Part 79 Delivery
Yeast, Smoggies and Brick Lane
Did you know, if you put a Like at the end of this, all your Christmas parcels will arrive on time.
Hiya, how ya doing? Good.
Right, it’s early November, 2008, Girls Aloud are at number 1 with *The Promise, and the news is packed with stories of a massive recession. BT were shedding 10,000 jobs, Woolworths and MFI were entering administration and even Rolls Royce were talking about job cuts.
Meanwhile, we had added a new dessert to the menu and changed wine suppliers. Exciting eh?
And when we changed to the new wine supplier, we had to let the old supplier know that we would be no longer using them. They weren’t happy about this.
“What do you mean you won’t be using us any longer? You can’t just drop us like that.’
“Hang on. You never have wine in stock, the vintages are all over the place, which means that we are constantly printing new wine menus, and when we can’t make up a decent sized order because you don’t have the stock, you charge us for delivery. Why should we stay with you?”
“Well, you can’t return any stock, we don’t do sale or return.”
“We never asked you to take it back. But back to the question, why should we stay with you?”
They never answered that question. But we had excess wine.
But fortunately, the new wine supplier came up with a solution to our excess wine problem. They printed wine menus which included their wine plus the stock from the previous company. Then as the old stock was sold, they would replace it with their wines and print another menu to reflect the changes. Nice eh?
Now, despite the doom and gloom in the media, and although we were still struggling very badly at the restaurant, we were enjoying living in London. So many museums, restaurants offering cuisines from around the world, and Brick Lane Market on a Sunday.
Brick Lane Market was a different beast back in 2008. Lot’s of shops offered cheap vintage clothing, well before the word ‘Vintage’ was stamped on t shirts by giant clothing manufacturers. Grubby people spread dirty blankets on the ground and set up shop so that you could purchase a second hand tooth brush, an empty CD case or a leather shoe from them.
And there were little street stalls selling many types of food. They were very makeshift, and often run by people who were basically winging it. This was the early days of the street food movement. This is when it was interesting.
London is always changing, slowly shedding the old and reinventing something new.
If you think we deserve a three quid coffee for writing this, that’s the button.
And when we landed back to the restaurant on a Monday morning, we swapped stories with the others, and picked up tips for the next weekend. Ben was as new to London as we were, so he was just as giddy as us.
But Lozza wasn’t giddy. Lauren was missing York. On the odd occasion she would stay in London on her weekend off, but for the majority of the the time she was back on the train to York. She wasn’t happy.
Those Monday morning catch ups helped to liven the task of putting the stock away. Monday morning was stock delivery day you see. Obviously the fresh foods were delivered daily, but Monday was the day we received dry goods and drinks.
But it was so dull, and it was heavy work. I hated it. Check the delivery notes to make sure everything was in place, which it never was. Drag it all downstairs to the kitchen and the store rooms and place it on the shelves, remembering to follow stock rotation. It took ages. So boring.
“Is that a case of plain flour ben?’
“Err, yea yea, plain yea.”
“Good, last time they sent self raising by accident.”
“Hey Lozza, what’s in those two boxes?”
“Dunno, they’re cold though, and heavy.”
Lozza opened one of the two rectangular boxes, and then opened the blue bag inside. The three of us stared at a large, solid frozen block of something yellow.
Ben seemed to know what it was, “Err yea yea, cool.”
“What is it Ben?” He turned and looked at me, “Dunno.”
“But you said ‘cool’ as if you know what it is?”
“Err, yea yea, no. No idea.”
This yellow block was the exact shape of the rectangular box, and there were two boxes.
“Ben, what’s missing from the delivery note?”
“Err, yea yea, yeast, they haven’t delivered yeast.”
“Well this isn’t yeast. Yeast is a little block. And yeast is a creamy beige colour. This is like a frozen paving slab, but yellow.”
Ben agreed, “Yea yea, it’s not yeast.”
I called the supplier and explained the situation. And they had the answer to the mystery.
“Ahh that’s where they are. We’ve been looking for them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Another customer has your yeast and you have their boxes. Right, we’ll get it swapped over.”
“OK thanks. But hang on, what is in these two boxes, we can’t work it out?”
“Frozen peaches. And that’s funny, they didn’t know what your yeast is either.”
“Frozen peaches? I didn’t know such a thing existed. Why would someone use frozen peaches?”
“Dunno.”
Donna heard this phone conversation, “Frozen peaches. Why?”
“Dunno.”
“Ben. Lozza. Those slabs are frozen peaches. Look, now you know, you can make out the shapes.”
Ben and Lozza were baffled, “Frozen peaches. Why?”
“Dunno.”
You see, delivery day was painful, it took so much time and there was always something extra to sort out.
So I took the two heavy boxes back upstairs to the reception area, ready to be collected and swapped for yeast. Then the phone rang. And as I was closest to it, and Donna and Tina were downstairs stacking bottles on shelves, I would answer it.
“Jesus, you just can’t get anything done around here.”
“Good morning, Vanilla Black, how can I help?”
Now, I recognised the voice which answered, but it seemed as it was in disguise. So I beckoned Donna over to have a little listen.
We both huddled around the phone, “Yes, please can I book a table for two on Friday evening?”
“You certainly can, what time would you like?”
“Err, what do times do you have available?”
Now, the honest answer to this should have been, “Any time you want, we only have four people booked in.”
But instead, Donna spent a few seconds scrolling up and down the diary page as if to find a slot, then pointed at 7:30.
“Errrrrrr, we can do 7:30 Sir, is that suitable?”
“Yes, perfect, see you Friday.”
We hung up and Donna worked out who it was, “It’s Kevin isn’t it?”
And I agreed, “Yes definitely, that disguise wasn’t fooling us.”
A brief explanation, Kevin, or Big Kev, is a chap I worked for when I was a spotty, curly permed 17 year old. And Donna worked for his wife, Barbara.
Kevin was originally from Manchester, and he was the sous chef in a Michelin starred restaurant in the mid 70s, long before anyone knew, or cared what a Michelin star was. And as well as teaching me how to cook the classics, Boeuf Bourguignon, Chicken Chasseur and salmon Coulibiac, without the vesiga, Kevin taught me a lot about running a business.
You see, many chefs focus completely on food, but there’s much more to running a kitchen than that. Let’s be honest, with some time and dedication, one could probably learn how to cook by watching a few hundred Youtube videos.
But Kevin taught principles such as minimising waste, exceeding expectations, adapting to a million tricky situations and how to haggle at the veg markets.
Big Kev was the guy who could walk into a room, pull the rose from his jacket buttonhole, present it as a gift to someone, and then command the attention of all. Maybe he didn’t realise that, but I did, and I wanted to be able to do this.
Donna reckons this is where my cockiness came from, but I call it confidence.
So no pressure then. Let’s hope we could attract a few more diners by Friday evening so he didn’t think we were a bunch of losers and doyles.
We cracked on with returning frozen peaches and preparing for a fairly quiet week. But at the end of that day, Lozza asked if she could talk to Donna and I.
Lauren wanted to leave, she wanted to go back to York to be with her friends and family. She told us that she would work up until Christmas, then she would leave and go home to York. This was very sad, Lozza had started working with us four years earlier, just a few months after we had opened the York restaurant. She had joined us as a trainee on day release from catering college, and she joined us on our journey to London. Lauren had become a friend, but now she was leaving us.
Join us next week so that we can fill your mind with more daftness and a little goodliness.
Thanks for reading this, Donna and Andrew
*Another version of The Promise here, this one by The Smoggie Queens. If you enjoy this, you can find Smoggie Queens on BBC3. Or iPlayer.
The ever fine line between confidence and cockiness …
We have frozen peaches at the supermarket here but never in a block! Wonder what they used it for??? And so glad you dumped that first wine supplier!