Restaurant Babylon Read online

  Much like Sean. I swear he is looking greyer and sweatier by the minute. Most of the chefs are in now. I have just seen Barney getting changed into his whites in the corridor and slipping on his black crocs. Half my staff favour Birkenstocks and the others don black Crocs. I suppose they are comfortable and waterproof but, personally, I can’t stand the things.

  ‘All right, Barney?’ I ask as he walks towards me, buttoning up the front of his white double-breasted jacket.

  ‘Just checking the prep list,’ he smiles, walking towards the noticeboard. ‘I want to be ahead of the game before Oscar gets here.’

  ‘Sure,’ I nod. ‘Did you work with him before?’

  ‘Bit before my time,’ he says, running his finger down the list. ‘I think I’ll crack on with the mirepoix.’

  The mirepoix consists of finely chopped carrots, onions and celery, which are fried gently in either butter or olive oil until they are reduced and translucent. It’s made daily, or every other day, and is the mainstay for many dishes. It takes about two hours of hard graft and it is not a job one would normally volunteer for, unless, of course, one is trying to impress a boss, or indeed a shiny new incoming head chef. Meanwhile Sean’s pulled the puntarelle straw and is slowly but surely cutting the spiky leaves off at the root. It’s a nightmare job where each leaf is sliced off and then split in two before being soaked and curled in cold water to take away some of the bitter taste. Personally, I’d take the mirepoix over that any day.

  In the far corner Alfonso is preparing the cuttlefish and, in the back kitchen, I can see Giovanna kneading the sourdough before its final proving. It will be baked and sliced fresh and warm for the breadbasket at lunchtime. She’s been the pastry chef here ever since we opened and she is always the first in at around seven. In her late forties, with grey Thatcher hair contained in a small cap, she must have some of the coldest hands in the business, which is a crucial asset when it comes to putting together a millefeuille. Over at the other end of her bench she has a pile of blood oranges she’s got to juice, sieve and make into a deliciously delicate ruby-coloured jelly before noon today. She’s got her work cut out.

  All this – staff, ingredients and prep time – has to be factored into the cost of a dish. So when I hear people telling me what a rip-off restaurants are these days, it does get me more than a little wound up. In fact, the quickest way to be ripped-off is not to book Heston’s fourteen-course tasting menu at The Fat Duck at £195 per head, but to go out for a pizza. The cost of a pizza is negligible; it’s less than a quid to make and you can bash out dozens of them in the time it takes for you to debone a duck. You can then charge up to £15 for the pleasure of your margarita. Now that’s what I call a mark-up.

  If you go somewhere posh, where they charge £30 for a main including VAT, it would have cost the restaurant around £7.50 to get it on the plate, and on top of that you have to think about rent, napery and staff costs. We are all aiming for a GP of about 70 per cent; if we hit that then we are happy. We normally times the food cost by three, or four if we think we can get away with it. Having said that, what you lose on the swings you make up with on the side dishes.

  Restaurants love a side dish, almost as much as they love a vegetarian option or indeed a bowl of soup. Side dishes are posh pizza. We sell them at £4 or £5 a pop and they cost pennies to make. Buttered spinach? 20 pence to make, £5 on the plate. Chips? 15 pence to make, £4.50 on the plate. A nice beetroot salad? 30 pence to make, £7 on the plate. Macaroni cheese? 50 pence to make (cheese is surprisingly expensive), a £10 hot and sizzling main course dish. It is not quite pizza standards but getting there. Obviously the more expensive the ingredients, the more difficult it is to make money. So a big fat bit of fillet might look overpriced at £35 but it will not be the most lucrative dish for us.

  And it doesn’t take much for the GP to slide. If you get a chef who’s a little bit lax and starts burning the food, or throwing the end of the carrots away, peeling too much off the celeriac, leaving flesh in the bones of the fish, you can suddenly find your GP slipped back to 65 per cent without you really noticing. Jean Christophe Novelli famously checks his bins every morning to see what is being thrown away, thereby making sure no one is being too profligate with his profits. You have to be on it all the time. Otherwise you suddenly find that lamb prices have doubled since the spring and the rump you’ve had on the menu all year is costing you twice as much as it did, and you haven’t changed the price on the menu. You’ve got to be in and out of the kitchen and all over the books like a Ritalin-fuelled nit-picker. I am sure that’s one of the reasons why large companies such as Gordon Ramsay Holdings find it tough to keep such a great big show on the road. It’s hard to be hands on and abreast of the goings-on in all your kitchens when you’re on the other side of the world watching a Lakers game with David Beckham.

  I walk through the back of La Restaurant’s kitchen to have a quick look in the fridges. I don’t want Oscar turning up and opening the large walk-in to find raw meat dripping on cooked meat, or dripping on the floor as I’d found it last week before going totally mad and throwing the whole lot out onto the kitchen floor. Or an army of revolting Pharaoh ants like I found last month. They are horrible little bastards. Protein eaters, they feast on spilt blood or any bits of meat left on the floor. I was straight on the phone to Rentokil to get them out. We’ve got a contract with them to come and deal with our rats, mice and cockroaches. If we are going to keep our star, cleanliness is all part and parcel of the package.

  Fortunately the ant army is nowhere to be seen and the meat is neatly stacked. There is a large shelf of T-bones, then a couple of racks of lamb chops that are waiting for a trim. They’re on different shelves to indicate which day they came into the restaurant. On another shelf there’s a large pancetta curing, a huge tub of giant green Cerignola olives, and a large bucket of par-boiled artichokes, plus a stack of baby pink rhubarb, chicken liquor and some more blood oranges.

  I am just closing the door when I hear a terrible scream.

  ‘Ma-a-a-an! Fuck off, ma-a-a-an, stay away from me, ma-a-a-an!’

  There’s a clatter of knives and some screaming and shouting and, as I walk back into the kitchen, I hear the back door slam.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask. I look from one commis chef to another. They are standing there, opened mouthed, staring at the recently slammed door. ‘Where’s Sean?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ says Barney, stating the obvious.

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘He started freaking out about the cauliflower,’ Barney continues, glancing across at the chopping board covered in white florettes. ‘He said it was like chopping brains, people’s brains, mad people’s brains. It completely freaked him out and he ran out the door. D’you want me to go after him?’

  ‘Yes, but be quick about it, we’ve got two head chefs turning up in three minutes – as if that’s not going to be enough of a shit storm, without being two commis down as well.’

  8–9 a.m.

  Barney comes back a few minutes later to tell me he found Sean quivering, whimpering and snotting near some bins belonging to L’Italiano, the cheap and cheerful E. coli trap along the street. He’d apparently found some leftover Ketamine in his wallet while sitting out the back and had decided to finish it off before service. I have to say the logic of that defeats me, but then I’m very much the wrong side of forty and don’t really see the appeal of disappearing down a K-hole. Unfortunately, or indeed unsurprisingly, it seems that horse tranquillizer and veg don’t mix and he came up, or fell down, or whatever you’re supposed to do, doing his mise en place. Apparently he’d been able to cope with the puntarelle – it’s an innocuous if high-maintenance vegetable – but it was the cauliflower that sent him over the edge.

  Any affection I had for Sean has now completely evaporated. The brigade is a man down and I have the double-headed ego of Andrew to massage and, quite frankly, my own hangover to deal with. I don’t expect to see Sean again. And I’m
hoping he’ll be too mortified to come back and pester me for his wages. He’s only on £16,000 a year, but as they say, every little helps.

  ‘Morning!’ Oscar pokes his head in through the back door. ‘OK to come in?’

  ‘Oscar!’ I grin broadly as he walks in swathed in a thick, blue, chunky duvet coat, with a rucksack on his back and his brown leather knife roll tucked under his arm. ‘Great to see you!’ He unzips his coat and takes it off. ‘You look well!’ I lie.

  He looks bloody terrible, especially under the warts ’n’ all strip light that bounces of the white wall tiles and illuminates backstage. Last time I saw him he was a plump-cheeked cherub, with blond curls, fat forearms and dimpled fists like a toddler. He loved his grub and obviously sampled quite a lot of it. Two years in France seems to have taken it out of him. He’s clearly been working his moobs off, his gut and half his body fat. He’s aged about six years.

  ‘How was France?’ He raises a pale eyebrow, as he looks around for somewhere to hang his coat. ‘Robuchon?’ He raises both his eyebrows. ‘Hard work?’ I hazard a guess.

  ‘You could say that,’ he says, running his hands through his thinning curls.

  ‘Over there,’ I say, pointing to the row of pegs in the corridor. ‘How long did you last?’

  ‘Almost a year.’

  ‘Impressive. That’s about ten months longer than Gordon and a few weeks less than Tom Aikens.’

  ‘And not quite as long as Richard Neat,’ he adds.

  ‘Indeed, but then he was a self-proclaimed psychopath.’

  ‘Great chef, though,’ nods Oscar.

  ‘Where’s he now?’ I muse.

  ‘Costa Rica,’ comes the swift reply.

  ‘Have Robuchon still got the one employee to one client ratio going on?’

  ‘Isn’t that how you maintain three stars?’

  ‘God, I remember hearing the old stories about Robuchon, the twenty-one-hour days, the three hours’ sleep and the endless cleaning. You’d bleach your boards, you’d bleach the floors, you’d bleach the sides, the stairs, the fridges, the walls, you’d bleach your own bloody hands off. Christ, no chef left the place stinking gently of garlic and thyme – they stank of Cif and fucking Toilet Duck.’

  Oscar smiles. ‘It hasn’t changed much; he trained as a monk, what do you expect?’

  ‘I think it has to be one of the toughest and one of the best kitchens in the world.’

  ‘True,’ agrees Oscar.

  ‘D’you remember Jean Marc who worked here for a while?’ Oscar nods. ‘I remember him talking about the headaches he got working there. By Thursday he’d had so little sleep and so much coffee his head used to throb. No amount of Solpadeine or bloody Nurofen was going to crack that mother. He never ate because he was no longer hungry. He lived on air and adrenalin. He said he’d seen several guys have fits because their bodies couldn’t take it any more and others who’d deliberately cut themselves to get time off.’

  ‘Yup,’ nodded Oscar. ‘There’s nothing like a bit of self-harming to get you off work.’

  ‘But you survived!’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘How was Michel Bras? A walk in the park after that?’

  ‘Put it this way, the hours were a little better. The lifestyle was little kinder and I saw daylight.’

  ‘Practically a holiday then?’ He smiles. ‘Well, we’re delighted you came back to us! I can’t wait to work with you.’

  ‘I am excited,’ he nods. ‘Very excited.’

  ‘Why don’t you get changed over there,’ I point back to the corridor. ‘And I’ll meet you in a minute in the dining room. We’ve got a lot to get through …’

  ‘Perfect. Over there?’ he quizzes, looking back over at the minimal changing facilities in the corridor, where the boys, the girls, the chefs de partie, the commis and the KPs all slip into their Denny’s work gear.

  In the old days the head chef wore a grand toque hat with a hundred pleats, which supposedly represented the hundred ways he knew how to cook an egg. The colour of your trousers denoted your seniority in the kitchen, with the darker shades reserved for the most important sous chefs and the chefs de partie. The white jackets were made from heavy-duty material to protect you from spills, burns and stabbing yourself in the chest and they were also doubled-breasted and reversible so you could hide those stains. However, in recent years things have changed. Despite being around for some four hundred years the toque hat is in decline and is really only used on cruise ships, in provincial hotels, and in all-you-can-eat buffets. Any stylish head chef worthy of his own photo shoot in Observer Food Monthly usually wears gel, some well-teased Harry Styles locks, a ponytail, or in the case of Andrew, a white Zandana – which, like all good chef headgear, releases humidity and absorbs the sweat. The hats were, and are, never about keeping hair out of the food and all about the sweat. The pouring, stinking, dripping sweat. So our commis chefs wear black skullcaps, my chefs de partie don white and the KPs have a nice black and white check.

  There’s the sound of a throbbing engine roaring around the back of the mews, then a screech of tyres and the loud sounds of Eminem.

  ‘That’ll be Andrew.’ I smile. ‘I’ll see you both through there in a minute.’

  Quite why Andrew James feels the need to drive a Ferrari, I don’t know. I do know how much I pay him. He gets around £90K a year when all his bonuses are factored in, so I don’t really know how he affords it. I suppose he’s got it on HP, but I don’t get the appeal myself. I think Andrew wants a fast car because Gordon has one and his old mate, the very talented Mark Sargent, also had one. Maybe it’s a chef thing. A sort of contagion they got from footballers. Perhaps he perceives it as a mark of his success? Or the sort of thing you have to acquire once you’ve got a star. A star, a car and a taste-testing slot on MasterChef, and you’ve made it. Or so Andrew clearly thinks.

  ‘All right?’ he says, about five minutes later, loafing into the dining room and chucking his leather jacket over the back of one of the chairs. He puts down his beige, perforated leather driving gloves and plonks himself down in front of me, stinking of fags and attitude.

  ‘How are you this morning, Andrew?’ I ask.

  ‘Not bad.’ He stretches both his hands above his head and yawns in my face. I am half expecting him to break wind but we are all fortunately spared that delight. ‘Tired,’ he pronounces.

  And he looks it. He’s unshaven, his long dark hair is greasy, his hands look like he’s been shovelling tarmac and he’s in the same grey T-shirt he was wearing yesterday. Andrew’s a good-looking bloke, lean and long, easily over six foot. The ladies love him, but today he’d have a job pulling anyone. They’d have to be at least two pints of Gavi de Gavi down before they’d give him a second glance. But that’s usually how he likes them, drunk and brief, so he can get back to his wife without too much hassle.

  ‘Well, thank you for agreeing to show Oscar the ropes for the next few days,’ I start. ‘It is extremely kind of you and well beyond the call of duty.’ He says nothing. ‘Um, I was wondering if we might have a look at the menu to start off with to see if Oscar here has any ideas.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with the menu,’ says Andrew, swinging back on his chair. ‘I didn’t hear any complaints when I got my star.’

  ‘No, no,’ I agree, very quickly. This is going to be much harder than I thought. ‘Um, would anyone like any water?’

  I wander over to the small bar area we have in the corner by the entrance to Le Restaurant. It is not the sort of bar designed for people to prop up for hours at a time, but it’s quite a good place to park a customer if his table isn’t quite ready. The bar itself is simple, black with a silver-polished mirror front; it has four cream leather stools for perching on, and a couple of silver bowls of skinned and hand-fried almonds. Behind are a load of glass shelves weighed down with premium whiskies, fat bottles of expensive brandy, and a collection of obscure liqueurs. Below the bar are a few bottles of Speyside chilling in the fridge, one
of which I help myself to.

  By the time I get back to the table Oscar has taken a large notebook out of his rucksack and is leafing through it, licking his fingers with enthusiasm. Meanwhile Andrew sits stubbornly, picking the fluff off his jeans. You could cut the atmosphere with a Global knife.

  ‘What have you got in there?’ I ask Oscar, sitting down and pouring the water.

  ‘Just a few bits and bobs that I picked up in France,’ he replies.

  ‘Have you got the Chocolate Fondant pudding recipe?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course he’s got the Chocolate Fondant pudding!’ snaps Andrew, the front legs of his chair landing back down on the floor with a thump. ‘Everyone’s got the fucking fondant recipe. Anyone who’s ever employed anyone who’s ever set foot near Michel Bras’s Laguiole has taken the fondant recipe and made it their own. Gordon’s done that, everyone has. It’s like the Basil Sorbet from Robuchon: we’ve got ours, Hartnett’s got hers, it’s in Nobu. Christ, even Jamie sodding Oliver has done a basil sodding sorbet! Everyone’s “inspired” by someone – it’s just that some of us are more subtle about it, aren’t we, Oscar?’

  ‘Yes,’ Oscar thankfully agrees.

  ‘I mean, the lemon tart recipe everyone uses is Marco’s. But I’m pretty sure Albert Roux or Pierre Koffman “inspired” it. Unless you’re Noma or even Heston, I suppose, there’s only so many times you can reinvent the wheel. There are only three or four genius chefs in the world – Ferran Adrià at the dear departed el Bulli, René Redzepi at Noma, and I suppose Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York, but he’s doing French fucking Asian bloody confusion and I hate that shit.’ He swigs his water and belches the bubbles. ‘I can’t stand fucking coriander.’