Never never never give up

Another lesson I'm learning in the process of trying to open the café is that perseverance is key. A lot of Antipodeans I’ve spoken to in London say they had also thought of opening a café, or knew of someone who wanted to, but had never gone ahead with it.

Perhaps there are only so many disappointments, knock backs and unreturned phone calls that these people can take before they say, ‘I give up’. But if there is one thing I’m not, it’s a quitter. Like Winston, I never give up.

The other week I saw that Tamasin Day-Lewis was speaking at a lunch at Books for Cooks. Now, I have to explain that my sister is infatuated with Tamasin. She feels that she and Tamasin are kindred spirits: both involved in high pressure jobs in creative industries, both mothers of three, and both passionate about food and cooking. If only they could meet, she is sure they’d become best friends.

When I went to Books for Cooks to arrange this meeting I was told that the event had sold out, they couldn’t possibly take any extras and already had a waiting list. A thin lipped assistant assured me that my chances of attending were “doomed I’m afraid”.

The following week I was serving in the deli at Tom’s when I looked up to see Tamasin at the cheese counter. I knew I would kick myself if I didn’t seize this opportunity. Caught completely off guard all I could think to say was “My sister is completely obsessed with you”. She laughed a little nervously and said “In a good way I hope”. I blundered on and by the time she was walking out the door with her bag full of cheeses she had secured me seats at her lunch: “Call Eric and tell him that Tamasin said its ok for you and your sister to come”.

The phone call was made and on the day of the event we were the first to arrive. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, non” said Eric Treuille, the French proprietor of Books for Cooks, “I thought it was just you. One of you can come but two is impossible”. Despite my pleading and offers to stand and not eat, Eric is also a man who does not give up and I was left pacing downstairs waiting to see if a ticket holder didn’t turn up. 30 agonising minutes later I was allowed in, giving Eric and Tamasin a triumphant smile as I sat down to lunch.

We chatted, we laughed, we ate, we bonded and my sister left with her arm around her new bestie. Well almost – a copy of Tamasin’s new cook book with a personal inscription.

Ink: A site to behold part 2

It’s official. After many weeks of nail biting negotiations and escalating legal fees today the contract was signed and we are now the proud tenants of the café site in Charlotte Place, Fitzrovia W1. My emotions swing between euphoria and terror on a minute by minute basis.

While economists and politicians may try to dampen our enthusiasm with reports of rising food prices, a credit crisis and a sharp decrease in consumer spending, we are standing firm in our belief that our café will succeed. Richard prophetically told his disappearing sister Karen in the movie Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story, “You gotta eat”. We too believe that the London population gotta eat somewhere so why not at 13 Charlotte Place.

So now onto the next item on the to do list: find a chef.

Here is the ad I’ve been running on Gumtree for the last couple of weeks with under-whelming results.

Head Chef/Sous Chef wanted

We are an independent startup in Fitzrovia looking for an experienced chef who is highly motivated, creative, feels passionate about seasonal cooking using best quality ingredients, and shares our dislike of chains and the bland coffee and food they serve.

You would be taking the creative lead in designing the menu which will focus on breakfast/lunch dishes with a gourmet twist, and be responsible for managing and training a small team. Good working knowledge of Australian café/restaurant culture would be an advantage. Salary 26-28k plus bonuses.

So if any one knows a good chef…

A chef for all seasons: interview with Oliver Rowe

In the spirit of furthering my knowledge about seasonal, locally grown produce I recently ate at a restaurant in Kings Cross called Konstam which tries to source all of its ingredients from within the London area.

The thing that strikes you when you first walk into Konstam is the visibility of the kitchen which is integrated into the dining space. Our table was so close to the prep counter I had to stop my hungry brother eating the mise en place.

It feels like you are eating in owner/head chef Oliver Rowe’s home kitchen, chatting to him while he cooks, asking him about ingredients and giving him our opinion (which he asked for) on who had ordered the best main- a difficult verdict arrived at through the time honoured practice of ‘a bite for a bite’. Perhaps we were a little conscious of the immediacy of our feedback but we each told him that our own meal was the winner - mine was slow roasted shoulder of lamb with apple and blackcurrant compote.

I often wonder if chefs and restaurants that make ambitious and worthy promises about their food sourcing policy manage to stay committed to their vision or whether they live to regret their absolute proclamations when the margins get skinny and the customers lose interest and move onto the next fad.

Oliver seemed like such an affable chap that I went back a couple of weeks later to record an interview with him about his food sourcing philosophy and whether consumers really care.

It’s about 8 minutes long and a large file so you may want to go and make yourself a cup of tea while it downloads.

Trying to act seasonally

One of the difficulties I’ve found in moving from Australia to England is establishing my seasonal bearings. I'm unfamiliar with such extreme contrasts in weather from one season to the next, complicated by the fact that the seasons don't seem to follow any rules, changing back and forth in the space of a week.



When I was little the world was a smaller, less complicated place. There were essentially two seasons: summer and winter. Meat was bought from a butcher, fruit and vegetables from the greengrocer and everything else from the Ironside shop’s Cut Price Store; a 3 aisle Aladdin’s cave which contained everything from dog food to cupcake papers. I had no idea where the fresh food I ate was grown or reared but I assumed, probably correctly, that if I was eating it, it was in season and hadn’t traveled very far. I also always assumed that price was a good indicator of seasonality. Over summer, mangoes would go from being $2 each to a $2 a tray special in the space of weeks as they reached the peak of their season.

Now I walk into a supermarket on the other side of the world and am faced with rows and rows of choice; lots of little styrofoam cling-filmed trays filled with an endless variety of trimmed and ready to cook meat, fruit and vegetables that are available every month of the year. Often the cheapest produce has a little sticker of a plane showing that it has been flown from Thailand, Chilli, Morocco or some other far flung country where the sun is shining and the labour is cheap.

While I’m loathe to jump on what seems to have become the latest foodie bandwagon, I do care about food miles, although I admit, my motives are largely selfish. Food tastes better when it is in season and hasn’t had to travel long distances with lots of people handling it before I eat it.

So without price and availability or even weather to help me navigate the UK food seasons, I rely on the local Farmer’s market to educate me. There I've discovered why the English are so skilled at making preserves and chutney’s – they’ve had to survive a lot of long chilly months when there’s not much grown apart from root vegetables.

Last Saturday I picked up these slender little conference pears and poached them in a vanilla syrup (1 vanilla bean split open and a 1:4 ratio of sugar to water).


I ate them for breakfast the next morning as the snow gently fell from the sky. So does that make pears a winter or spring fruit?

Baked eggs: friend of the leftover

I’ve mentioned before how my parents hated food wastage. Sunday night presented a prime opportunity for all of the week’s leftovers to be transformed into a cohesive meal that was called dinner. As you can imagine this clearing out the fridge approach to cooking had mixed results, but on the whole, positive. Leftover meat became a curry, any combination of cooked vegetables was smothered in white sauce or breadcrumbs and baked, and there were endless variations on risottos and pasta sauces.

I’ve developed my own version of the Sunday night leftover dinner, discovering that there aren’t that many dishes that can’t somehow be turned into a base for baked eggs.

Baked eggs are almost obligatory on breakfast menus in Melbourne cafes. I remember Birdman Eating on Gertrude St in Fitzroy had four ‘baked eggs of the day’ which were always really interesting and unusual combinations of ingredients like chilli jam and green beans or braised fennel and trout. Now I think I may have stumbled upon the secret to their popularity - baked eggs are a great way to use up leftovers.

Here are some of my experiments

First life: Mint and pea crostini

2 cups of frozen peas
salt
clove of garlic
squeeze of lemon juice
handful of roughly chopped mint
couple of generous glugs of extra virgin olive oil
couple of tablespoons of finely grated parmesan plus shavings for ganish

Cook peas in boiling salted water for 2 minutes – drain, run cold water over the peas, and drain well. In a (largish) mortar and pestle, pound garlic to a paste with a good pinch of sea salt. Add the peas, lemon juice, mint, and mix to a coarse paste in the mortar and pestle. Add the olive oil as you go to loosen the mixture until it looks like it can be spread on crostini (bread toasted and rubbed with cut garlic). Season with salt and pepper and top crostini with pea spread and shaved parmesan.

Roasted butternut squash with thyme and garlic

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cut squash into wedges, toss with olive oil, whole cloves of garlic, salt and pepper and sprigs of thyme and roast until tender: around 30-40 minutes.

Caramelised onions

Heat 2 tbls olive oil and 1 tbls butter in frying pan. Add 2 peeled and sliced onions and cook over gentle heat until they are soft- 10- 15 minutes. Add 1 tbls brown sugar and heat until the sugar melts and caramelises. Add 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar and stir together.

Second life:
Minted peas and broccolini baked eggs
Roasted butternut squash and caramelised onion baked eggs

Preheat the oven to 220°C (430°F). Grease a small dish/ramequin, lay the leftovers at the bottom.

Make a little hole and break an egg into it. Drizzle with olive oil. You can also add 1 tablespoon of crème fraiche or yoghurt before you add the egg (as I have done here) which is the way the French do egg croquette.

Put the dish in a baking tray and pour hot water in the dish to about half the height of the dish. Put in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how runny you like your eggs.


First life: Chickpea, eggplant and chorizo stew

1 medium eggplant salted for 20 minutes, drained and cut into 1 cm dice
1 red onion roughly chopped
about 50 g chorizo cut into 1cm dice
clove of garlic finely chopped
2 tomatoes peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 can chickpeas
½ cup chicken stock
good dash of white wine
handful spinach
Greek yoghurt to serve

Cook the eggplant in some oil and remove from pan. Cook chorizo and diced red onion in the pan over medium heat until onion is soft (no need to add oil as the chorizo will release its fat as it cooks). Add garlic and cooked eggplant to pan- stir for a minute. Add tomatoes and drained chickpeas and stir to combine flavours. Add a dash of white wine, stock and let stew simmer for 10- 15 minutes. Before serving, toss through a handful of baby spinach until it wilts. Serve with a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

Second life: Chickpea, eggplant and chorizo baked eggs with greek yoghurt

Cook leftovers in a dish with the egg following the sam recipe as above. Before serving, drizzle the baked egg with greek yoghurt.

A site to behold

If you’ve been following this blog from the beginning, you may be wondering whatever happened to the café I came to London to start. All this researching and talking is well and good but there comes a time when you just need to start walking.

Well let me assure you, I want to walk. I want to run, sprint and leap but I feel like I’m in that recurring dream where I’m trying to run but no matter how fast my legs move I always stay in the same spot.

The first hurdle has been finding a site. As an independent start-up with no track record and trying to do it on my own rather than paying for a scouting agent, this has been no easy task. It has involved lots of meetings with estate agents, lots of web searching, lots of cycling around London and lots of frustration.

Finally a break through came in October last year. I found a site in Bute Street, South Kensington, which met most of our selection criteria: an inner city suburban area populated by high income professionals and ‘yummy mummys’, room for outside seating, near a school, a tube station and lots of crap cafes. The best part was that it was already operating as a popular café so I could move straight in and start trading.

It was a done deal. We’d popped the champagne, I’d quit my job at Tom’s. I’d even drafted the blog entry “You Bute”. With the Fulham site, I’d learnt that if it looks to good to be true, it probably is. With Bute St I learnt my second lesson. A property is not off the market until contracts are exchanged.

It is a long sorry saga that dragged on for many months but the short of it is, we were gazumped not once but twice and finally had to accept that this was not the site for our cafe.

Of course the reason I am able to write this blog entry is because we now have a site - although contracts have not officially been exchanged. What was that lesson I said I’d learnt? I’m a believer in happy endings and my gut instinct tells me that I’ve found the site for our café. But before I pop the champagne or say too much more I might just wait until there is ink on a contract.

Watch this site…

The gastronomic rewards of research

Last Saturday I finally made it to Broadway Market in Hackney to check out a place that I’ve wanted to try called L’Eau a la Bouche.


After browsing the small café/deli and taking mental notes (and sneaky pictures) of their recycled timber shelving and food display units, the lure of the produce and east london locals on display outside at the farmers market was too great and I opted for a takeaway coffee (La Marzocco was there in la Bouche but in the company of Union rather than Monmouth coffee).

I had a recommendation from a local and before he could say ‘ouvre la bouche’ I had devoured a damn tasty sandwich from Sporeboys's mushroom stall prepared using their magnificent looking wild mushrooms in a small fry pan and extreme wind conditions.

I took down the recipe in my mental note pad.

Fried mushroom sandwich

Throw a couple of generous handfuls of a mixture of sliced mushrooms (note nifty slicer in foreground of photo) into a fry pan with melted butter. Stir for a few minutes then add salt and pepper, some chopped garlic, and a handful of flat leaf parsley. Transfer mushrooms onto a slice of sourdough bread, grate with fresh Parmesan and drizzle with olive oil before topping with another slice of sourdough.