So, why a restaurant ?

So, you take early retirement and someone asks you, "What are you going to do with all that spare time?" You suddenly realise that after the thrill of not having to get up early, sit on overfilled trains and perform mind-numbingly boring office work for eight hours before returning home on even more overfilled trains and vegetating in front of the TV has worn off you will be totally and utterly bored stiff. What to do?

I had a vague idea that I might enrol on an Open University course (history, perhaps, I like history), but then it suddenly hit me, why not use the money you have got and buy a little cafe or bistro. Cooking was my "thing", it was one of the few ways I had found to get over the stress of commuting and working in IT, and I was (if i say so myself) a pretty reasonable cook. Yes, let's buy a cafe.

"But how are you going to run it, you don't want to be working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?" I could employ a couple of people to help.

"How will you know if the people prepared to work with you are any good?" Good question, let me think about it.

And that is sort of why I ended up at West Notts.College on a City & Guilds Level 2 catering course. And the rest is history. Or rather it is history if you know me or my fellow workers at our restaurant. We met there. I'm not sure what they thought of me, a 58-year old man, joining a course full of 16 and 17 year olds, but I loved the energy they brought to the course. I had a great time at college, and I think I was an influence for good; having a mature person on the course encouraged the kids to grow up a bit, and without one, it was left to me to be the dad, looking after their mental health and cheering them to be the best chefs they could be (of course, the chef-tutors helped a bit, I suppose). By the end of the Level-3 courses, I reckoned I was ready to work in a good quality restaurant; at least a gourmet pub, if not a fine-dining restaurant.

That's me, second from right in second row from front

On leaving college, I applied for loads of jobs, but nobody seemed to want a 60 year old commis chef with very little experience (I had done a few shifts in a pub and spent the summer working as an agency chef, mostly in bulk catering establishments). I spent 2 months working as a pot-washer but was starting to wonder if I had just wasted my time earning catering qualifications. The nearest I was getting to working in a restaurant was meeting up with other ex-students for a drink and heading back to the college restaurant (Refined - check it out on Trip Advisor, it's a great place to eat when in the Mansfield area) for a bite to eat and popping in to chat with chef.

Then one evening, chatting to the girls, it came to me that neither of them were totally happy with their experience of working in a kitchen. They had experienced bullying, misogyny and an atmosphere where people were more likely to blame each other when things went wrong than own up to mistakes and look to learn from the experience. They asked me how my job hunting was going, and I joked that it was beginning to look like the only person who would be willing to employ me was me. Just a casual comment. A throwaway line. But next morning it all made sense. Why not go back to the original plan of owning my own place?

So, I looked around and found a restaurant for sale in the heart of Mansfield that I thought would be ideal. It was operating as an Italian restaurant, but I wanted to expand its horizons (and anyway there are plenty of other Italian restaurants in Mansfield, if that's your thing), cooking dishes from all around the Mediterranean, from Spain, France and Italy, round through the Balkans and the Middle East, through to North Africa - whether the dishes are tapas, pasta, pizza, braises, grills, kebabs or tagines, flavours that take you back to holidays around the Med are what we are about.

The final question was, “Who would I get to staff it?” All along I had wanted this to be a project that would bring in young chefs on their first adventure in catering. I wanted their energy and enthusiasm, undimmed by bad experiences, and in return I would promise them a nurturing environment free from bullying and harassment. My first thought was the people with whom I had first discussed the project but they were too busy or stressed in their current jobs, so I turned back to West Notts. College and asked them who of the current crop would be suitable and interested.

So, here we all are, ready to get the restaurant open and serving the people of this area with tasty, fresh food. Come and join us (please, come and join us!)