Part 6. Cigarettes And Alcohol

Smoking or non smoking and no waste fritters.

Welcome back! We’re rambling on again, sharing our story of opening a veggie restaurant in 2004. But if you’ve just joined us at this Part, instead of Part 1, get yourself to the beginning, you've missed a couple of funny stories and some bad grammar.

So this time we are still working our way through the to-do list prior to completion and getting the keys. The list was endless and grew by the second, and every day we lost count of the decisions to be made. But we’ll come to all that soon.

So first, time for something a bit funny, well, I didn't laugh at the time. If you’ve been reading this Substack in sequence you will remember that last time, we bought loads of furniture from the auctions. Right, we wanted everything to look mismatched but we thought it would be good if we made all the seat cushions on the chairs look the same, just to show that we had actually put some effort in and not just bought them and put them in place.

Also, some of the patterns on the seat pads were a little gaudy, like faded images of woodland scenes, or a bouquet of roses that now looked like a bouquet of stick insects.

So we bought some black material and it was decided that, as I had zero experience of upholstering, and Donna was still working her day job, that I would upholster them. Now, the furniture was stored at an industrial unit which I was using for that little business, Collander. It was the perfect place to do some upholstery, lots of space and nice and quiet. I cut the cloth just a bit bigger than the seat pads. I realised that the pads came out of the chair frame, so this was easy. I then covered the seat pads with the black cloth, turned them over, and using an old heavy duty stapler I had, stapled the cloth onto the wooden pad underneath. I had to make sure that the cloth was taut so it didn’t move about afterwards. And to make sure my artisan skills weren’t destroyed I put loads of staples in, like, if there were supposed to be twenty staples in the wood, I put sixty in. Nothing was going to make this cloth come away from it’s base.

So when I got home I was quite pleased that I had done thirty chairs, and they looked very smart, and I told Donna all about it. But, she asked me a question  which I wasn’t happy to answer. The question was, “Did you wash the cloth before using it?” Now in my world you wash something when it’s dirty, not when it’s brand new. So when I asked why I needed to wash the cloth, Donna explained that if someone came to the restaurant wearing a white skirt or white trousers, it could maybe leave black dye on their clothes. Well, my response was to refuse entry to anyone wearing white trousers or a white skirt. So I went back to the unit the next day, rubbed a piece of white cloth on the material and low and behold, there was a black patch on the cloth. I prised out 1800 staples, plus washed each piece of cloth, being careful to remember which seat it belonged to, dried the cloth, then stapled them all back on again. Oh joy!

See, they don’t teach that at business school.

Something which was stalling us was the amount of decisions to be made, we would decide on something, then the next day we would question the decision, then change it back. It’s difficult to decide on something when you don’t know what’s going to happen. Which days should we open? Where do we hang diners coats? What time was last food order on an evening? That’s an important one, after a 14 hour day you want to go home, desperate to sleep. The answer to that question was in the windows of the other York restaurants. We just walked around and looked at everyone else's opening hours and decided from that. Thanks guys, one decision finalised.

This one wasn't on our to-do list, it came as a bit of a surprise to us.

If you ever go a bit bonkers and do decide to open a restaurant, then you’ll have to pay money to PRS to play music. Even if it’s just through Spotify or the radio, you pay up. Then PRS then takes the money and gives it to the recording artists. Fair enough! There’s probably a bit more to it than that.  So Donna filled out the long questionnaire, which in those days was posted to their head office, and then you waited for a letter, to be told the amount to pay. This all depended on the size of the establishment, if you play hold music on the phone, does the establishment play music in the bathrooms and other blah blah stuff. Actually, there was a rumour that a certain pub chain, who refused to pay for the license, removed all music from their establishments. Then they used that as a marketing tool, a nice quiet pub with no music blaring. Clever guys!

Quite a biggy on our to-do list was to apply for a licence to sell alcohol, It’s changed since we applied all those years ago, we hear it's easier now. Back in 2004 you had to attend a course for the day and learn about measurements of alcohol, who can drink and who can’t and acceptable forms of ID. We appointed a local legal chap to organise the license for us, and left him to it, whilst we attended the course. But more on this another time, it’s a good story.

Smoking! At the time there was a big hoo ha about smoking in public spaces. There was talk that a ban on smoking in public places was coming into force at some time, so some restaurants were implementing it before it actually happened. Some places just carried on and let people smoke. We asked around for thoughts on this, and of course there were lots of big opinions, but nothing constructive. Someone suggested that the restaurant was a no smoking zone until 9pm, giving time for the majority of diners to finish their food. Imagine that, diners poised with a box of matches and three Benny Hedges hanging from their lips. Then, as soon as the the bell chimes nine, it looks like a nuclear warhead went off over table 7.

In the end we just went with a completely no smoking restaurant.

However, there were still a few sneaky people who lit up in the lavvy, nice eh? By the way, the ban came into force on the 1st of July, 2007. Apparently it resulted in 1200 fewer emergency admissions to hospital for heart attacks in the following year. And I imagine cleaner and whiter restaurant ceilings.

One decision that was made easily and early in the process was the name of the restaurant. Absolutely no way could it sound like a vegetarian hippy joint. So, The Veggie Patch, Beantastic and Green Peas would not be used. Also, we didn’t want something which people couldn't pronounce or spell, and nothing too long winded. We wanted a short and snappy name that meant nothing, we would give the name an identity. We came up with the word Black, as it sounded moody and serious. Then Donna suggested it needed to be softened, so she added Vanilla. Both of us ran the option by family, friends and colleagues. It was unanimous, Vanilla Black was the winner, and it seemed that people remembered the name. Over the years diners often asked for the origin of the name. Unfortunately our story isn't very interesting, maybe we should make something up. OK, the restaurant was named after my Great Aunty Vanilla.

Time was ticking on, and it was now October 2004. Donna left her nursing job at North Tees Hospital, there was just too much to do and it had to happen to help us move things on quicker. Although she always said she would help out for a little while, and then return to nursing, she never did. She swapped bed numbers for table numbers and never looked back. NHS to FOH.

So now we were both unemployed, but with a bigger mortgage. This is when you start to get panic pulses running through your body one minute, and then a flash of excitement the next, we had to make this work, nobody was going to make it work for us.

Then suddenly the big day was nearly upon us, we were contacted by our solicitor, John, a little guy with half lens glasses who didn’t suffer fools, idiots, numpties, inefficiency or laziness gladly. He sat at a desk which was always stacked with bits of paper, and behind him were ramparts of files which went around him in a horse shoe shape. It was like he was in a little castle.  He let us know that the completion day was next Friday. So, soon we could collect the keys for number 26 Swinegate. We had been signing bits of paper now and again so this was the final step.

So the next Friday we did just that, strangely it wasn’t actually exciting, which at the time, baffled us.  Maybe because we had virtually been running the restaurant in our minds for the last few months. To be honest, it was a pretty dull affair. We turned up, a stoney faced guy handed us two keys, asked us to sign something, then he turned his back on us and wandered off. That’s it. Cheers mate! We had a restaurant.

We did tell you that this week we would write about the development and creation of the food menu. Soz, we ran out of space, plus, we reckon it’s  worthy of its own Post as there is so much to tell you about. So join us next time and we’ll talk food.

And talking of food………

This recipe is a bit of root to leaf cooking. When cooking at home I roast a lot of vegetables and always have lots of trimmings. But, instead of throwing them out, I pop them in  a bag and leave in the freezer. This is stuff like, spring onion tops, peppers, trimmed broccoli stalks and little cauliflower leaves. So if you want to be thrifty, give it a go, only keep good bits though. If you’re rich and don’t need to save money, just use your regular vegetables from Waitrose.

These are vegan by the way. There’s no egg in the fritters, just make sure the oil is hot so they seal and don’t fall apart.

Curried No Waste Fritters with Nectarine, Cumin and Chilli Salsa

Serves 2

Ingredients

-2tsp white wine vinegar, or cider vinegar if you want.

-½ tsp ground cumin.

-1tbsp olive oil.

-Red chilli up to you how much, you know your limits.

-2 nectarines.

-sprinkle of salt, or a quarter of a teaspoon if you need an amount.

-200g veggie trimmings from the freezer. Let them defrost.

-100g self raising flour.

-2tbsp curry powder

-2tsp garam masala.

-½ tsp salt.

-160g water, yes weigh it. It’s more accurate.

-1 litre of oil for frying

Method

In a bowl add the vinegar, cumin, olive oil and salt. Let the salt dissolve for a minute.

Finely chop the chilli and add to the bowl.

Peel the nectarines, slice around like you do with an avocado. Then remove the stone, then cut the flesh into small dice.

Add to the bowl. Mix and let it sit to allow flavours to get to know each other.

Roughly chop the veg trimmings, it’ll be easy as the freezer will have softened them. Keep some chunks as it makes them look good.

Add flour, curry powder, garam masala and salt to a mixing bowl.

Then add water and whisk until smooth.

Put the oil on a high heat in a deep saucepan.

Add the veg to the batter and fold in.

To cook, add tablespoons of the mix to the oil. Be careful. Once you have a few in, turn the heat down to medium. The trick is to get them to set in hot oil then turn it down so they cook but don't burn.

Once cooked, sit them on absorbent roll to drain, then cook the rest.

You’ll probably eat one while you’re doing this.

Pop on a plate and served with the salsa.

Eat them

I’ve kept this very simple, but remember, you could adapt the salsa by adding coriander, mint etc. Have a mess about.

See ya!