Following on
from my recent thoughts on menus, I thought I should introduce the new workday lunch
card. We have switched from offering a full A La Carte during the week to a set
Three Course Set. This, as with every decision we make, is designed to improve
our guests’ dining experience, specifically to offer them greater convenience
and value. Allow me to explain…
Around a year
ago a young cook came to join the team as Head Chef. It has long been my
preference to employ a Head Chef at Brunswick House; though I adore cooking and
spend as much time in the kitchen as possible, the demands of manning the pass in
addition to overseeing the rest of the operation here long ago went beyond my
organizational abilities, and, with the arrival of Charles Woodward, my technical skills too.
Charles is an excellent chef. His CV was most impressive, encompassing
senior positions at Fera, Viajante and The Corner Rooms, among many other
places I also admired. He was young, serious and friendly. He heard I was
looking for someone to head up the kitchen, came for dinner, really enjoyed the
place, and got in touch out of the blue to see if I wanted to meet for
coffee. We met on a Monday evening at
4pm at Quo Vadis, rather like a blind date, all stiff smiles and reserved manly
handshakes. Eight hours later it was midnight, coffee had turned into tea,
snacks, aperitifs, a three course dinner, three bottles of excellent Burgundy, Fernet Branca, Vieille Prune and… well, memory gets a little foggy, but we
spent the whole evening talking incessantly about food, restaurants, and the
kind of place we’d both like to see Brunswick House become if we were to work
together. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
Charles making friends on his first day
It’s basically
the only qualification required for getting a job here – to love food deeply,
enjoy talking about it incessantly, and be able to work unceasingly in its
production. Charles has been wonderful to work with on all counts. I’ve also
learnt a huge amount about cuisine from working alongside him. A highly
technical and exacting cook, he is also a very considered person, and as such
has almost as many opinions on what I propose we do here as I. He has a
tremendous amount of energy and ambition, and has helped me continue to drive
this place ever upwards.
Under his
influence, the menu has become increasingly involved. Under my guidance, the
general principle was a happy union of three complimentary components on a
plate, with a unifying sauce or dressing. Charles has, like a fractal
regression, taken that model and constructed each of those component parts out
of three parts in turn, and those parts from three further components. The food is on another level, and I think this is
magnificent.
Chef Charles at work
It is, of
course, a lot harder to make. We now have more kitchen staff to realize this,
and the plates take significantly longer to produce, both in preparation, and
service. While this is manageable in the
evening, when guests generally don’t have work to rush back to, we’ve found
that the 40 minutes it takes to prepare some of these dishes from the check
printing is too long for many of our diners. It’s also the case that the
elaboration has made the dishes more expensive to produce, and has pushed up
the prices somewhat. Not by much, maybe a pound here and there, but perhaps too
much for lunch.
Our new weekday lunch menu
We have
therefore decided, in recognition of feedback from our many loyal regulars that
the pace of lunch had become inconveniently slow for them, to switch from an A
La Carte to a Two or Three Course Set, with three choices for each course. We
are simplifying the dishes to make them quicker to produce, and also less costly,
so a guest opting for three courses at £19 should be able to get through lunch
in an hour should they wish, even when we’re very busy. As the whole three
course menu is only slightly more expensive than a single main from the A La
Carte, we hope our guests do not feel we’re forcing them to order more than
they’d like, though should they just wish for something small and simple, our
Bar menu is always at hand.
Me and some pals cracking into luncheon on the terrace, come join!
It may be that
there is an uproar and we’re quickly beaten into submission, returning to the A
La Carte across the board. I suspect however that this will be welcomed by all
our visitors who maybe do not have all the time in the world to while away the
afternoon eating and drinking, as dreamy as that sounds. Weekends, such as today, will retain the full offering.
I leave you with this, one of my favourite poems
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