why did she have to tell me about the kettle, why couldn’t she tell Emma or Donna.

“Oh yes please Fern, quickly, I can’t wait.”

She tilted the kettle towards me and opened the lid.

“Wow, what did you do to it?”

I was genuinely impressed, there was no scale at all, the inside looked as new as the day it was bought.

“I used the vinegar, that’s what I wanted it for.”

“Yes but how, did you just put some in and swill it around?’

“No, I boiled the vinegar in the kettle, then I just rinsed it a couple of times.”

This was brilliant, I hadn’t heard of this.

“I’m impressed Fern, I’ve never seen this done before. Thanks for this little tip.”

“You’re welcome Andrew. Would you like a cup of tea? I found some teabags called Clipper from that shop, Sainsbury’s.”

No thanks Fern. Hey Tina, look at the kettle, Fern descaled it by boiling vinegar in it.”

“Oh yes, I know about this, we do it all the time in my country.’

So if you ever read this Fern, thank you, I have descaled kettles many times since that day.

Thanks for reading this guff.

Andrew and Donna