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Word of advice: don’t do pasta, unless it is baked, for more than eight people. It’s too hard to make it al dente for any more than that.
Yes, the food is important, but if they just want good food they can go to a conventional restaurant. What is essential is attention to detail, character, personality, intimacy, personal touches and…humour! You are really going to need that.
PORTION CONTROL.........................
This can be really hard to work out. Serve some dishes family-style. That is: a big plate in the middle for people to share. People love that, it encourages conversation.
Dishes that are plated-up obviously need to be more or less equal portions. I normally do this by eye, but you can also weigh them. Use one of those nifty digital scales on the counter and weigh each portion before putting it on a plate. This does slow things down but can be useful.
I always overestimate how much people want to eat. I have a morbid fear of people going home hungry, feeling ripped off. Once, a helper sent out very small portions of a starter. I took over and the rest of the starters were more generous. I didn’t know how to handle the situation with the poor diners that only had tiny portions, I was too embarrassed to take the plates back and put more food on them. Now I would go up to the diners and say that was a mistake, give me your plates back and I’ll put on some more! An underground restaurant doesn’t have to be a seamless operation. Mistakes are ok, they are even funny.
For plating up, you need a lot of counter space. If you haven’t got much space, use an ironing board, which is a nice long stretch to add to your counter length (make sure it’s steady), or even the floor if necessary. I’ve kept dishes needed for later covered on the floor in a corner.
Warm the plates if you can. I use an Aga and so I have the simmering oven for this, but you can also use the bottom of a conventional oven. This will keep the food warmer for longer, which is important if you have several tables. You don’t want the last few tables to get cold food.
Another trick about plating up is to have the plates that are ready to go out nearest to the door. It’s obvious I know, but it took me weeks to work that one out! In the panic, I often ended up doing it the wrong way around and the front-of-house would have to go around me to grab the plates.
SLOW FOOD.........................
I don’t ‘turn tables’. I believe in taking time over your food. I like a restaurant where you feel you could stay all night if you wanted. The table is yours for the night, as long as you want (within reason, although I have had people stay the night when they are too drunk to make their way home).
Send food out with short intervals, say 20–30 minutes between courses. In a normal restaurant it’s usually 15 minutes between courses, but there they want the table back. On the one hand you don’t want to rush people, on the other, you don’t want them sitting there twiddling their thumbs. The front-of-house should be able to gauge and tell the cook when people are ready for their next course, when their plates are empty and they are starting to get restless.
Now, this being a home restaurant and not necessarily a slick machine, sometimes there will be delays. Sometimes there’s pressure: one thing after another goes wrong. It can be true ‘seat of your pants’ stuff, guerrilla cookery, and there have been moments when I worried that I’d have to order take-out for all my guests. One supper-club host told guests that dessert had gone wrong and so they were all getting a packet of chocolate buttons each. Did the trick, people laughed, and who doesn’t like chocolate buttons?
If the delay becomes obvious, then ’fess up, go out there and say ‘Sorry, waiting for the food to cook.’ Most people are understanding. If the delay is really bad, you could swap courses, serve something that’s ready, the salad, say. As a last resort you could get your front-of-house to go around with a bottle of wine, fill their glasses. Be open and humble about your mistakes, and all will be forgiven.
6 FRONT-OF-HOUSE.........................
If you haven’t got a partner in crime, then get help, ask for volunteers. Crazy it might sound, but people want to work for you for free! People love to join in and if you are a good cook, it’s like a free cooking lesson for your volunteer. It is also more companionable to have someone to bounce your ideas/mistakes off!
Typical conversation:
‘Not quite sure about this sauce/bread/dish. Think I’ll get away with it?’
Volunteer tastes.
‘Yeah. I like it. Maybe cut off the crack/funny colour/burnt bit, or cover with cream/bit of parsley/sauce.’
I also tell my ‘staff’, ‘Don’t take any shit from the guests. Be nice of course, but you are not a servant, you are not at their beck and call.’
In a home restaurant, the customer is not always right: I am.
Don’t have too many people in the kitchen. It confuses matters, takes up space, and can sometimes turn into a backstage party. Which might sound fun, but the focus is the diners, their enjoyment of the evening. In my experience, four people, including me, is enough: two for front-of-house and an assistant in the kitchen is perfect.
In an emergency, if your front-of-house can’t cope, is ill, or doesn’t turn up, get a guest from each table to come and serve their own table. This has happened to me. The guests really didn’t mind; in fact, they enjoyed it. So don’t be afraid to get the customers to pitch in. This informality, communality, is part of what distinguishes a home restaurant from a conventional restaurant. If they need water and you are too busy, let them get it themselves.
7 DRINK.........................
My advice is to give your guests a free drink when they enter. It breaks the ice if you have guests that don’t know each other. People are a little shy on arrival. It often takes a couple of drinks before you start hearing laughter. Generally by the main course, the room is buzzing. People have forgotten that they are in a stranger’s house.
A drink will relax them, encourage them to socialise, ease them into the experience.
But you, however, cannot drink. Oh maybe just one. NO MORE. Take it from me: you don’t want to be half-cut as you try organising a meal for upwards of ten people. You need to be alert, on the ball, and watching all your timings like a hawk. A slip up, too long a chat with a guest, and your mains are burnt. You can start drinking once the main course is out.
Now to the sticky subject of licensing laws: out of all the possibly illegal things you are doing with a home restaurant, the most illegal is the booze. You are supposed to have a personal licence and a premises licence. I’ve got a personal licence. I haven’t got a premises licence. It’s practically impossible to get a premises licence for a residence. So you are stuck.
This is what I’ve been told by a licensing officer: you can give drink away for free but you can’t include it in the price of the meal. You can’t sell it. If caught, you can go to prison for six months or be fined £20,000.
BYO (bring your own) is legal. You could charge a corkage fee. After all, it’s you that has to provide glasses and wash them, replace them when they break, and all that work and expense adds up. However, guests often don’t bring enough drink and you don’t want them coming and going to buy more. That would piss off your neighbours and create more work for you, endlessly answering the door bell. So emphasise that guests should bring enough drink, and have the address of a local off-licence.
At first, I sold wine via lottery ticket. This turned out to be illegal, as you need permission from your local council to hold a raffle. I’ve also linked up with a small wine supplier. People pay online for the wine beforehand, with a small mark-up going to me, and it’s delivered to The Underground Restaurant. That’s what rules are for, finding a way around them!
Another pop-up restaurant, ‘The Surreal Dinner Party’, gave away a free bottle of wine in exchange for an artwork…not sure if that makes it any more legal but it was fun, especially as the guests did their own artwork and swapped.
It goes without saying that I wouldn’t serve a minor, nor would I continue to serve somebody that has clearly had far too much to drink. But it’s risky. I may end up in prison.
Then I’ll start a supper club in prison ‘Goodfellas’ style. Dress code: stripy pyjamas. Menu: porridge.
8 ON THE NIGHT.........................
Have someone to welcome the guests. You can’t be in two places at once. After guests have had their initial drink and have sat down, I do a little announcement or introduction at the beginning of the meal.
I’m naturally a backstage person, as are most chefs. Quickly I learnt, after a few weeks at The Underground Restaurant, that it was essential to make my presence known front-of-house. Now I do a talk at the start of every meal. It makes sense. People are in your home, they want to meet the host. Going to somebody’s house to eat and never meeting the host/chef is as strange as getting in the back of a friend’s car, while they drive alone up front, feeling like a taxi driver. So describe the meal, the inspiration behind it, maybe give some information about the ingredients and a few house rules. This seems to start off the little ceremony somehow. Gets the ball rolling.
MUSIC.........................
The iPod, which doesn’t require too much attention, is great for continual playlists. This is a task I outsource to my teenager. If it’s a lunch, my teen makes a sunny ’60s playlist; for dinner she uses instrumental, ‘chillaxed’ music. For themed nights she has created specialist playlists: Midnight Feast (#litres_trial_promo) had only songs with the word ‘black’ in the lyrics (which tended to be heavy metal!), for ‘Night of the Senses’ my teen actually composed a song on her laptop to represent the seascape. She also has playlists that are guided by the weather. It’s probably best to have fairly mellow music without lyrics so that people can talk to each other. I’ve also had living-room concerts by up-and-coming artists in exchange for food and drink. Mostly I don’t pay musicians, but I did hire an accordion player for Bastille Night to add to the French atmosphere of the evening.
TABLE SETTINGS.........................
Lay the tables. I always feel more relaxed once the tables are laid. Choosing the flowers, candles, tablecloths and napkins, vintage glasses and pretty salt and pepper is one of my favourite parts.
Write or print out menus for the guests, perhaps one per table, or write it on a blackboard (one pop-up restaurant used their children’s blackboard) or on a wall mirror with liquid chalk.
Chill the white wine or beer and soft drinks. If people want their own wine chilled, I’m afraid I say no. I have only one teensy under-the-counter domestic fridge. I have enough problems fitting in my drink and food, I can’t chill their stuff too. At times, I’ve had to resort to asking neighbours if I can use their fridges. If you have the fridge space, great, but if not, be tough.
Just as people arrive: light the candles, pour out the initial cocktails, put on the music.
9 THE HOST.........................
One of the biggest assets of an Underground chef is personality. It really helps to be willing to share yourself. Be warm. Be funny. Be cheeky. Boss them about. Sometimes the guests need chivvying along. Remember, it’s your house. As I said before, sometimes you, as the host/ess, need to break the ice. Your guests are waiting for a lead from you. If the vibe is a bit chilly at first, pop out of the kitchen, make a joke. The atmosphere will change in the blink of an eye. It’s called hospitality for a reason.
So do go out and talk to people after the main course, when you can relax to a certain extent. If you are the chef, you can’t do that while you are cooking. Guests like to feel special. People love that personal touch. How often do they get to talk to the chef in a normal restaurant?
If you are feeling generous, go around with some cognac or dessert wine. This is a good opportunity to find out who has come to your house for the night. The kind of guests you have will probably be very interesting. Boring people don’t go to underground restaurants.
Part of being a host is expressing and sharing your interests with your guests. It might be great art or photography on your walls. As my training is a background in photography and travel, my living room has 40 large black-and-white photographs of my travels.
A tip: I’m sure you’ve had dinner parties where you’ve spent so long concentrating on the food that you end up opening the door to your guests in your dressing gown with no make-up and scraggy hair. So...get ready in the morning. I put on make-up, shower and wear something nice covered with an apron, so that if I run out of time, I still look ok. Then you can always just touch up your lipstick and spray on a bit of perfume to hide the cooking smells if you run out of time.
10 GUESTS.........................
My guests come from the internet, they are mostly strangers. Some hosts set rules, such as you must write in with a little biography, give some indication of what you are about, who you are. Other hosts allow only friends and friends of friends to attend. You can do what you feel comfortable with. I’ve never yet had a problem with any of my guests. It can be a little startling for them to sit at a table of strangers, but usually the food and drink and strangeness of being in someone’s living room binds them together. As I’ve mentioned, I also do themes: quizzes, a Marmite menu, an umami menu, an Elvis night. This gives guests something to talk about.
It does help if guests ‘get it’ and are willing to throw themselves into the unconventional spirit of underground restaurants. It’s difficult when they behave as if they are in a normal restaurant and expect staff to be at their beck and call.
One difficulty you need to be prepared for is guests and their ‘allergies’. Allergies are on the rise and, frankly, are the bane of every cook’s life, especially if, as in my case, you do a fixed menu. Of course, anybody in hospitality would want to cater for a genuine food allergy, but you’d be amazed at how many people ‘upgrade’ an aversion to a full-blown allergy in restaurants. Short of demanding that your guest has a blood test on the spot to determine a positive IgE antibody reading, the cook is in a helpless position to rebut these claims.
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