Five minutes later and I’m slowly sinking deep into the front seat of Reza’s over-heated Mercedes. It must be about thirty degrees in here and half the seat springs are broken. The number of customer backsides must have given it repetitive strain injury. There is very little air in the car and what there is is laced with leather, flatulence and Magic Tree. I start to lick ten-pound notes off from a roll in my pocket, while he takes small paper packets out of a larger plastic bag.
‘This is top quality stuff,’ he sniffs, scratching his luxuriantly black sideburns. His fingernails are manicured and his left pinky is squeezed into a large flashy signet ring. ‘It was all harvested at dawn. Iranian,’ he adds. ‘The quality is so much better.’
‘I’ve gone right off the Spanish stuff,’ I agree, counting out another tenner. ‘It’s all adulterated. I am not paying fifty pounds for ten grams of floral waste.’
‘It’s cut with crap,’ he laughs, ‘but look at this …’ He opens up a small packet. ‘Red gold.’
Reza’s been my saffron dealer for three years now. He’s an affable chap with his own delivery business to half the restaurants in the capital. He also deals caviar, which I do purchase occasionally, but now that the sturgeon’s been slaughtered into near extinction by the Russians up their end of the Caspian Sea, it seems a tad unethical to take it from the Iranians, just because they’ve got a few left. I know you can get farmed eggs these days from obscure places like Uruguay, and I think even the French are having a go. But I’m a fan of those old big blue caviar tins and even those old yellow-lidded pots that the Russian sailors used to sell door-to-door fresh off the docks. Also, so much of it’s been tampered and played with now it’s often not worth the expense.
Saffron, on the other hand, we seem to get through by the packet load. It is also not cheap, around £6,000 a kilo, but when you consider it takes five hundred thousand crocus flowers to produce one kilo, you can see why. The stigmas must be hand picked between dawn and ten in the morning – after that they lose their colour and scent. They are then dried and are ready for use. Iranian saffron is darker than its European cousin, an autumnal red, and the aroma is denser.
‘Wow,’ I say, inhaling the sweet spicy scent. ‘It smells fantastic. One hundred pounds for two?’
‘Perfect.’ He yawns. ‘Are you sure you don’t fancy some caviar?’
‘No thanks, mate.’
‘Isn’t Oscar starting this week?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I hear all the gossip.’ He grins, broadly flashing a gang of golden molars that are clearly doubling as his pension plan.
‘Starts today, in fact.’
‘He’s a nice man,’ he says, taking my fistful of tenners and counting them. ‘I remember him from before.’
‘Mmm,’ I agree, looking over the maroon velvet tissue box on the dashboard and into the cobbled mews beyond.
There, sitting on the back doorstep of the restaurant, rolling up an unsuspicious-looking fag, is one of my commis chefs, Sean. I like Sean. He’s a young lad, full of Irish charm and in the early stages of Celtic tattoos. He’s got a couple of symbols on each forearm, the plug earring, the bolt through the eyebrow, and he occasionally comes in with various shaved areas on his head. He looks exhausted.
‘Thanks, Reza,’ I say, getting out of the car and pocketing the saffron. ‘I’ll give you a call soon.’ Closing the door behind me, I make my way towards Sean as he lights up. ‘You all right, mate?’ I say, raising my voice as I come down the alley. He looks over; his eyes are rimmed red and his face is ashen. ‘Been here long?’ He stares up at me and I am pretty sure he is trying to focus. ‘You OK?’
‘Oh, Boss!’ He nods. ‘Fine, mate, fine. I went out last night and I had some sleep but, you know, I thought I’d come in early.’
Bollocks, I think, looking at him. I know a dirty stop-out when I see one and Sean’s come straight from a club. ‘Good,’ I lie. ‘Just so long as you’re OK. You’ve got a long shift to get through.’
‘Tip-top, Boss.’ He sniffs, exhaling his fag smoke in circular puffs.
‘You coming in?’ I ask, opening the back door.
‘One sec,’ he says, taking another large lug on his roll-up before flicking it across the cobbles.
I’ve met the likes of Sean many times before; they’re all keen and interested in cooking, they’ve been to college, got the skills and come to London to become the next Gordon Ramsay, with their face on the telly, their home in a magazine, and a wife endlessly photographed endlessly shopping. But they get a bit distracted by the nightlife and the club scene on the way. I had one commis chef who started here eight months ago who used to pop an E up his arse at the beginning of service. He reliably informed Andrew that it made for an easy ride, putting it up the arse, and it meant he didn’t get too high too quickly. Being a relatively straight bloke from Bradford, Andrew took a dim view of this ‘entre nous’ and Chris, I think his name was, was out on his Eed-up backside before you could say ‘come down’.
Talk to anyone in the business and they’ll tell you there’s plenty of drugs on the scene. Mainly coke and on both sides of the pass. The chefs are doing it to stay awake; the commis chefs are doing it out of exhaustion, misery and boredom; the maître d’s are chopping out because they’re hungover from the night before; the waiters are sharpening up before a shift – and out front there are punters, girlfriends, wives, partners (both business and sexual) all hungry for a line along with their wine. It’s rife. It’s London. It’s everywhere. We’re forever getting the Evening Standard hacks coming in to swab our toilets during London Fashion Week. It’s tiresome. They just can’t help themselves; it’s quite sad really that they can’t come up with another idea.
But coke is mainly rife in those hip places where the food is secondary to the fun: brasseries, chains, places where they flip burgers, flatten chickens and fry courgettes into chips. There, the turnover and the atmosphere are as high as the crowd and so are the chefs backstage.
It is less usual, although obviously not unheard of, in a Michelin-starred kitchen. Although who can forget the sad death of David Dempsey, head chef at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, who fell from a block of flats after a night out on cocaine? But when you’ve got stars and staff and a soufflé that goes up or down in three and half minutes, you tend to be too much of a control freak to be under the influence of anything. Although I did hear recently that one of the hottest chefs in town at the moment has succumbed to the blow and you can begin to taste it in his cooking. It’s not quite so precise, not quite so perfect as before. But the pressure to be good and stay at the top of your game is usually reason enough to ‘just say no’ and focus. Just ask Gordon and Marco. I was told they were both ‘far too square’ to take drugs – unlike myself, who has always been a little bit partial.
In the old days, I remember spending many an early morning quite literally sniffing my away around Covent Garden market, apologizing for my terrible ‘cocktail cold’ while feeling up the cavolo nero. We’d have loads of nights out on the pop and chop – champagne and cocaine – and lock-ins were a regular thing in the first West End restaurant I worked in, learning to turn potatoes and pick bloody frisée lettuce for fifteen hours a day.
But things have changed, as indeed has Covent Garden. Andrew or I might still pop down there for a few essentials but we are much more likely now to use our own suppliers. We used to use Secretts, Greg Wallace’s place just outside Godalming. They have great asparagus, but they’ve got a bit pricey for us, so we’ve moved on to Rushtons The Chef’s Greengrocers who, although they have a place in New Covent Garden, deliver to our door.
We spend about £20,000 a year on veg but over £400,000 a year on meat, plus fish and wine. These are big contracts and you’d have thought that suppliers would be keen to keep them. But we had this bastard bloke who was always late with his order and consistently overweighed his produce, gently charging us a little extra every time, so we’ve recently moved to H. G. Walter in West Kensington, who supply The River Café. The legendary Caff, of course, gets first dibs at everything. The nicest grouse, the best partridge, the springiest lamb. But they’ve been with them for years and are the sort of restaurant that uses a whole prime £20 chicken to make even their most basic stocks; so you can’t really begrudge them their top spot in the queue.
We’re looking into our fish supplier at the moment. Last week the turbot came packed in a whole load of ice that, strangely, seemed to be included in the price. And when you’re paying nearly £25 a kilo for one of the ugliest fish around and they include the ice, you know you can’t trust the sod. So I am thinking of moving to this new bloke who apparently buys directly off the boats in Essex. Ben’s Fish, I think he’s called. You speak to him in the morning, he’ll tell you what he thinks they are bringing in and it arrives shiny and spanking fresh (ice not included) at around four that afternoon. He does a few places in the Islington area at the moment, Moro, St John and Trullo, and I’m debating whether to join them. Boat to plate in less than eight hours is a good USP. Most of the fish we get at the moment is at least twenty-four hours old.
With ingredients, it’s all about freshness and provenance. The organic argument is a little bit supermarket. In the trade, husbandry and where you’re sourcing your supply is far more important. Either your restaurant is completely organic or it’s not. There’s simply no point in shoving the word ‘organic’ in front of a dish or an ingredient and hoping it’s going to impress the henna brigade – it just makes the place look amateur. Whether your beef has been butchered and hung properly and where it came from are far more important. And contrary to what the layman might think, if any of us comes across a great supplier or a source of good meat, we are much more likely to share the contact than hoard it. Great suppliers are rare and they need to be nurtured and encouraged, otherwise they go out of business. The more restaurants use the good ones, the more likely they are to survive.
Equally, there’s nothing like a few charlatans to really put you off your coddled eggs. There’s always a crooked supplier, and plenty of crooked chefs, to keep you on your toes. The oldest trick in the book is for the chef to over order and to sell on out the back. In one of the places where I used to work, the head chef was on a percentage from the fish guy. The fish would be delivered, and a third of it would disappear and be sold on. Then the delivery guy and the chef would split the proceeds fifty-fifty. He was only caught because another delivery bloke wanted in on the scam and when they refused, he shopped them both.
As an owner you have to be on it all the time, checking the invoices and watching the stock, otherwise you’ll wake up one day to a terrible surprise. I remember my first boss in London told me how he went to dinner once at his head chef’s flat only to find his tables, his chairs, his cutlery, his salt and pepper pots all making an appearance. His chef had lifted the lot from the restaurant. He even ended up tucking into his own meat.
‘I can tell you what we ate,’ he told me. ‘Pork and fucking prunes. I have never been able to eat it since.’ Eventually he fired the bloke when he worked out that he’d paid for seventy-five turkeys one Christmas and had only served twenty-five lunches.
Theft is as rife as drugs in this business, but there are levels. Some theft is acceptable, expected even, like light-fingered bar staff walking off with the odd bottle of house white, customers pocketing the pepper or walking out with a wine bucket under their jumper, pretending to be pregnant. And some, such as my last barman, selling my wine out the back of Le Bar, or the waitress who stole £5,000 from my office, is patently not. But you live, you learn – and you watch everyone like a bloody hawk. And if something doesn’t tally up, or look right, then it invariably isn’t.
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.’