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Category Archives: Cooking
37 hours to go
Yesterday we made great progress. The bar counter facing the kitchen was assembled. And most of the painting of the ground floor was done. Hopefully, progress continues today. An army of cleaners will come in before we open. Menu for tomorrow is coming together. Much to the frustration of the wait and kitchen staff, the [...]
Posted in Cooking 3 Comments
Opening
Finally it is starting to come together. The last week was tough. Delivery of wrong furniture. BT not being able to install broadband. Tiling of the basement taking forever. Then there was a major water leak when a contractor hit the main water pipe with a drill. Oh, yeah the air conditioning unit that was [...]
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Nightmares
One of the nightmares I had was that the truck that was going to deliver the furniture would be involved in an accident and that our furniture would be put on fire. I never thought it would happen. One nightmare I didn’t have was that the furniture supplier would deliver the wrong furniture, or rather [...]
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Hedone
Finally the kitchen has been put in place. Well, almost. Enough so we can start playing with the equipment and try to figure out where all the utensils will be stored. Not easy. I got 4 dozens of scallops yesterday from a diver that I will probably use as a supplier quite a bit. Fantastic [...]
Posted in Cooking 6 Comments
Not quite there yet
I was hoping that the kitchen would have been installed by yesterday. It isn’t. It will hopefully be by tomorrow. Only two weeks left until we open now. Still so much to do. Staff will start working over the next couple of days. One of my chef de partie arrived from France yesterday. The pastry [...]
Waking up the starter
Some friend chefs have told me that I am crazy to think that we will be able to make our own bread during the first few months. Perhaps. There are several reasons why I want to make the bread. First of all, I want to make the bread as natural as possible, in other words [...]
Posted in Cooking 5 Comments
A week in chaos
The past week has been a week in total chaos. Kitchen equipment was supposed to arrive on Thursday. With short notice, delivery was moved a day earlier to Wednesday but only some bits and pieces finally arrived so the equipment could not be installed. Bewildering, especially considering the manufacturer. The contractor for the kitchen floor [...]
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Progressing
The refurbishment of the place is progressing nicely even if the space now looks like a space in shell condition. A lot of things will happen this week. New floor in the dining and in the kitchen room will be fitted. The tiles to the kitchen arrived the other day. Not totally sure how it [...]
Posted in Cooking 2 Comments
PR and marketing
One of the most difficult decisions to make was whether to hire a PR consultant or not. Everyone in London has told me that I had to have a PR consultant. Some has even suggested it is more important than the food, which I find hard to believe. I have met with some of the [...]
Posted in Cooking 3 Comments
Restaurant design
I really wanted to start writing about what makes great ingredients and why they are everything when making great food but there is so much going on right now that it will have to wait a few days. The process of opening a restaurant has made me think of totally different aspects of the dining [...]
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Naming the restaurant
I was ready to give up on finding a name. I had set up a panel of a dozen people with different background and the majority of which had English as their mother tongue. I did not want the name to sound too French or to have any connection to me as a chef or [...]
Is the customer always right?
My father was keen to teach me early in life that there are two rules in customer relations: A customer is always right If the customer is wrong, rule number one applies. But does this apply to the restaurant business, or more specifically to cooking and food? I have thought that it did, at least [...]
Posted in Cooking 4 Comments
First Night