Exploding Chicken

I have always found eating a very functional thing, like dressing or washing so I wouldn’t say I have any feelings about it. Going to restaurants has never been something that particularly interests me, and neither is cooking. For me food is no more than refuelling (and something that often slips my mind).

Because of this I don’t have many particularly strong memories about meals. There was a Christmas dinner that sticks in my mind because it wasn’t until 3pm which I felt at the time (and still feel now) was much too late to have lunch. What we ate or who was there, I am not clear about.

After a lot of thought there is something, I remember, food wise from the cruise ship days. We had the same menu as the guests which meant the dinners were on rotation, we had the same menu every week for months on end meaning that we got to know exactly what we wanted before looking at the menu. The table we always sat at was the circular one in the middle, it was the biggest table and closest to everything on the buffet.

It fell on ‘Island Night’ which was our outdoor deck party. The band played and we had to dance with the guests from around 8pm till midnight. The thing with parties is that they are only fun if you want to be there. Doing this week in, week out for years, it quickly became one of my least favourite things. In fact, it got to the point I used to ask to be sent to the Alaskan cruises just to avoid having to go through the ordeal as it would be too cold.

The chicken kiev though was a high point. We would gather as a team and everyone ordered the same although inevitably everything would be delivered separately along with a glass of free wine, once tasted it became obvious why the wine was free. The cutting of the chicken was as much of a performance as the cutting of a wedding cake and as everything came out of the kitchen one at a time, we went through it several times a night because as the knife came down, the dinner would explode.

The buttery liquid inside would squirt out at speed often in several directions and we had to be ready to avoid being splattered. We would hold napkins in front of us and hide behind them until the impact had been made, then emerging to survey the damage. Then another kiev would be presented to one of our table mates and the process would be repeated. It was tricky to get the first one as there would be so many interruptions to eating, it would be cold before you finished.

I remember asking the chef how it was the velocity was quite so strong, but he didn’t seem to understand what I was on about. Perhaps he didn’t know either, it remains one of life’s great mysteries.

Service Please

I have never met a chef who objected to being called “chef”. No matter how senior in the kitchen team they are, calling them “chef” is always fine. ‘Morning chef’, ‘thanks chef’ and of course, ‘yes chef’ are normal things to say to anyone wearing white standing near an oven. It’s odd, we would never define other people by their job role – ‘thank you HR advisor’, ‘yes procurement officer’ or ‘morning systems analyst’ would all be very strange, but chefs are different. Plus, it has the added bonus of nobody needing to remember their actual names.

I was discussing this phenomenon with somebody from the restaurant team at the semi-finished hotel and they felt that not only did they not know the names of most of the chefs, but the chefs also don’t know the names of the waiters either. They just yell ‘service’ at anyone they see, regardless of how busy that person is or what their job role actually involves.

A more serious reason behind some of this is that due to a variety of circumstances, staff turnover is extremely high in food service businesses and learning names can be tricky. It is not unusual for a new chef to arrive without knowing where anything is or how to make many of the dishes on the menu. The person who was supposed to show them didn’t turn up (or has been poached by a place down the road offering an extra £1 per hour) meaning the new chef is in at the deep end.

The waiters may not be in a better position either. On a summers night I visited a small pub for dinner, the place was packed, and a young lad (approximately 19 years old) was running round in a panic. I would have estimated that there should have been four of them but it seemed to be him on his own. Then his mother arrived to help out. Although it quickly became clear that she had never worked a pub shift in her life and had no idea how to do anything. Even pouring lemonade proved a challenge for her.

There were danger signs. The table I pre-booked wasn’t set (or even clean), nobody seemed to have food in front of them and the young lad looked on the verge of tears. I was tempted to volunteer but maybe that wouldn’t have been too useful either. I would have ended up tripping over an excited dog with a tray of glasses. When the waiter took our order, we were told there were no chips as ‘the chef can’t find them’.

This kind of thing is happening all over the country. Good people trying their best, but the industry is severely understaffed. The politicians tell us it’s “unskilled”, yet I wonder if they can tell the difference between Coke and Diet Coke by sight alone. And if they can, perhaps they can help chef find the chips.

The Fashion House

We didn’t realise the people from the fashion house were due to be staying at the hotel. They had all booked separately through the website using a variety of different names and addresses, the bookings were all different lengths and contained a variety of room types. Then the day before, the phone calls from the personal assistants started.

Their team of creative directors were having some time out of the office to work on their next collection. These people were not really used to being away from the city and seemed to struggle with basic things. Considering they were the creative directors from a major fashion house, they also had no idea what to wear. They turned up in brand new waterproofs (even though it wasn’t raining) and bobble hats which they wore inside (even though it wasn’t cold). It was like a PA had put “what do people in the countryside wear?” into a search engine and in a panic, just purchased the first ten things that were listed.

The PAs continued to phone about everything. To be clear, the PAs were in London. The people from the fashion house were calling the PAs to call us, rather than speak to anyone in person. They called first thing in the morning and last thing at night. On one occasion, we asked if they wanted to sit together for breakfast and none of them answered, about 20 seconds later, a PA phoned to say that they will eat separately. The group hadn’t left, and I took the call in front of them. It was so strange.

One woman had been booked a room in the annex which is about a 30 second walk down the driveway. The PA tried to get that changed but we were full. This woman refused to walk to the annex as “the north is too creepy” and insisted on getting a lift. If the hotel had no driver available, she simply got her PA to get her a taxi so she wouldn’t have to walk to the next building. The taxi would have to come from the next town and probably cost £25. Its not her money, she didn’t care.

Then there was the coffee. Room service is expensive in any hotel, the reason is it takes staff members away from their work and slows down service for everyone else. The tray charges are to discourage people from making multiple small orders (such as one drink at a time). The people from the fashion house wanted very specific coffees at various different times during breakfast delivering to their rooms. It was explained that speciality coffee with non-dairy milk, alongside the tray charge and gratuity, the cost would be £23 per drink. We were perplexed that the PAs seemed to have no problem with this. In fact, over the course of their stay, the people from the fashion house spent over £1000 on room service coffee.

One of the creative directors flew in from their Mediterranean villa on a private plane. They stayed for six hours and then flew home again at 2am taking the largest car I have ever seen to the airport, being driven by a chauffeur in a bowler hat.

On one occasion, an external caterer arrived for the group with a lavish meal. The PAs had organised it and it was set up in a side room without anyone from the hotel being informed. Of course, we don’t let people bring their own food into function rooms. Usually, its pizzas or burgers that get snuck in. This was fine China plates and a Bain Marie, all loaded through a side door late at night while nobody was looking. By the time it was discovered, they were all eating (in silence, while looking at their phones). A very substantial charge was added to their account by the manager, predicting that the PA wouldn’t care (a correct assumption). As a side note, it is worth noting that about 80% of the food was left uneaten, a nice treat for the hotel staff who were left to clear up the mess.

A large fleet of cars arrived to take them away at the end of their stay. One of the women left without packing her cases, just leaving all her possessions behind scattered all over the floor. An assistant arrived a couple of hours later, having driven all the way from London just to pack this woman’s cases and then drive them back to her. One man didn’t like to travel with luggage in the car, so his cases travelled in a separate vehicle to him. Except the car with his cases in broke down on the motorway so he was stuck at the airport with no passport, missing his flight in the process. I can’t imagine how many messages that PA got.

So, what I have learned is that the reason high fashion is so expensive is not because of the rarity, the prestige of the name or the quality of materials used but because of the inability of the directors to understand how to control expenditure. I also hope that those poor PAs are well paid, I suspect that however much money they are on, it won’t be as much as they deserve.