Thankless jobs

Fashionably late, Salvation Jane was officially launched 6 weeks after opening. Less fashionable or forgivable is the lateness of my thankyous.  Well after midnight I stood on a chair and said something heartfelt along the lines of a speech I’d prepared and had intended to give much earlier in the evening when there were more people in the room and less cocktails in me.  In case I actually did just slur “Iloveyousall” to the handful of family, friends and members of the band committed to drinking the bar dry, here is what I meant to say….

Tonight is my way of saying thank you because in the 3 and a half years I’ve been running a cafe, I’ve rarely taken the time to stop and enjoy a drink with the people who make the business what it is - staff, suppliers, customers and industry people.

It doesn’t feel that long ago that I was living a very different life as a policy advisor in Melbourne. A couple of months before I was due to fly to London on my one way ticket, I took a day off work to attend an industry seminar at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. It was called something like Tips for Success in Running a Restaurant and had a panel of industry stalwarts including two of my heroes: Sam Clarke from Morro in London and Alla Wolf Tasker from the Lakehouse in Daylesford, just outside Melbourne. I went along expecting to feel inspired and reassured about the huge career change I was about to make from public servant to restaurateur. Instead, the talk turned into a therapy session for the room full of chefs and restaurant owners, all talking over the top of each other about the hardships they’d faced in running their businesses – difficulties of location, finding and retaining good staff, the power of reviewers to make or break your restaurant, trying to maintain passion when you are so physically exhausted from the long hours...and on and on.

I sat there feeling the panic rise. At the end of the session I went up to the table of speakers and asked them: "Knowing all that you now know would you still choose the career you have?" Alla Wolf Tasker didn’t hesitate. She looked me in the eye and said “Absolutely. There’s nothing like the excitement and theatre of hospitality. Each day is a new performance; the table is set, the audience arrives and you put on a show.”

It’s true. Despite all the challenges that are continuously thrown at the team at Salvation Jane and Lantana, they are greatly outweighed by the rewards (I hope). When we’ve had a successful service where everything runs smoothly and customers tell you how much they enjoyed themselves, you understand the unquantifiable pay off for working in this industry. One of the biggest and unexpected rewards I’ve received is meeting so many wonderful and talented people from all walks of life who share the same passions as me - from the staff at Lantana and Salvation Jane, people working at other London restaurants and cafés, to our suppliers and customers. It is an incredibly creative, enthusiastic and supportive community which I feel so privileged to now be a part of. 

The only two people I want to single out for special thanks are our two head chefs who don't often hear the gushing about their food directly from our customers. George Notely at Lantana and Tim Dorman at Salvation Jane.

They are an absolute joy and pleasure to work with. I know I can be a pain in the arse sometimes but the reason we do work well together is because we are all obsessive perfectionists who will wake up in the middle of the night because we’ve realised there’s a typo in the new menu and can be put into a bad mood for an entire day by a careless mistake like over blanching the green beans. They are both serious and talented chefs who continue to make me incredibly proud,  

This is not one of our real dishes

and smile.

One man's weed is a farmer's treasure

From the dirt, 

new life has emerged.

Introducing the latest cafe to gain a foothold on English soil, Salvation Jane. 

Like it's sister cafe, Lantana, Salvation Jane's namesake is an Australian weed. 

Introduced into Australia in the 1880s as an ornamental plant by an English settler named Jane Patterson, this adventurous little plant had other ideas. It spread uncontrollably, smothering all other flora, for which it earned its other name, Patterson's Curse.

Salvation Jane is what farmers called it because in drought times the hardy plant was a saviour to grazing livestock.  Farmers weren't the only ones to sing the praises of Salvation Jane. Aussie rock legends INXS  penned this tribute to our new cafe:

Wild wild flower of love
Salvation Jane
You've got the power to change
You're such an easy prey

Nine times the protector
Ten years and a day
Eleventh hour we're facing
Twelve o'clock in the sun

Oh mother nature
We're trying to kill you
Such greedy fools

Salvation Jane
Wild wild flower of love
Salvation Jane
Wild wild flower of love
You've got the power to change

Welcome back to England, Miss Jane. May you become a Shoreditch treasure.

Thank you to Tom Gildon for the beautiful photos- more to follow. 

Lantana 2

There has been something worrying me about Lantana 2.  

Grease 2, Caddyshack 2, Revenge of the Nerds 2.

Sequels. They are generally rubbish. Insipid shadows of their predecessors.

Since we put the word out that we are opening a second café, our Lantana regulars have been incredibly encouraging and excited, wanting to know where it is, when it’s opening, how big it is, whether it will be in the same style, have the same menu, will any of the Lantana staff work there? There is a level of expectation and anticipation for our second cafe that I didn’t have with Lantana.

With Part 1 you have the advantage of surprise.

The second time around we all knew the shy bookish wallflower could be transformed into a hot babe with a leather jacket.

Something dawned on me when I was at the site of the new cafe last week watching the throngs of people pouring out of the Old Street underground. London is a city of 7 million people. Lantana is a café with 35 seats. Not exactly a box office blockbuster.  

Lantana has its own unique character and identity because of its location, the regulars, its menu, the people who work there and the changes we’ve made to it over the three and a half years since it opened. Part 1 hasn't finished - its still running. Part 2 will have a whole new audience who might not have even seen the Original.

Maybe sequels are a bad metaphor. Its more like a series - Downtown Abbey, Masterchef, Mad Men. You can start watching at any point but there’s a little something extra for the returning audience who know that the Earl of Grantham should not be left alone with the female servants and that a chocolate fondant on Masterchef usually ends in tears. 

Maybe it is actually just a cafe in a city with a lot of people who like to eat and drink coffee. Maybe. But I’m still not going to call it Lantana 2 and I'm not going to attempt a chocolate fondant.

Can I hang your coat?

Duck Soup, Soho

I miss not paying attention to details in restaurants like coat hooks, napkins, and light fittings because right now I find it hard to actually focus on the food on my plate when I’m eating out. It’s like when you’ve been shopping for shoes, all you notice is what people are wearing on their feet. 

With the construction of café number two well underway I’m consumed once more by the myriad of choices I need to make, from the positioning of power sockets to bowls for serving muesli.  It’s a sobering thought to think that every single item in a restaurant has involved a person making such decisions.

Mishkins, Covent Garden

Mouse and DeLotz, Dalston

Corner Room, Bethnal Green

Duck Soup

So next time you eat out, pay the restauranteur the courtesy of at least noticing the toilet roll holder 

Duck Soup

and the stand where you put your umbrella.

Mishkins

They spent considerable time flicking through supplier catalogues, wasted hours on ebay and traipsed through antique markets at ungodly hours of the morning. I’m guessing.

Let them eat cake

Unemployment rising. TICK

Global food prices soaring. TICK

Consumer spending on goods and services remaining low. TICK

Britain likely to enter a double recession. TICK

Ideal time to open another cafe.

People often ask me whether the credit crunch has affected our business. Its impossible for me to answer because this is the only economic environment Lantana has known. Opening in September 2008, Lantana arrived on the crest of the wave that was, and still is, the global financial crisis.

I remember the day before we opened flicking through a newspaper filled with stories of the long deep recession we were facing. As the knot in my stomach grew tighter and tighter I said to my business partner “I think we might be the most stupid people on earth”.

We bravely soldiered on and three years later not only is Lantana still in business, it is now one of many independent cafes in London that are not just surviving, but thriving. I’m amazed and delighted that barely a month goes by when I don’t hear about a new café opening that I want to go and check out. Two have opened just recently, metres from where I live.

Salt on Great Queen St, Covent Garden, the day before opening

and just around the corner in Wellington St Covent Garden, Notes recently opened their second cafe. 

“Let them eat cake” is famously attributed to Marie Antoinette when told that the starving peasants had no bread to eat. While this expression has been used to demonstrate her frivolity and callousness, maybe she has been wrongly maligned. I suspect that she was actually showing great empathy for the peasants, understanding that in times of extreme economic hardship it is the small luxuries that help us survive.

On a bleak Monday afternoon while sitting in one of my favourite local cafes 

I sipped a silky smooth flatwhite with a slice of carrot cake and pondered why cafes seem to be defying the economic slump. On cue, two city types popped their heads in and one said to the other: 

“This place looks nice. Is it expensive?”
“£2.20 for a coffee. That’s cheap” the other replied, and in they came.
Since when did suits become sensitive to the price of a cup of coffee?

That's when it struck me. Independent cafes are no longer the third place. They have become the credit crunch place. With their reclaimed furniture and lack of frills or pretention, they are the affordable luxury that we can still enjoy in a gloomy world of austerity cuts and meagre budgets. The fact that independent cafes are usually staffed by young scruffy hipsters is the icing on our cake, making us feel we are doing our bit for youth unemployment.

So with shaky hand about to sign the lease for a second café, I can read the newspaper with less fear than I might when economists are describing our grim economic future and quibbling over whether the recovery will be shaped like a 'V' 'W’ or 'U'.  Perhaps it will be an 'L' shape (long-term slump with no recovery) which in years to come will be taught in high school economic classes as the ‘Latte’ recovery. 

Rodeo Mike

Hi there! My name’s Mike and I work at Lantana. If you pop down to Lantana this month you will recognise me as the one grooming my very own charity Mo for Movember, in support of Prostate cancer and Testicular cancer. So far it is going well and a bushy tash is forming beautifully, if not very gingerly!

Lantana has kindly offered to match whatever I raise, just because they are that nice, so donations are very welcome. If you would like to donate to this amazing cause visit my site. Better yet, come down to Lantana and check out my Mo for yourself and donate in person. Any amount is a generous one.

See you soon :{)

PS- Let's hope Mike has better success than the LanMowers who last year only managed to raise £70.41 and brought great shame and embarasment to us all, but mostly to themselves. S x  

The Lantana Q&A

Any resemblance to the Guardian’s Q&A is entirely intentional and done without their knowledge or permission.

Tim Dorman, Head Chef at Lantana since January 2011, grew up in a small town  in New Zealand with nine siblings in a Brady Bunchesque family.

Tim is the Bobby (second from left) in the Dorman Bunch. NB. This is not Tim's actual family photo.

After a brief stint as a rousie* in a shearing gang, Tim suspected that crutching sheep had limited career prospects and decided to follow his brother into the kitchen. His first job was as a dishy in the restaurant where his brother was head chef. From those humble beginnings he worked his way up the kitchen larder via numerous fine establishments including the gunshop cafe, an award winning restaurant in my home town, Brisbane. But the bright lights of bigger cities beckoned. Tim came to London to seek out fame and fortune and found...Lantana.


What is your earliest food memory?
My mum counting down from 10 to make me eat swede and carrot mash.

Which person has had the greatest influence on the way you cook?
Good friend and former head chef at the Merthyr Bowls Club, Andrew Dale. He was my first proper teacher...the first person who really inspired me in the kitchen.

Aside from knives, what is the most expensive piece of kitchen equipment that you’ve bought for yourself?
My bright red Kitchen Aid with an array of mincing, juicing and mixing attachments. The first thing I made with it was pancakes the morning after my birthday - not really utilising its full potential. It’s now sitting in a box underneath my house in Brisbane.

What’s the worst thing a chef has ever said to you?
Too numerous and inappropriate to mention. A four year apprenticeship means you learn to deal with a lot.

What trait do you most deplore in other chefs?
Gordon Ramsay style tantrums. I’ve seen chefs make apprentices cry and then expect to have a beer and be mates after service. Wankers.

Who would play you in the movie of your life?
Will Ferrell.

What would your superpower be?
Invisibility.

Is it better to cook or be cooked for?
To cook. I like showing off.

What is your guiltiest food pleasure?
Does wine count? (No) Then cold baked beans from the tin. But they have to be Watties, not those crappy English ones.

What is the greatest crime committed against cuisine?
The 3am kebab.

Strangest food request you’ve had from a customer?
Raw steak. We had a regular at the Merthyr Bowls Club in Brisbane who used to come in and say he’d been out in the bush hunting and needed to eat raw meat. One of the many colourful New Farm nutters.

Cheese or chocolate?
Cheese please.

Closest you've come to death?
Crashing my car into a semi trailer when I looked down to change the radio station and crossed onto the wrong side of the freeway. I left black tyre marks down the side of the truck and ended up in hospital.  The first of many car crashes. That's what you happens when you learn to drive in small town New Zealand.

What would your last meal on earth be?
BBQ rib with a cold beer on a hot sunny arvo’

If you could ask anyone, alive or dead, to dinner, who would you invite?
Goose and Maverick

Tell us a joke
A Scotsman walks into a bakery and points to a cake, “Is that a doughnut or a meringue?”

The baker says, “No you’re right. It’s a doughnut.”

*rouseabout (often abbreviated to 'rousie'), is commonly used in Australia and New Zealand to refer to shedhands who pick up wool after it has been taken from the sheep's back during shearing operations.