The shipping containers were already like home to me. I knew which of the ten different keys went in the ten different padlocks and I knew which lever to pull in which order to release the huge metal doors. They slowly creaked open and there it was: my new home.
The space is two shipping containers side by side, one thirty feet and one forty feet long. They are tucked back from the street a little, surrounded by trees, and the sun dances through the leaves from morning through to afternoon. Something about the proportions of the space and the ever-changing light have always made it feel like a comfortable place to be. I had a good feeling standing there, with my own set of keys and my own plans ahead, but I was essentially looking at an empty box.
The two containers are side by side and slightly offset, with the overlapping middle walls cut out to create a larger area as you enter. The two ends – the entrance and the doors to the back garden – are both fully glazed. There are small slot-like windows cut into the sides for extra light, and the external areas created front and back by offsetting the containers create two gardens of sorts.
At this point the plywood walls and floors were unfinished and unpainted and the back garden was a pile of rubble; there was a sink in one corner and there was a toilet, but that was essentially it. There was a lot of work to do and it was time to get on with it. I had saved as much money as I could through running supper clubs and larger events with the National Trust. It was just enough to get going –£8000 if I remember rightly – a drop in the ocean compared to the average restaurant start-up budget.
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My head was full of questions. How do you set up a company? How does service work? What will environmental health say? Who will come? Should I make my own butter? Does it matter if there’s no gas? What should it be called? Can I actually do this? Where should I get bread from? What should be on the menu? Who grows veg round here? How long can I afford not to have an income? Is it OK if I only serve pour-over coffee? Does anyone even walk down this street? How will people know I’m here? How do I get a business bank account? How much does a website cost? Can I manage this on my own? What’s the long-term plan? Am I mad?
Some of the questions were easy to answer and some played on my mind for months. Each had a solution, however, which I figured out along the way. People were friendly and helpful, as the food community in Newcastle is an encouraging place with people always eager to help. When I was too embarrassed to ask the really stupid questions, there was always Google.
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To add to the pressure, in between leaving my job and opening up I decided to go and work in a couple of London restaurants for a few weeks to expand my knowledge and skills. I wanted to check if I knew what I was doing. I could have done that at home but I wanted to challenge myself. A good friend was managing Quo Vadis in Soho at the time and put me in touch with chef Jeremy Lee, who was happy for me to go and ‘stage’, as it is known, in their kitchen. Another introduction to one of my long-term heroes, Margot Henderson, saw me nervously pressing the buzzer at Rochelle Canteen a few weeks later.
I arrived to some confusion, but once everyone realized why I was there, I was kitted out as a chef for the first time and set to work. Washing nettles was the first task – a good one to begin with as I could settle down and survey my surroundings. I was pretty happy standing there washing the nettles and smiling to myself that I was actually doing this.
Standing in the Rochelle Canteen kitchen surrounded by their team of chefs, it was easy to feel that I knew very little at all. I was there to learn, though: how they organized themselves (very well), how long they kept things, when they ordered stuff, how they reused leftovers, recipes, ideas, presentation; I wanted to know everything. So I set to it… Cut, chop, prep, observe, clean, watch and learn.Anna Tobias was the head chef at Rochelle Canteen, running a tight little ship, confidently and efficiently sending out tasty, interesting dishes everyday as well as catering for events. My first day’s work over, we all sat down for the staff lunch, which included leftover rabbit faggots with mash, salad and lemony roast chicken, followed by some leftover blood orange sorbet and golden syrup biscotti. Well, you don’t get much better than that in my books. I was (nervously) having a wonderful time.
The following week I was so terrified about working at Quo Vadis that I started to grind my teeth in my sleep, waking up in agony. However, it turned out that Jeremy Lee greeted everyone with kisses and had such a lovely group of friendly and encouraging chefs in his kitchen that I felt better as soon as I arrived.
It was a much bigger set-up than Rochelle Canteen. I spent time in different sections with different chefs, even a couple who had studied architecture – one in Newcastle. I spent some time in bread and pastry, butchery, fish and sauces, as well as plating up and sending out some of the starters, which I loved. I left London exhausted but full of knowledge and ideas.
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Back in Newcastle I began by painting: walls, floors and window frames in subtly different shades of white, blue and grey. I bought nice but cheap garden furniture from a camping website and painted that too. I had a palette in my head of pale duck egg blues, bleached-out woods, pale green succulents in pots, enamel plates, natural linen fabrics, botanical prints; I could see it all in my mind, I just needed to make it real. One of the things I loved about working in the design world was this stage, gathering a beautiful palette of ideas. But this time I was the client, and I hoped I wouldn’t hate the project by the end!
I gathered cooking equipment as cheaply as I could. The oven was the main expense and even then it was just a domestic double oven with an in-built induction hob. There was no gas on the site so I toyed with the idea of installing Calor gas bottles outside and piping it in, but that soon became very complicated so I settled for everything being electric.
I bought a small pot-belly wood-burning stove on eBay, which was made out of a converted Calor gas bottle. It’s extremely cosy in winter, and definitely needed – winter in a shipping container can be challenging at points, particularly when the toilet freezes… I cleared the rubble from the garden and got someone in to lay some decking, which was expensive – hence why it doesn’t extend very far! – and I filled some massive grow bags from eBay with herbs and courgettes, hoping for a bit of produce for when I opened. I got the builders in for everything I couldn’t do: building new walls for the toilet and the store, hardwiring the oven, installing the kitchen extractor fan… I costed out every penny, made spreadsheets for everything and watched my bank account slowly drain away.
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I organized my bin collection, applied to run a food business with the council, set up a bank account and a limited company. I researched a lot and spoke to a lot of people: people in hospitality, chef friends, my butcher, other people I knew with small businesses, friends in food, people with successful food businesses… There was no shortage of helpful advice and I slowly pieced it all together until I had formed my own views. I’m still proud I managed to sort it all out myself, more or less. I just made lots of lists and got on with it.
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I had a few well-paid supper clubs booked in over this time, which was a saving grace. One involved a trip to London, where the brief was ‘Northumberland’. I had to travel with a ‘mobile’ fridge on wheels full of local produce on the train, as I couldn’t afford to hire a refrigerated van. Turned out these things weren’t very mobile. I was travelling with 10kg of local lamb and a crate of North Sea lobsters, and it was really heavy and really hard work! I could have done without that, but it was a boost to the bank account and allowed me to carry on.
I printed out our new menus, put lights up, tested food, framed pictures and gradually it was becoming the place I had imagined. I got Environmental Health round to advise me, which wasn’t as scary as I had imagined. They were incredibly helpful, and didn’t even think it was a ridiculous idea to open a restaurant in a shipping container.
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I even designed my own branding. The idea for this came from the rail in my kitchen at home where I hang my cooking utensils: I had a bunch of bay leaves drying out on it and used some artistic licence and added a leg of ham. I was really pleased with it and still proudly say, ‘I did!’ when people ask who designed it. Once printed and put up as signage, with our name, Cook House, everything suddenly began to feel very real.
It was actually starting to look like a real restaurant/kitchen/café. I still wasn’t sure how to explain it to people. People asked constantly when I was opening. It changed all the time as things took longer to finish or arrange than I thought, so I just took to saying, ‘Soon…’