Part 27. Career Opportunities

The pan whisperer, Margaret Thatcher and camping in.

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Hiya! Welcome back to the ongoing saga, no, the story of running a restaurant.

Now let’s get straight to it, no waffling this week. Here we go.

You may recall that our Keanu wanted to drop hours, and this left us short in the kitchen. So he was obviously a traitor.

But luckily, a young lady called Lauren wanted some work experience. We weren’t too sure what Lauren exactly wanted, so we agreed to have a little chat with her.

So, Lauren came to meet us one afternoon, she was bright and chipper, and friendly also. But, it turns out she didn't want some work experience, she wanted a part time job, you know, some pocket money for lager tops and cigars.

Ah, from the details we were given by her college tutor, we were expecting that she wanted to just pop in for half an hour now and again.

Now this was very good, with our Keanu deciding to slack off and do his Uni work, Lauren could pick up his hours. Perfect!

Plus, and this is important, we strongly believe that giving people a chance is a good thing to do. It would have been easier to put an advert out and pick up a chef with experience, but people have to start somewhere. If we didn't give them the experience, how would it ever happen?

Maybe this comes from the experiences Donna and I had when we started our working lives. A quick history lesson.

In the 80’s there was a programme put in place by Mrs.Thatcher* called a Y.T.S.

A Youth Training Scheme was it’s full name, and it was meant to help young people gain some work experience and hopefully nab a job at the end of the two year placement.

And the scheme was put in place because, if you didn't go to college, and then on to university, you were stuck, because apprenticeships had finished and jobs were non existent. This situation was worse in certain areas of the country, where the big industries had almost vanished. Ship building, steel production and mining were in a massive decline. There’s lots of political reasons for this, but basically, it was a bit depressing. And as we lived in the North East, it was pretty bad. But if I’m being honest, I couldn't see myself working in a foundry, and Donna was never interested in coal mining.

Oh yeah, and the pay on the training programme was £27 a week, plus, you could claim back your travel costs if you kept the bus ticket. These schemes were often mocked, but a lot of people did very well out of them. It often depended on the work placement you ended up in, some places just used trainees as an extra pair of hands. Thanks Maggie.

But Donna and I were lucky, we managed to shoe horn ourselves into the right places. I ended up working for Big Kev, remember the guy who had worked in a Michelin star restaurant in the 70’s and also turned the gas down to save money.

Big Kev gave me a chance and put the work into training me, or maybe I was just quite good. Donna found herself working as a care assistant in the residential home which Big Kev and his wife owned. Hence how we met, way back when I had a curly perm and Donna had a large hairdo and wore anything with shoulder pads.

And eventually we were both employed on a full time basis, as regular members of staff. So we appreciate these chances which people gave us, so it always seemed right to pass the goodwilll onwards. Good karma and all that.

So it was agreed that Lauren would start working part time with us. We chose a quiet night for her to start, a Tuesday, and we arranged a time, 5pm. All good.

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Tuesday arrived, and so did Lauren, ten minutes before 5pm. She always arrived a bit earlier than she was supposed to, just like Tricky Vicki. Unlike our Keanu, he always arrived a few seconds before he was supposed to, I never liked him.

“Hiya Lozza, alright?”

Lauren was nervous, as expected, “Hiya, shall I get changed?”

“Yea, see you in a minute.”

And after that minute, Lozza arrived back in the kitchen looking like a college student. That means, sharp white chefs jacket, checky trousers, long white apron and little white cap. She even had college issue knives. Quite funny really. You see, when you’ve been cheffing for a while, that jacket is no longer white, and it’s spotted with scorch marks. The checky trousers have one long gone ‘cause they’re just not cool, and the apron has been replaced with something shorter because it’s easier to wear, and it looks better.

The knives, well they're always basic, but they’ll do. After all, you can spend hundreds on a knife, doesn't make you a good chef.

Without any pointless chatter I gave Lozza the job of cutting cubes of bread for the olive oil croutons. I told her they were the garnish for a tomato sorbet and marinated cherry tomato starter. And without any questions, and I’m not sure how, she knew how big they should be. And she was quick, in less than five minutes the job was done.

“Do you want me to fry them now?’

Oh look, someone is thinking for themselves.

“Yea, get them crispy though.”

“OK.”

And of she went. And once that was done, Lozza knew that they needed draining on some kitchen roll. Then she spun around and and asked what was next. So I set her off on the aubergine and and mint dumplings. Lozza blackened off the aubergines then asked if they needed finishing off in the oven.

Look, more thinking, what was going on!

And again, in a Yorkshire accent which was very similar to Vicki’s, “Where’s flour?”

So without being told, Lozza knew that if she starts the longest job first, she can start getting the dry ingredients ready. And I didn't have to tell her this.

Lozza had common sense, but she’d also picked up some experience from college.

And this is an important point. You see, some people seem to think that working in kitchens is about collecting recipes, and they place high importance on this. But it ain’t about that. Well yea, you can pick up some processes and recipes, but you can also look online and collect thousands of recipes.

But you can’t pick up experience from Google.

Being able to just look at a pan of boiled potatoes and know if they're cooked, comes from practice.

Knowing when the oil in a frying pan is hot enough, just by glancing at it, comes from doing it hundreds of times.

And when you can pin point that burning smell coming from the oven, and know it’s puff pastry.

Or when you’re on the other side of the kitchen and you just feel that the saucepan of wine has reduced enough.

When you look in the oven and stare at twelve trays of food, and within seconds know which need to be dropped to a lower shelf and which need to go up top.

Being able to juggle six frying pans on the stove and know exactly how long the contents of each one has left before it’s ready to serve. And knowing which dish each pan is for, while also getting the next dishes ready to go in the next frying pan.

This is valuable experience.

This stuff comes from zoning your mind into the the job completely. This comes from many years of absorbing the different smells, the feel of a product, the texture of food in it’s different stages of being cooked. Listening to the kitchen noises, carefully noting the reduced hiss of something frying as the water content lowers.

And for some reason Lozza was good at this. Not just cooking stuff, but absorbing, very quickly, the environment around her.

She could focus on one job, but then quickly switch her attention to the cream whipping in the machine in the corner, then back to the oven to check the mushrooms, then back to focusing on lining the pastry into a case.

Who needs our Keanu anyway.

And after that night, Lozza worked as many shifts as she could.

“Hey Lozza, our Keanu can’t work Saturday night. Do you want to do it?”

“Yea sure.”

Lauren had fallen into the kitchen rhythm, the routine, the culture. There’s something weird about working in kitchens. It’s hot, sweaty, stressful, fast, and terrible on the bunions. But for some reason, it doesn't always feel like work.

It’s difficult to get over in words, not the words we use anyway. You’re in a room with a few friends, you’re in over drive for several hours. You're stressed and uncomfortable, you hate each because everything is going wrong. Ten minutes later and that hatred dissolves, you're suddenly blood relatives. It’s peaks and troughs all night.

Dishes are going out incorrectly and the chaos is so thick, there’s no way out of it.

But twenty minutes later you’re all flying through the dishes like a bunch of machines.

Without even thinking, you can polish plates, whisk up a dressing, arrange ingredients in a pretty pattern, then jump over to another section and help your mates with there plating.

And when all of that comes together, you become unstoppable, you and your mates are streaming through the orders, and without speaking to each other you know what each other needs.

“Mate, garnish for…….”

“Got it, there you go.”

It’s only half way through the night and the culinary rock band you’re in is belting it out, every order is executed perfectly and on time.

And that feeling becomes addictive.

But then Tricky Vicki walks in the kitchen, “Woman on table four is allergic to salt, sugar, water and plates. What can we give her?”

So you see, experience isn't for sale, you have to work for it.

Here’s a little video which gives you a tip for cutting tomatoes. I learned this from experience, and it’s going to change your whole life.

OK. One last thing. The sale of our house in Stockton on Tees was going through, so we spent our days off looking at property in and around York.

On one particular day we viewed twelve houses with four different agents. This was tiring, especially considering that we were also working fifteen hours a day. Plus, we had two hours drive on top of that, one trip to York and one home.

But we had a short term fix, a brilliant idea, we could cut out the two hours driving for one night a week by staying over at the restaurant, and at least we’d catch up on some kip.

So, we went off to Argos and bought a blow up bed, with a pump. Then on the glorious day, before we left the house, we checked everything was locked up and left food in the clockwork feeder for the cat. Then off we went to York.

We did our days work as usual, busy busy. Lozza was working well, Mr. Upholstery Man paid a visit and Beer Bud said some funny things.

And when everyone left, we concentrated on blowing up our bed for the night. We stuck our flock coated deluxe mattress in the corridor to the loos, then set the alarm. We were excited about this, it felt like we were camping out, or camping in.

Then we had another good idea, this came from our giddiness and excitement. As we’ve gained an extra hour each way, why don’t we have a glass of wine.

Me, “But I don’t want wine, I want a tinny.”

Donna, “ Ok, but let’s be quick, remember we need to get some extra sleep”

And two hours later, we were still chatting and drinking. “Oh my God Donna, we’re going to sleep later than we normally do.”

And the next morning we woke up, disorientated as we stared up at the tongue and groove ceiling, and more knackered than if we’d driven home.

Daft idea!

Thanks for reading this, and catch up next week as we…………

Andrew and Donna

*Did you know! Just before the 1979 general election, Margaret Thatcher's advisor was a little concerned that voters would find her voice too shrill. But on a train ride, by coincidence, this advisor met Sir Laurence Olivier. After a bit of a chat about the shrill situation he recommended his own voice coach. Thatcher underwent vocal training with the coach to lower her pitch, and adopt an authoritative tone. You know the rest.