Saturday nite is nearly over in the restaurant, and I have left the others to deal with the desserts and coffee that remain, and to do the reset of tables. We have the last cookschool in the current series tomorrow morning, so I've come back over to the house intent on heading to bed soon, becos we've had a big couple of days with various things happening and I'm starting to wilt around the edges.

Am sure Rick won't be too far behind me. But before the dogs get ushered out to their kennels, I thought I'd make mention here, of a place we found today that was just fascinating. I've been talking about wanting to go for awhile, having read about the enterprise in an earlier edition of "Life and Leisure", and just hadn't quite had the opportunity to head over to the Waikato.

But today, my husband decided to ride over to Morrinsville, as you do, and Courteney and I drove over some hours later, and rendevouzed with him there. She then went on to do a 3 hour training ride, after which she was due to join the Morrinsville Wheelers, for their weekly race, ( a mere extra 2 hours)  as you do!

While she was on her initial ride, Rick who'd got changed, and I, headed to the Camelia Cafe, part of the extraordinary Zealong, Oolong tea, developement that is happening at the Hamilton end of Gordonton Rd.

A truly spectacular concept - oolong tea, which is one of the worlds most precious, is been grown in conspicuous quantities and processed using age old methods, and then exported all over the world.

We have for years sold leaf tea, at the restaurant. Its just one of those things that I've always believed in - if we were going to sell tea, I wanted to make it good tea, and since the start I've used Tea Total, and stock a range of teas, that we serve in glass teapots. And we sell alot of tea.

Oolong, according to a customer of ours who was once a tea taster in Sri Lanka, is the rolls royce of teas - and having tried it for the first time today, I begin to understand what Colin was intimating.

They serve it beautifully at the cafe - you have special containers that hold infusers for the leaves - they are placed in the container, using a spoon that looked like it was made from bamboo,  and then boiling water from a teapot is added, and you are told to wait 1/2 minutes, before removing the leaves and drinking the tea. The teapot in the meanwhile, is placed on a warmer, where it maintains a boil, and you can use it to top up your tea leaves again and again.

We were told today, that you can get 6-8 cups out of the same leaves. I think I drank at least 8 cups becos I was curious to see how the flavour of the tea changed and developed, and it did, but imperceptibly. Normally teas get more tannicy the longer the leaves are left, but the flavour of this stayed fresh and vibrant. The waitress mentioned that the best pour is considered the 2nd to 6th cup - and I decided you would have to have a pretty developed palate to be able to judge to that degree.

I'm not a tea drinker - I like coffee. Although I do try and drink some green tea in the week, becos of its beneficial properties, but I tend to wax and wan on it.

This experience today was quite delightful - we had lunch as well, and the sushi platter that I choose just felt like a perfect match. They are developing the whole area, - the decking and seating outside, overlooking the expense of camelia plantings, was just lovely. An inspiration indeed,  for what we could  one day do out the back here, at Somerset maybe...

Needless to say, I very much want to include the tea in Somersets lineup. I was stung some years ago, when Colin told me I didn't have 'real' teas on my list. So we will serve this Zealong oolong, but I will make sure that we do it as close to properly as I can realistically achieve, and that will involve getting some of the special drinking cups to infuse and then strain the tea. So we've made contact and will follow up next week.

Oh! - and by the way - Courteney got an email late on Thurs nite informing her that she has been selected for the Worlds Road team to compete in Melbourne in 4 short weeks. We're talking the elite Worlds, the top of both the men and the women from all around the world, so for her to be named in a 6 person lineup is huge kudos in her first year of racing at Open level, and to say her parents are fair bursting with pride would be a little of an understatement. Think I should be checking my air points on the Amex...becos I think Rick will burst if he doesn't get to watch her actually race...

I know you're not supposed to eat at the computor, but I'm currently tucking into a bowlful of warm polenta, topped with some sauteed vegetables and pinenuts, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The polenta is made from NZ cornmeal which I finally tracked down at the gluten free shop in Cameron Rd, and I think it definitely tastes fresher, and has more 'corn' flavour than the imported varieties that I've used up until now.

We have a number of customers with celiac, so are in and out of the Gluten free shop regularly getting flour and various other things, so that we can accomodate those people in the restaurant or cookschools, and I will definitely be getting more of this cornmeal for moi, next time I'm in.

The restaurant is exceptionally quiet tonite, so I have retreated to home, becos theres a number of things I could catch up with at my desk, which will be a better use of my time, then feeling forlorn and sorry for myself over there. Its been a really quiet week, and we can't even rely on Saturday nite to pull the average back up, becos with the Allblack game televised at 7.30pm, I know now that we won't be full, and I hate it when that happens on a Saturday...

You really need to take a big deep breathe at times like this and focus on the bigger picture..or so I keep telling myself!

Some menu changes on tonite, and becos of the quietness of the nite, Rick probably won't get the chance to try out the plating of all the new dishes, but before I left, a couple of the new ones had been ordered.

We get criticised occasionally for not changing our menu enough, which always somewhat bemuses me, becos from my perspective, I feel that its in a constant start of flux. The changes are seldom wholesale, but the odd thing is been altered quite regularly. And today is typical, where theres a new entree on, and 6 of the mains have been changed. We still have chicken, fish, lamb, beef fillet, and lamb shank on, but the way they're been cooked and what they're been served with has altered - and that definitely classifies as a change to my mind!

Especially since Rick has decided to serve the lamb shank without the mashed potato that has accompanied it for the last, I don't know how many years! There'll be some whinging about that one I suspect - thereby proving that we can't win. If we don't change, we get criticised, and if we do alter something that people love, then we're also up for criticism!

I try to keep uptodate with the menu listings on the website becos some people are very particular about what they  want, and if they've preread the menu on the website and then get to the restaurant to find it slightly changed, they can be quite nonplussed. For that reason I've been resisting pressure from the organiser of a large group that we have due to come in a few weeks, who's been wanting a copy of the set menu NOW, so that she can get it printed, becos I knew these changes were iminent and I wanted to make sure what I sent her thru was the latest edition. Hopefully she'll be pacified tomorrow when I send it to her, but she's been interesting to deal with, so it remains to be seen...

Cookschool bookings for the Christmas series are starting to come in, and I'm taking deep breaths and staying abreast of it all, becos it becomes interesting sometimes. Fascinates me how many people booking for the first time, don't like the fact that we haven't told them what the food is going to be. I have to confess that I just take it as a given now that people will book, knowing the general framework of what we're doing - ie, this time, it will be festive food - but not needing to know exactly what that will be.

But it would appear, that not knowing pushes some people out of their comfort zone, and they really don't like it. And I find that curious. I look on classes as an opportunity to learn something - the specifics of which don't matter to me hugely, but I always take away something, to add to my knowledge and skill in the kitchen, and I know that most regular attendees regard the classes similarly. Together with being a pleasant social outing...

I will eat anything - especially anything cooked by a good chef. At Merediths recently we tried the tofu dish, expressly becos neither of us have had pleasant experiences with tofu, and figured that if a chef of Michael Merediths calibre had a dish on his small menu centered on tofu, then he had to figure it was good, and we were curious to try. And it turned out to be the standout dish in an extremely good meal.

But some people have a much tighter frame of reference in what they are prepared to eat, and for what ever reason, don't want to have to try something that they think they don't like - and rather than just coming with an open frame of mind, would rather avoid a session if they thought it featured something they didn't like. Curious...

Its been a bit of a mission, finding someone I can buy the range of craft beers that I want to list on the restaurant menu. But we are there now thanks to the very knowledgeable guys at Regional Wines in Wellington, that Phil put me on too - the beers have just arrived and I'm delighted!!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Rick and I had the good fortune to be taken thru a fascinating tasting exercise of some of the NZ craft beers which are increasingly starting to appear on the landscape. I have been conscious for awhile, that I needed to get off my chuff and start researching some of these small boutique producers, in just the same way, that I focus on accessing wines that aren't necessarily readily available, but which I think may appeal to our customer base.

I have no idea at this point how the idea of craft beers is going to be recieved in the restaurant - and it might initially be a bit of a hard sell, to convince men to step away from their familiar brands. But most of the aficiandos of craft beer that I've spoken too, are totally convinced of the superiority and the range of flavours available from the small producers.

I don't even especially like the flavour of hops, but was stunned at the range of different tastes in the varying styles of beers, from pilsener, pale ale, brown ale and porter. And even I had to concede, that they have oodles more flavour and interest than the rather bland versions produced by the goliath brewerys.

Hopefully lots of customers will concur with me!

We are 2/3rds of the way thru Wine Options for this year, and our team won last nite, whereas the week previous, we'd been bottom of the table - proving perhaps that guesswork and serendipity has rather alot to do with the outcome. Rather than being incredibly clever as we'd prefer to believe!

We're going to have to create an almost perfect scoring record next week to come out on top overall, and with the chances of that happening being almost zilch, I'm resigned to a mid field  placing. The quality of wines we've been tasting in the options this year have been pretty much superb, which has made for an interesting experience, and that is more important to me than where we place.

Wine is a huge subject, which I doubt I will ever be able to profess to be an expert on, and with Wine Options each year, I get to taste wines that wouldn't ordinarily fall in my orbit, and for that reason I consider it a really worthwhile opportunity, becos I'm getting to learn.

Today I got to learn about a whole new subject, becos of the generosity of a customer who I'd approached to help me on the subject of craft beers. I've been meaning for some time to relook at our list of beers in the restaurant, and to move it more towards some of the craft beers that are been made in NZ now.  But not really enjoying the flavour of hops especially, I really didn't know where to start.

I must have mentioned my dilemma at a cookschool for some reason ( discussions at cookschools can go in all sorts of unpredictable directions...), and one of the attendees, mentioned that her husband was an afficiando of beer, and would be delighted to advise.

So today Rick and I went out to Phil's, and taken down to his exqusite cellar ( or man cave as he calls it), where he took us thru an intense tasting session of 6 examples of some of the beers available: a pilsener, wheat beer, Pale ale, bitter ale, porter, and then a vintage ale, which is one aged in barrels.

I fully expected to be a spectator only and to write notes while the men tasted - but Phil poured and had gone to a lot of trouble on our behalf, so in the interests of politeness, I sipped, a pilsener to start, and surprised myself by finding the taste not unpleasant.

As we worked our way thru the various styles, Phil explained what created the differences, and warned about over chilling killing flavour, and UV lights in fridges creating a 'skunky' taste in beers in clear or green bottles.

It was truly fascinating. His passion for the subject was truly infexious, and his knowledge comprehensive. I didn't ask one question that he wasn't able to answer, and I learnt more about beer in the space of 2 hours than I'd ever previously been aware off. My personal favourite was the porter - a Harringtons Wobbly Boot, no less. The malt has been roasted to give more complex flavours, and it was coffee that hit me immediately on first sip. Not at all what I expected to discover in a glass of beer.

Rick thought the Coopers Vintage Ale was the best - but maybe I'm too new to the flavours of beer to appreciate the complexities of that one.

I have read of beer and food pairings happening in restaurants, and never quite been able to get my head around the concept - but now having tasted the variation between the different styles of beer, and the amazing flavours that they have, it is making more sense to me, and I think would be a fascinating exercise. One that Phil has said that he and a brewer friend would be keen  to lead the discussion on.

When we were in Nelson last year, Rick asked for a Steinlager Pure at Hopgoods as his predinner drink, to be told that they only stocked local beer. I was impressed at their sazz. He tried something they recommended, and enjoyed it - something that if they had stocked Steinlager, he wouldn't have got to experience.

I don't think I'll be quite that brave upfront, now that we're going to rejig the beer listings at Somerset though. I will keep on Heineken and Steinlage Pure for now, becos those are what the suits drink, but all the rest of the beers will be craft - from breweries like Tuatara, Epic, Harringtons and Crouchers.

Maybe next Monday, when the guys arrive for Wine Options, we hand them an Epic Pale Ale rather than a Heineken, and then stand back to gauge the reaction. Hmmm....

And we will see how it goes....

Have just spent a while unpacking deliveries of wine. I order from a wide range of sources, and when wine arrives en masse as it did today, it can take some time to check pricing and vintages, and get it all stored away in the appropriate place.

Our wine list is quite deliberately printed in a way that means I can get updates run off frequently in a cost efficent manner. A quick email to Simpson Print, and I usually have new lists within hours. But even so, keeping on top of the quantities of the various different wines can absorb a reasonable amount of time.

 It constantly fascinates me, how there is never any predictable rhyme or reason to what wines sell.  We have our biggest sellers overall certainly - but quite often for no apparent reason, a wine that we may not have been selling much off, suddenly gets chosen by a number of tables all on the same nite. So for that reason I like to hold reasonable quantites of each wine, just in case we get a run, and that means having to know at any one time the volumes I have in stock.

Chris set me up an excel programme years ago, that I've continued to use to keep a record of stock levels, and I'd be lost without it, but as with most computor systems, its only ever as good as the information put into it, so if I miss a delivery or make a mistake in my inputting - the figures can go awry!

A trend we have noticed in the Auckland restaurants is to actively promote the sale of cocktails - something that I have no real desire to emulate at Somerset, becos our focus is very much on wine as a food match, and an extensive cocktail list would be too much upkeep for something I'm not really  interested in. We sell a couple of cocktails - kir royale, becos that holds nice memories of our french trip, a classic martini, and a gimlet. But that is pretty much the extent of it. I'm just not convinced that the demand is there.

I have taken care over the years to source good quality non alcoholic drinks, becos I'm consicous that not everyone wants to drink  wine with a meal. Years ago I read about the Camla Farm people down in Dunsandel, in Canterbury, who were making single style apple juice, and we've had them as a feature on our menu since. I think they produce 6 different flavours, and we've narrowed down what we offer to Coxes Orange, and its a pleasure to be able to offer a juice of such impeccable flavours.

Similarly we sell grape juice - something I would have shuddered at once, becos most of the grape juices on the market were hideously naff, and an attempt at a pale imitation of a bottle of wine. Sweet and cloying, I could never understand why people would bother. But then I feel a bit that way about decaf coffee. I've never drunk a decaf coffee whose flavour I've enjoyed, so therefore if I can't have caffeine, rather than pretending, I'd be more inclined to have a herbal tea...rather than a pretend coffee.

So I'd never listed a grape juice becos I thought they were naff, and I was therefore intrigued to spy some years ago, in an Auckland delicatessan the Herons Flight version which is in a single serve, 330ml bottle. Herons Flight is a special winery in Matakana and we've listed their sangiovese wine at the restaurant for some time now, and work hard to convince people to step outside the pinot noir/ cabernet/merlot mindset, and try a wine made from a different grape.

This juice is made from sangiovese grapes, obviously unfermented, and it tastes of the grapes. Quite beautiful. We sell truckloads of it, both for people eating at the restaurant and for some who want it at home, and last time I rang to order some more cases, David told me that they have got lots of phone calls from people all over NZ who tell him that they'd encountered the juice at Somerset and loved it, and want to buy some. Like it very much when  that happens!

And now just this week we will replace the Bundaberg Ginger Beer that we've had on, with a Waiheke Island brewed ginger beer, that Hannah ordered, when we took her out for lunch to the Ponsonby Rd Bistro in Auckland last week. This is a completely natural ginger beer, using root ginger, honey and lemon juice, and the flavours are clean and distinctly gingery, without overpowering sweetness. I was hugely impressed, and delighted to list a NZ product, becos we do like promoting NZ made product.

The Waiheke Brewery also predictably brews beer, and that naturally leads to my next task which is going to be to completely revamp the listing of beer that we offer, and change to almost totally small independent breweries. The inroads that have been made over the last few years with the independants is massive, and I think I should be reflecting some of that pride and quality with what we have to offer.

I don't particullary enjoy the flavour of hops, so tasting a wide variety of beers doesn't hold much personal appeal, but we have a good customer who is completely passionate about the beer scene in NZ, and we are going to tape into his knowledge to shape our initial changes.

Theres always something....

One of the inherent problems when it comes to wording dishes on the menu is that different words provoke different responses in people. It has always been our approach at Somerset to keep our descriptions fairly lean - we'd rather under describe and over deliver, then do the reverse and have an epic description, and then bring out a dish that doesn't quite live up to its billing.

But it constantly fascinates me how tweaking a word here or there in a description can radically alter the number of times a particular dish is ordered - words set the picture for people, and if they've never had the dish before, it will be the written description that will tempt them to try or otherwise.

The problem with that is that certain food words can create varying responses depending on peoples background and eating experiences, and an example of what I mean by that was highlighted last week, when we had an apple tart returned becos the customer said the caramel sauce tasted burnt.

The word caramel to me, immediately evokes the process of boiling sugar ( we usually add water for the initial stage) to a temperature above 170oC until it changes into a deep golden hue. That is the basis for a lot of patissiere work and for pralines that we use in icecreams. In this instance we follow a Nico Ladenis recipe that we've turned too many times over the years, and add a cup of cream once the caramel has got to the right degree of intensity. This is all whisked together off the heat, and will keep for days in the fridge.

A simple, effective, sweet sauce, with just the right notes of bitterness that create a level of complexity, that we would expect when we see the word 'caramel'.

But 'caramel' obviously meant something different to this gentlemen. He was presumably expecting something purely sweet a la the condensed milk/ sugar/butter sauce that goes in tan squares.
He didn't expect to encounter any bitter flavours, and he incorrectly described them as burnt. It is possible to burn caramel - very easy infact, by taking the boiling process too far, and the resulting smell is very unpleasant, and impossible to ignore. The only solution is to discard the mix and start again - never easy removing the sad mess from the saucepan when its been taken that far either!

This wasn't 'burnt' - we know that becos we immediately checked to make sure. But it did have all the complexities of a true caramel sauce, which we, and the vast majority of people who are currently raving about the dish, love.

And one of the other lessons I've learnt is that at times like that there is really nothing you can do - expressing your point of view is only going to make him wrong, and people don't appreciate been made to be wrong. It is a natural desire to want to justify yourself, to point out that the kitchen haven't in fact stuffed up - but any attempt to do that, simply creates a demarcation, so I tend not to go there.

You just kind of mentally shrug and accept that you can't win everyone and get on with it.
But that hasn't stopped us recommending the tart when people ask what they should have for dessert, becos it really is quite delicious.

There are 5 component parts:

    - a pastry disk base made from our cream cheese pastry
    - apple pureed spread over that base
    -very thin slices of apple spread in concentina fashion over the pastry
    -caramel sauce
    -hazelnut praline icecream

Splendid!

I have just put down Alan Bennetts " Writing Home" to tackle this blog, and that is possibly not a clever idea, becos Alan Bennett is one of my favourite authors, simply becos he is so good at what he does. I admire his skill both with words and ideas - his ability to punture thru human pomposity on all levels, with a deftly executed bon mot.

And which leaves me feeling more than a little inadequate by comparison. But then, comparisons are odious things, are they not - and I should instead be inspired by his ability to stand aside from the fray of general society, and pass comment on some of its more absurd angles.

Which, by a natural progression, brings me to Mothers Day. I wandered over to the supermarket around lunchtime, and emerging from behind our fence and gate that very effectively block out the outside world while we're at home, noted how busy all the eateries accross the road were - even a couple that don't normally do a big lunchtime trade, were pulsating at the seams. People and cars everywhere - simply becos it's Mothers Day.

Like Valentines Day, Mothers Day has grown in its commercial construct over the years, and is now a big day for hospitality, as I'm sure it is also for retail.Everywhere is busy, becos everyone feels obligated to take their mother out to celebrate this fanciful notion of Mothers Day.

I have problems with the idea on some many levels, I'm not quite sure where to begin!

The main part of my problem with the concept I guess, is that my default position to being told what to do, is usually to object. I simply don't enjoy being ordered around, and to my mind, that is what happens on a number of levels with Mothers Day. We are all fed the message ( and that has been cranked up considerably in intensity during my lifespan) that to show our appreciation to our mother we need to buy her something, or take her somewhere on Mothers Day - regardless of what we do or don't do for her on the other 364 days of the year.

It is purely a commercial construct - spend money. And to my mind begs the question,  'why should I?!'

I don't need someone else to tell me how to express my love for my mother when she was alive, or how my daughters should feel obligated to do so for me. I loathe the whole subtext that accompanies the message, that you need to do this, becos everyone else does and if you don't you will feel guilty, and worse, you'll be letting down your mother.

My relationship with my daughters is something that is totally special and private to us. I  don't need anyone else, thankyou very much, to tell me or them how to express what our feelings are to each other. We puddle our way along, thru life taking the time appropriate for us personally, to express our love ( and other emotions occasionally!), and the thought that there is one particular day in the year, where we should feel extra obligated to do so, is to my way of thinking, just nuts.

But people do. As the crowds accross the road attest - people will come out in their droves on Mothers Day. ( And interestingly, considerably more so than on Fathers Day - but maybe that is tied up with the idea of Mum not having to cook on her 'special' day!).

And we're full tonite at Somerset - which is far from the norm for a Sunday nite this time of year.

So I'm consious of the contradiction inherent in me questioning behaviour that my business actually benefits from.

We don't however open for lunches on Mothers Day - becos we don't do weekend lunches at the restaurant, and we do get a number of phone enquiries prior to it, wanting to make booking for lunch, and its fascinating the number of people who respond to our statement that we're not open for lunch on Sunday with the comment ' but its Mothers Day".

I'm never quite sure how to interprete that comment - do they mean that the day is of such cultural significance that we should be open, or do they mean that we're crazy not to open becos it'll be busy, and therefore if we're serious business people, wanting to maximise our turnover, we should be seizing the opportunity to make some easy money.

And for those hospitality business' that are open 7 days normally and carry the staffing levels to cope, I have no doubt that Mothers Day represents a welcome boost to the till, and they would look on this blog as some selfindulgent nonsense!

But for us to open, it would require existing staff to work longer hours, and as I overheard one of them explain to an especially obdurate person on the phone who'd got stuck on the idea that we should be open,  'some of us are mothers too!'. Well put I thought.

Being me, I'm probably overthinking the whole thing - giving it far too much weight and significance. If a bit of advertorial prodding makes people sit up and make an acknowledgment of their mother, then what harm can there be in that?

None really I suppose.

Except I do find it extraordinary that so many people from right accross the social spectrum feel this weight of expectation and the need to do the socially acceptable thing on Mothers Day. To fit in - you need to do as others do. Hmmm...

And now I need to go and get ready, becos we're busy tonite and one of the peculiarities of Mothers Day is that a significant portion of the tables book early, so we'll be getting our initial hit at 6pm, which is earlier than normal.

Have snuck back over to the house while we wait for tables to arrive, ostensibly to do some bookwork - some stuff I was going to do this afternoon, but lunch service at the restaurant ended up being busy and protracted, and since Rhonda's away for the next 2 months, its not quite so easy for me to slink away, as I normally do. In fact today I did lunch by myself, which won't usually happen, and had to move my tush!

Always good to remind myself that I can still do it - and more importantly, still enjoy doing it. We have considerably more staff now than we used too, and the restaurant is usually divided  into sections, with a waiting staff member in charge of each section, and my role ends up being more of a hostess - someone to do the meet and greet, and float over the top, filling in where required. So to actually have to do the hard grunt on the floor is a rarity for me these days.

But with Rhonda in the States for 2 months - the rosters have been jiggled and rejiggled, and Roz has stepped up to take over alot of Rhondas job, and things will carry on. As they always do. But I'll be back up more than I've been used to for awhile. Which won't do me any harm.

 We have a great team around us these days - and I really appreciate the way they rise to whatever the occasion may demand.

I'm having a slightly more full on week than normal, becos not only is Rhonda not here, but neither is Rick, and we haven't spent too much time apart in our married life, which I don't mean to sound quite as twee as it possibly does. Its more to do with the fact that we bought the restaurant ( with my parents,) a couple of short months after we got married, and our life since has been living and working together. And time apart just hasn't really featured.

But he's down in the Hawkes Bay for Club Cycling Nationals with Courteney - so I'm picking up the other pieces as well. As you do. The dogs and I are coping just fine - although I was rather over Bensons efforts to defend me last nite, when he decided that a periodic bark during the nite would keep things at bay, and then a quick lick of mums face just to reassure her that all was under control.

No more special treatment tonite I think - they'll be back in their kennels, otherwise I'll be dead on my feet by the time Rick gets back! But getting them out there is going to be a mission, now they've had a taste of staying indoors for the nite..

I have all the annual accounts to finish organising. Thanks to GST that is no longer a marathon effort like it used to be in the very early days. When I worked as an accountant in my previous life, before we bought the restaurant - annual accounts were something that got done historically. Information was collated at the end of the year, added up and subtracted and Profit and Loss Accounts and Balance Sheets extracted. But with the advent of GST - (when was it?, I know it was after we opened in '86,) accounts had to be done on a twice monthly basis at least, so as to be able to file the necessary statements. And that meant people started staying much more current with their information during the year - rather than throwing all the invoices into a box to be dragged up to the accountants office at the end of the year. Reluctantly.

And now of course some of the software available  - I'm using Xero which is outstanding - means that I can have weekly accounts available to me if I want to be that uptodate with the financial information, so the annual accounts are no longer the mission they once were. More a case of verifying balances and analysing any discrepancies, and journaling miscoding. But always nice to get it done and dusted for another year - so will get onto that shortly.

In between waitressing on customers today and stocking up the chiller with wine, and reordering some more, I got a phone call to say that the 6 cases of Pinot Gris that I'd ordered for the cookschool series we're now in, wasn't going to be able to be delivered, becos Terrace Edge had won a gold with that wine, and Air New Zealand had ordered their entire vintage, which is fabulous for them, but not so stunning for me.

 They'd saved me some cases from the current vintage, but they're not going to be enough to get me thru the series, so I've had to ponder Plan B. Fired of a couple of emails which I'm currently awaiting responses on and am hopeful of having it sorted soon. Theres alot of wines out there to choose from - that's never a problem - its more finding the right one for the food match,  at the right price point,  and one thats a little different for people.

And now I'd better head back over to the restaurant cos can hear car doors shutting, which means our 7pm bookings are starting to arrive...

Rick has been putting together the recipes for the next cookschool series, which is due to start next Friday, and at the same time has been working on some menu changes for the restaurant.

The end of day light saving, more than anything heralds the arrival of the colder months, and that factor combined with new produce arriving on our doorstep, means that it's time for change.

More and more, we are getting access to outstanding local produce that is a real pleasure to be able to use becos it ticks all the right boxes - its seasonal, it's local and its been picked and delivered to us, often on the same day, so the quality is magnificent.

Limes, figs and feijoas are our focus at the moment. The figs are coming off our own trees and also from people in Katikati who have planted a large orchard and are cropping for the first time this year.
Rick is specialing them as an entree with dolce gorgonzola, walnuts and a honey and mustard dressing, and we are selling truckloads. Which is proving to be somewhat of a surprise becos when we specialed them after encountering them in Italy back in 04, we found little interest. So peoples palates have changed and adapted, and they no longer react to the idea of figs with aversion, I'm delighted to see.

We have friends coming for dinner on Monday nite, and one of them was with us in Italy, and I don't remember her eating much else other than figs, so will save some from our trees for her, and ensure they're incorporated into the meal in some way. As you do!

And we're lucky to be getting the most magnificent limes, also from growers in Katikati. I've been ignorantly telling people over the last few months who wanted lime in their beer, that it wasn't the season, and we don't buy imported citrus. I was therefore gobsmacked when Jill offered me some of her limes - they've been picking since February, so the season is obviously different to the orange and grapefruit that we have down below, which are a long way from ripe yet.

 So we now have limes for the Coronas, - and Ricks decided to use them in the cookschool also, becos they are just so beautiful, and the one thing we love to be able to do in the classes is celebrate local product.

Feijoas are suddenly plentiful - and we are using them in a dessert  and possibly also with a chutney to go with the fish. Rick played around with a recipe this week, that was lovely, and I've been using up the surplus with cheese and crackers when my sugar levels get low in the afternoon - as you do. But not sure yet whether thats going to pan out to making it onto the menu.

Feijoas are a fruit that people either love or hate - they tend to generate extreme reactions. Likewise offal - so I've been pleasantly surprised at how the changes to the lamb midloin dish has been recieved. Its been served with sweetbreads, that have been poached in milk, cut up fine, formed into a sausage, chilled then coated in bread crumbs, and roasted in the oven. I thought we'd get lots of requests for them to be left of the lamb dish. In fact I warned the waiting staff when we went thru the menu changes that that was likely to happen.  I was wrong. They've been selling really well.

Likewise the mushroom soup, which is newly on.  Mushrooms as a general rule don't sell. More often than not, if the menu says they're part of a dish, then  a lot of people will ask for them not to be included, so I've been pleasantly surprised with how well the soup is going. Its been served with buffalo ricotta pastries and people are reacting very positively.

The dishes we're serving the soup in are sublime. I bought them a couple of years ago, for a price that still makes me wince, for the kitchen table concept, that back then, I thought was going to be happening in the near future. That particular dream is taking a little longer to come to fruition then I would have liked,  so we had these gorgeous bowls languishing in storage in the garage and I figured that we might as well be using them. Every kitchen hand is warned to be extra careful with the washing of them  - and I suspect they possibly wish the soup wasn't selling quite so well!

Love nice table wear, its a huge focus of mine  - it just makes such a difference...

I hear criticism occasionally that we don't change our menu enough - which always perplexes me slightly becos I  feel that we are very seasonally  focused, and always responsive to the new produce that comes along with the changes of the seasons. Its hard not to get excited when you haven't seen something for awhile. But there are also certain dishes that remain on the menu regardless of the season becos they are so embedded in peoples expectations of dining at Somerset, that it simply isn't worth the drama that would be caused removing them.

And of those dishes, one of the most entrenched now, is the twice baked blue cheese souffle. I overheard a table tonite, explaining to their guests that they always have the souffle every time they come, and that is not untypical. Far from it, in fact. Even though its one of the dishes we've included in the Somerset at Home lineup, that has in no way impacted on the volume we sell during service at the restaurant.

So we change some things, and other things stay the same. And if that leads some people to believe that we don't change our menu 'enough', well, so be it. I guess I can live with that.

Some apple crumble to eat - bought a big bag of gloriously red apples earlier this week that turned out to have a disappointingly soft texture, ( I need apples to be crisp) so have stewed some of them up and reinvented them as crumble for us for a late supper. Rick and Courteney are both racing in the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Road Cycling champs tom in Morrinsville, so it will be early to bed for all of us I think, with some crumble and cream in our tummies to encourage the sweet dreams!

Looking at these photos of homemade cakes, got me to thinking about the vexed issue of people wanting to bring cakes to the restaurant.

As with so much of what we do, then can be no hard and fast rule to instill in the staff, as being the requisite answer for when people ask if they can bring a birthday/anniversary cake.

And the reasons for there being no clear absolute pathway for us, is becos the reasons for people wanting to bring a cake are varied.

Sometimes its pure and simply a cost decision on their behalf. By bringing a barely iced sponge from the supermarket or The Cheesecake Shop, they are going to get a cheaper option than if they asked us to make them one, or if they choose to order desserts from our menu. That matters to some.

Needless to say, I have a problem with that - becos I always question why people who are so budgetory orientated would bother to come to a restaurant like ours. There are many cheaper options around for them to pick from. And invariably those people also want to BY0 wine, seldom order entrees, want us to provide whipped cream to serve with the cake, and look in horror if  they are told that there will be a charge for that, and say they'll have coffee at home....

We have had people arrive with burnt cakes, hot from the oven, and have been airily asked to whip up an icing  for it. We have had cakes from the supermarket, still in the plastic box, with the "Marked Down' price sticker attached. We have just about seen it all.

A restaurateurs nightmare in other words!

And that is not becos we are mean and want to maximise the spend we get out of every seat in the restaurant.  Buts its becos we're a business, and a business makes a profit when its income exceeds its cost structure. And we make that income from selling food and wine.

And when people want to use our facilities but want to bring their own food and wine - then our ability to make a profit is severely compromised.

But.

Life is never as clearcut as we would like it to be - becos when good customers ring and tell me its someone's special birthday and they've had a cake made and could they bring it to have with coffee, I wouldn't hesitate to say that they are welcome. Becos they are. Even though I am fully aware, that knowing there is cake to come will mean that some at the table will opt to go without desserts.

Thats is what I regularly refer to as the 'swings and roundabouts' of restaurant service.

So its never easy. Sometimes I end the nite feeling used and abused, and sometimes I am totally comfortable with what has transpired, and I guess ultimately the distinction rests on what I think the motivation from the customer is.

If they are trying to get away with spending the bare minimum on what they say is a special occasion, then I just don't understand why they've come to a restaurant at the upper end of the cost scale in Tauranga.

If however they are just trying to add the icing on the cake, figuratively speaking, to a birthday celebration  then we will bend over backwards to accomodate and facilitate.

And regretfully, there is no ironclad framework I can wrap around how to deal with the issue becos people are so different. For better and worse!

Heilala Vanilla are a company that we have had a long association with, and whom we hold in the highest regard.

They have created a very special product  thru a joint venture with a village in Tonga, and not content just to get the best dried vanilla pods to the market, they have gone on to create all sorts of value added products as well.

We think what they have achieved in a relatively short time from is amazing - and speaks volumes about Jennifer and Garths combined talents.

Below is a trip that they are organising to Tonga for people to go and see the source of the vanilla, and to travel with Peter Gordon, a very special NZ chef who has a totally original way of looking at food.

We would love to go, but the timing is all wrong for us du of a large catering job we have booked for that time frame, so I've had to gnash my teeth and be practical. Hate it when that happens..

But  our loss may be someone elses gain, becos places on the trip are limited, so below is the email from Jennifer for those who might be interested in having a special few days in Tonga..

I have just got to the end of a reasonably intense few hours spent downloading all the information from my old computor onto a new system. A process made much easier by the fact that Chris comes and helps. I would be completely lost without him, but don't tell him that - he'll be insufferable!
I've needed a new computor for a while but have been delaying, becos being such a creature of habit I was dreading this readjustment stage that I knew I was going to have to go thru to familiarise myself with all the new stuff.

I think we're over the worst now however, and I certainly loving the new key board, and the speed with which stuff is happening...

Its kind of ironic to ponder that when we opened up back in 86, personal computors were not around. I'd just left an accounting office where there was only one mainframe computor, and an operator who would work overnite - we'd leave all our files on her desk and she'd do all the entry overnite.
I can distinctly remember getting our first fax for the business here, and feeling absurdly modern! Then came the photocopier, and the very first computor, which has been upgraded a number of times over the years.

I've been lucky in that I've had Chris to drag me up to date with each modification - left to my own devices I'd probably still be sending everyone snail mail. But I am a convert - I do love the immediacy that the computor gives me. I can sit down and complete a task - send it and get a response all within the space of minutes. Plus the depth of knowledge that the internet opens up is just extraordinary.

So its a great tool - and well worth the few hours of discomfort, while we swap everything over and make it all compatible.

Plus I had a gentleman from the Liquor Licensing board call in to check details for the onlicense application, and I had to do all the normal bookwork as well, so being a pretty full on day, and I'm looking on going over to the restaurant for service shortly, almost as light relief!

The restaurant has been put back to its normal state after having moved all the furniture outside on Sunday for the Sharon Elizabeth concert. I delayed doing that as late as I could becos the weather wasn't offering me any guarantees that it was going to stay fine, and going thru the process of getting everything set up outside, only to have a shower sweep through, would not have been good.

We were lucky.  The weather played ball, the courtyard looked quite lovely - Anna from Silver Bubbles worked her magic and created a lovely space, that was beautiful in the sunlight when people first arrived, and then turned romantic and dreamy when the candle light and fairy lights kicked in as it got darker. I told Anna that she reminds me of Rick - in the sense that what she does is create layers of visual interest. The end result is deceptively easy in appearance, but I have more than an inkling on Sunday of how hard she and others toiled to create the kind of effect they wanted. And there were multitudes of things to catch the eye.

Ricks sauces are like that. Look simply on the plate - but there is layers of technique gone in to create the complexity of flavour that is arrived at. All interesting.

Sharon sang beautifully - the sort of songs that evoke nice romantic memories for those of us who have been fortunate enough to go to any of the Mediterranean countries. I have absolutely no religious belief at all, but never fail to became captivated by listening to Ave Maria. We visited a monastory close to Montalcino that had been built in the 900s, and the soaring stone edifice was one of the visual highlights for me of the trip. I associate Ave Maria with it, becos I bought a CD of the monks singing it.

I used the evening as an opportunity to introduce everyone to the Herons Flight Sangiovese - an Italian style red wine grape made in Matakana that I particularly like, and was gratified to get a uniformly positive response. You never know with wines how they're going to be recieved, and its always a big step to convince New Zealanders in general to step outside the grape types that they're familiar with.

An evening like this where Rick and I set the food and the wine matches gives us a chance to throw in something a little different  - and always a buzz to have that recieved positively.

A nice nite - well worth all the stress that came with the territory!

I've just had a late lunch with Rick - tomatoes and basil and eggplant out of the garden, tossed quickly over heat and mixed with some pasta. Perfect flavours for a day like today. John had brought over a beetroot tart that he wants to special tonite, - the cream cheese pastry on the base with roasted beetroot and then some of Over the Moons fresh goats cheese - all a beautiful combination, and that'll be on the restaurant menu tonite.

I've just got back from going up the Mount - later in the day then I normally do, but had to get the newsletter folded this am, and then had some stuff at my desk to attend too. Rick and Courteney had headed out on a bike ride, and Hannah had gone over to Hamilton to pick up Andrew and head down to Wellington tonite - he's in a Coast to Coast team, and she's going down as support crew.

It was glorious over at the Mount - and the sun must have been exactly overhead, becos no matter which side I was on there was no shade, which is most unusual. Usually you get a shady patch somewhere - but headed for home feeling definitly scalded!

Intrigued to read in the latest Hospitality magazine that el bulli is closing for 2 years. el bulli is a spanish restaurant, judged most frequently over the last few years as being the best restaurant in the world, and the chef/owner Ferran Adri is one of the chefs at the forefront of the molecular gastronomy movement, a subject that we continue to mull over. It's closing apparently becos he is burnt out and needs a break, to refresh and recharge.
Fabulous concept I feel, but not one that we can afford to emulate.

However the point that most fascinated me was that the restaurant makes no money - this, remember is the best restaurant in the world, that you have to book at least a year in advance to get in to. A restaurant that seats about 45 people, and which only does one seating, and is only open 6 months of the year. ( The rest of the year the kitchen team work in a laboratory devising the  multi course menu for when they reopen.) To eat there costs an equivalent of $NZ500, and everyone I know who has had the experience says it is worth every cent. People eulogise.

But. The restaurant runs at a loss, and the money is made from the books, and his lectures around the world. He is a man much in demand.

Now I find that truly fascinating, becos it comes back to the conundrum that we have always had with Somerset and that is, that this style of restaurant is not, and never will be hugely profitable, becos we don't get the economies of scale from volume.

 A comparison I've often quoted is the clothing industry. Haute couture always makes a loss, and those ateliers are sustained by their pret-a-porter ranges. In other words, the exquisite clothes hand made by incredible craftspeople, and sold for thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, are not profitable. Amazing as it may seem.
To make money, all the great houses have a mass market line - people in the Main Street will buy Chanel sunglasses and pay a premium becos of the brand recognition of the name. And becos of the volume of the sunglasses that they sell all over the world, they make money- even though the clothes and other accessories are factory made, under markedly less salubrious conditions.

Small restaurants only have a certain number of seats that they can sell every nite. Alot of the formal restaurants in America work hard to have 2 sometimes even 3 seatings in a nite, so as to maximise the return from each seat in the restaurant. 3 different people sitting in the same seat over the duration of an evening, are going to spend approximately 3 times, what one person would. Once you've had your coffee, the chances are the restaurant is not going to make any further income from your presence, so they'd far rather you departed, and let some one else use the table. 

So for that reason, you're told the time to come, and also instructed on what time you will need to vacate the restaurant. Seatings start at 5.00pm and with some of the upmarket New York restaurants, they will still be seating people at 11.30pm.

Europe operates in a different style - people go to those restaurants to spend the evening to relax and indulge, the way dining out should be - and the idea of having to be in and out within a certain time frame, would be completely alien to them.

From what I read about el bulli, it certainly doesn't turn tables. But they charge alot of money for the priviledge of spending all nite at the table - and from what I understand the experience is so unique that the money is almost irrelevant.

But from my prespective what makes the fact there is no profit so interesting is that they are operating with a set cost structure, more so than most restaurants. They get the same number of patrons every nite, ( they're always full!) , all of whom are going to eat exactly the same food ( except for the odd vegan, or gluten allergy or...), so they know in advance, exactly what they are up for. The only variable really, would be the wines that people would choose to accompany their meals

By contrast, the reality for most restaurants is that numbers will vary on a nitely basis with no predictable pattern, and we have no way of knowing in advance what people are likely to order to eat off an a la carte menu. We may have a nite when everyone orders 3 courses, or it may be a nite when we sell very few entrees - you just don't know, and you have to be prepped and ready, just in case.

And being prepped and ready costs money in terms of labour and food materials. And that is why I hate a week when the level of busyness varies, becos it makes that whole process so much harder.

To my mind, it would be a dream to know exactly what to expect in terms of costs - but then I did ponder as I worked my way up the Mount,  whether that  could all get a bit predictable and possibly  boring. At least we have alot of variation - and we are never allowed the luxery of resting on our laurels, becos you just never quite know what is going to happen. And sometimes thats not a bad thing either, becos variety is supposed to be the spice of life! Hmm...

Tonite is very quiet in the restaurant, so I've been over, had a discussion with Rhonda about the setup for the cookschool in the morning - we have our first one in the series due to start - tasted the cherry icecream which is newly on the menu, and retreated back to the house with my diary tucked under my arm, and a glass of Trinity Hill Chardonnay to sup.

If Rick gets away in time, we might head into town later to catch the George Clooney movie 'Up in the air', becos there seems to be a feast of movies coming our way that I'd love to watch, and the problem for us is getting the free nites to see them all, before they disappear again. So figure we may as well turn the negative of a quiet nite into a positive.

Becos quiet nites are a negative. They depress weekly turnover, and they make prep hard, becos quantities can be variable, and that makes consistency hard for the kitchen.

Last nite we were almost full, and last Thursday, we were over full - really good customers had to sit in the bar, and we had to turn away a number of requests for tables- and yet this week,  Thursday is quiet- a third full.  And wouldn't like to say why. Beyond the fact that this week, historically is quiet - schools about to go back maybe?

Theres no rhyme or reason - which is what makes it a titch frustrating, so you really have no choice but to roll with it. I suspect that our bookings even out pretty well - we don't get anything like the seasonal variation that we used too, years ago,  and from week to week the number of bums on seats that we get is pretty consistent.

So this isn't really a whinge, but more simply a commentary on the way it is sometimes.

Ricks just put some menu changes on tonite - watermelon and corn and tomatoes are currently too good not to be using. We're compressing the watermelon in the vacumn packer, and that condenses the water molecules, which makes both the flavour and the colour more intense. And we got over some goats cheese from "Over the Moon' in Putaruru to match with it. A soft, fresh cheese that reminds me very strongly of the cabacou that we ate in France. I know yum isn't really a descriptive word,( have just read in an American food blog that it shouldn't be used to describe flavours!) but it was absolutely what struck me when I first tried it.

We'd called into the shop when we were heading to Taupo to visit my brother after Christmas, and had a tasting session, and were hugely impressed - so nice to be using something that local.
 
Catharine stocks a range of their cheeses in her shop " the Village Pantry ' in Te Puna.

The other goats cheese that I'm addicted to comes from Te Aroha, and is a place I'd very much like to visit - Aroha Organic Goat Cheese - they are just beautiful. A firmer texture and milder flavour than the 'Over the Moon' one, and we've been eating alot over summer, tossed thru salads. Had some with my first tomatoes out of the garden yesterday ( incorporating a liberal sprinkling of salt, having just read Michael Ruhlmans blog on salt ), and it really was sublime.

None of which will appeal to the very good customer who is coming in for dinner tomorrow nite and has sent me thru a bullet point email of what he wants to eat, and none of which are things that we have on the menu. All of which is cleverly planned to see if he will generate a rise out of me - something I've managed ( just!) to avoid giving him the satisfaction of all these years.

Last time we cooked sausages for him was at a large outcatering wedding, of the daughter of good friends of his and ours,   where we'd cooked the bloody sausages, left them to cool in the house, as we started the massive plating job of getting the beef and chicken choices out to the 150 odd guests, only to hit his table, rush up to the house to grab them, and discover that the band ( who were absolute tossers from Auckland) had decided to help themselves and had eaten all of them. So service to  the remaining 138 people got held up as that news was relayed back to an incredulous Rick.

The joke backfired on all of us - and caused some stress along the way! I don't think he thought that we would do the sausages, and we and the brides father were determined to make it look effortless, but unfortunetly, it wasn't to be and  I think he ate beef that nite, becos he doesn't do chicken! And  I suspect he doesn't actually believe that there ever were any sausages, even though David bought them for us!

He is however someone who I have the upmost respect for - whose opinion on anything to do with what is happening in the restaurant scene in Tauranga, I actively seek, becos no one else has their finger on the pulse quite the way he does. However I bet he doesn't give the other restaurants the same kind of grief he gives us though.

He's testing, always testing...

There are a number of customers, who over the years have become the equivalent of a kitchen cabinet to me. We don't have a board of directors - Rick and I are the only directors, but we are in the very fortunate place where we  have the ability to tap into a range of business expertise,  from people that I hold in the highest esteem, on a regular basis.

These are people who know our business well, and from who I can expect a full and frank discussion of any point I might raise with them - and I never forget to say a private thankyou for having those people in our lives.

Which is why, if one wants to test the outer limits of the elasticity of my tolerance - by  ordering food that he knows will make me wince, then so be it. I'll play his game - and I'll win! ( I think!)

I have been approached by someone who is doing a research project on the history of restaurants in NZ, and who was especially interested at my time at Bonapartes - a restaurant that I worked in in the late 70's when I was a student in Auckland.

So the below is a copy of the script that I've just sent thru to him, answering as best I could his queries about the history of Somerset, the place of restaurants in NZ culture and my memories of Bonapartes...

I mentioned in the latest newsletter ( the hard copy of which will be posted tomorrow, and the electronic copy has already gone - theres a copy on the website),  that our field of reference for what we do here at Somerset is quite wide, becos different aspects of the business, require food to perform in different ways. What works in an a al carte situation here at the restaurant, with a kitchen full of commercial equipment and 4 chefs, is not necessarily going to translate to a marquee with dodgey gas mein host ovens, in windy and wet conditions, and 150 guests wedding guests all wanting to eat at once.

We have to come at the food requirements from a different perspective. Likewise the cookschools and the Somerset at Home, and then the Winemakers Dinners that we do at the restaurant also require a different approach.

And then within Somersets  daily menu itself, there is a wide range of food styles. We have never called ourselves a particular 'sort' of restaurant, partly becos we never wanted to be lumbered with, and limited by, an imposed boundary. We're not Italian but we do cook Italian food; nor are we Asian, although we have been heavily influenced by David Thompson in particular. The french food we do can come either from books celebrating centuries of traditional country food, or something that one of the master chefs like Alain Ducasse or Guy Savoy, has created.

Lately we've been looking to sous vide methods, out of curiosity, and are experimenting with ways that that style of cooking can expand our repertoire. We're currently specialing a compressed watermelon salad - that is inspired by Peter Gordons idea of  combining  watermelon, with feta, and olives, but altered by vacum pressing the watermelon. A process that intensifies the flavour and deepens the colour. I have no doubt that there will be some who prefer their watermelon to be 'normal', ( just as there were some who objected stridently to the fact we served paris gnocchi instead of potatoes in our side dish of vegetables, over winter, when we couldn't get good small potatoes) but we think its an interesting technique,  and sometimes,  'interesting' is good.!  We think!

The menu is large by  comparison to alot of restaurant these days - and I blame that fully on our longevity and the number of return customers that we get, who come back to eat what they had last time.
There are certain dishes that we can't change - we have tried, and it just hasn't been worth the angst caused. So they stay on as perennial favourites, and becos we'd get bored if there was no change, we tinker around with other aspects of the menu, to allow for seasonal variation in ingredients, and to keep the kitchen team stimulated. ( And those customers who don't want to eat the same thing every time they come!). And that has had the result over the years, of the menu getting longer and longer.

We are still however, a fair way off getting even close to Kenny Shopsins menu of over 900 items...Gordon Ramsey would have a ball winnowing that back!

So, becos we're not limited by being a certain 'style' of  restaurant, the ideas we get, come from all over the place. One of the major ways that I personally contribute to that process is to order a constant stream of cookbooks thru Amazon, and their arrival usually sets me up for a quiet few hours of contemplative reading.

Today has been a classic example of that. The latest parcel from Amazon arrived yesterday with 3 books that I ordered pre Christmas. I remember reading one of the food bloggers lists of top cookbooks of the last decade. I don't think it was Nigel Slater, and I can't remember now who exactly it was. Possibly Michael Ruhlman or David Lebovitz...

So far I've almost read the 'Shopsin' one and dipped into the other 2 enough to get a feeling for them both. And it has struck me that they are profoundly different, but will all be very useful, which just goes to show how eclectic our food sources are.

 Rick is working on some cookschool ideas, along with changes to the current menu, so has been  actually sitting around within my vicinity for a couple of hours and has preforce been made to listen to a running commentary from me as I read out some of the more interesting concepts from the Zuni Cafe one - like salting stock at the start of the cooking process, and salting meat in advance, and then making beef and lamb stock out of chicken stock rather than water. Its all interesting gist for us - something to toss around and maybe try, and if it improves the flavour of what we do, then will be adopted.  We don't think we've reached an end place with our cooking. There is always new stuff to learn, and even new ways to look at things we've always done. Thats what makes it all so interesting.

The day you think you know it all is the day you should retire I suspect.

Alot of this process is discussed in the cookschools - but you can never cover all that you learn along the way, people would get information overload.

Then during the evening in the restaurant becos we were quieter, I retreated to the couch in the bar and started flicking thru Michel Richards book, and kept having to rush into the kitchen to show them another picture or describe another technique that I'd just read that fascinated me. Some really cool stuff.

So 3 books from which we will get totally different ideas, but all of which will be workable within some context of the business.

The Shopsin book is a philosophy - an extraordinary read, which I will go into in another blog in more depth when I've finished it. The man is a complete iconoclast - he calls everything exactly the way he sees it, usually couched in swear words, and without any pretence of niceties. I rather admire the honesty, and adore the fact that if he doesn't like the look of customers when they walk in, and doesn't think they're a fit with his establishement,  he tells them to leave!

The Zuni Cafe cookbook is intense. She has an extraordinary level of taste. I've never thought to taste chicken stock as it cooks, and the food and her approach is reminiscent of Chez Panisse where she once worked. Quality of ingredients is key.

And then the Michel Richard book is all about technique. He is an ex pastry chef who is now a restaurateur - a most unusual career trajectory, becos the skill set is quite different, and chefs usually move from savoury to sweet, but very seldom the other way. And very seldom to the kind of acclaim that this guy has generated.

He argues that you have to keep moving with food. If you do the same thing all the time, it gets boring, and he's more interesting in learning and being stimulated, so is constantly experimenting and coming up with new ideas. A number of which involve sous vide, which is perfect for our here and now.

So, there are some dishes on our menu that we don't move with.  They stay. The squid, the duck and the licorice. Although there is a minor degree of tampering that will go on. We added vanilla to the kumura mash on the duck a few years back, and we now glace the orange slices that are coated in chocolate to go with the licorice, before we dehydrate them - where once we just dehydrated fresh oranges.

But the essence of the dish remains the same - becos significant numbers of people want them too. The rest  of the menu varies - seasonally and as inspiration takes Rick.  And within those changes it may just be the way we make our beef stock, or it may be a whole new technique.

The tweak may be so small that only some people will pick up on it and comment. ( One lesson I have learned, is that there is a huge range of variation in food appreciation.), and some changes will be so dramatic that everyone will comment.  Either positively or negatively. Becos that is another lesson that you have no choice but to swallow - you are not going to please all the people all the time....

So. I think we're in for a week of expermenting, which is cool. Rick has to nail the recipes for the cookschool by the end of the week, so he's under a certain degree of pressure, which is good for him!

We have history with people. We have that becos we've been here for nearly 24 years, and seen alot of people over a lot of time, and theres been an awful lot of living go on over that period.

Without any doubt, I can state unequivocably, that that people connection is one of the things that I, personally, find the most satisfying about the business.
I'm currently reading " Eat me. The food and philosophy of Kenny Shopsin', which will be the subject of a future blog all to itself, becos its a truly spectacular book, and he makes the very pertinent comment in it,  that what makes his restaurant special is

'my relationships and interactions with my customers - and the way they relate and interact with one another.'

So it was with a substantial smile that I flicked thru some photos that an Auckland customer has just emailed me thru. He and his wife are close friends of good friends of ours who live here at the Mount, and its been a January habit for us to see them all at some stage at the restaurant. 

They were in on Saturday, and James was adamant he wanted a photo of us all, even though Rick was away in Christchurch, and we all had to dutifully line up for the photo that then became a non event when Rhonda pointed out that the batteries in his camera were flat. You get that!

But in going back to Auckland, he's gone thru his albums to dig out previous photos taken at Somerset, and they have definitly raised a chuckle. And abolutely confirms one of the reasons I love photos so much, becos they capture a moment, and its amazing how much stuff you forget as time moves along.

This photo was taken in 93 - its the old back room to the restaurant, with the old blinds - and the haircuts have changed rather considerably from then till now...as have all sorts of things in the restaurant.  And looking at this and the others he sent thru, has reminded me of much I'd forgotten.

But right now I'd better get with the current day, and head over to the selfsame restaurant, cos we have customers due to arrive...

Years ago - honestly can't remember exactly when, but would be at least 10 I'd say - Rick featured on Peta Matias'   Taste NZ series.

It was a fascinating experience to watch the filming process - I have photos that I took, somewhere. Must dig them out...- it took about 5 hours for what ended up being about 5 mins on TV.

As I remember Rick cooked the squid dish, and the crew went for a wander thru the orchard down below, and then we cooked them lunch apres.

There were only 3 of them - a camera man, sound man and Peta herself, who impressed us enormously with her professionalism. Her ability to flick between an almost meditative style mood to full on presentation mode, when the camera came on, was extraordinary. There is alot of down time in that type of filming - and the 'talent' gets to stand around for ages.

She coped with it  easily and seemed to have a natural rapport with the 2 guys she was working with. It was a fascinating glimpse into another world.

And the reason I mention is becos we were stopped walking into Alimento the other day by a lady we know, who said she'd just seen Rick on TV that morning. They must be running reloops of the series. And since then its been amazing how many people mention that they caught the show.

Everyone except us! I think we have it on video somewhere - must go and see if I can find it....

We are back into restaurant matters today. Rick's just headed out on the bike for an hour or so, having been up to the berry farm, and got all sorts of other stuff organised over at the restaurant. The boys have been prepping in the kitchen since 9am - and will go thru until service tonite. We had lunch out on the deck - roast chicken and rice perfumed with kecap manis, and macarons, and discussed the upcoming couple of months. No-one looked too much the worse for wear from New Years celebrations, I was relieved to note.

Becos we've been closed for the last week or so, most things have to be prepped from scratch, and that makes for a long day for them.

Carpets were cleaned while we were closed, so tables have all been moved back to where they should be and Rhondas been resetting them, so that we're ready to go tonite. Christmas trees have been covered and removed to the shed,  wine restacked, and water carafes cleaned and refilled. I think we're ready...

Going into a busy nite for our first one  back, which is going to be a bit of a shock to the system first time up after the break, but would far rather have it that way then be too quiet, so am not complaining. Hopefully we'll all remember what to do...

Its been a really nice break - we didn't really venture too far from home, choosing to just chill mostly here in Tauranga. That chilling involved quite a bit of very pleasant sitting around eating good food and drinking some special wines, in the company of good friends, so it certainly wasn't arduous. 

Rick and I went out for dinner last nite, a deux, and discussed the upcoming year in terms of the business. We both fulfill quite different roles at the restaurant and its therefore quite important to occasionally sit down and take stock of where the others head is at, in terms of what we want going forward. Even after all this time we sometimes have the ability to surprise the other with our expectations. Communication is good!

Already I'm back into sorting particulars with upcoming wedding catering, and will soon be working on the cookschool dates for the next series, so things revert back to normal very quickly.

I managed a bit of pottering around in our home kitchen  while we were closed, doing the sort of experimenting that I always enjoy, and going off on tangents that sound good in theory but which don't always work out quite so well in practise.
Made some neenish tarts using dulce de leche rather than conventional condensed milk - not sure why, the idea just occurred to me, and appealed, and becos I had some left over pastry from the Christmas mince pies Courteney and I had made pre Christmas, I decided to use it up in that fashion.

Also made a berry tart to use up the leftover marzipan. Under instruction from Courteney I make real marzipan for the icing on the Christmas cake, and ended up with an excess this year, that I turned into a tart, inspired by the idea of a pithivier. Rather than using puff pastry as they do traditionally in a pithivier I used the cream cheese pastry, becos we'd just finished a cookschool series in which we'd convinced people that it may not be quite as good as puff, but it was considerably less hassle to make, and cooks up with a very satisfying degree of puff to it. Instead of enclosing the tart with pastry as for a pithivier, I covered the top with blackberries, and it was pretty fine, I have to say.

We sell the pastry now thru Somerset at Home, and in the run up to Christmas, the kitchen were constantly replenishing stocks becos we sold so much. Even though we give people the recipe in the classes, we've discovered that lots have a 'thing' about making pastry, and prefer to buy it. Its great that we can now properly oblige.
 
Then to use up some raspberries which weren't going to last much longer I made a Louise cake and mixed the fresh berries thru the meringue mix on top, and used the raspberry jam from Somerfield Berry Farm, which is fantastic. That was particullary good fresh from the oven.

And becos the Christmas pudding I made this year was especially large, we had leftovers, and Rick and I fried some the other morning,( something my mother always used to do, and which I thought was commonplace, but I've had people react with horror when I've told them that we do it) but there is still more, so thought I'd revert to David Lebovitz's book 'The Perfect Scoop', to find a recipe for icecream that I could mix the remaining pudding with. Got sidetracked by a recipe for banana icecream, which I made so as to use up the overripe bananas that were languishing in the fruit bowl, and the pudding remains in the fridge, to be dealt with on another day. I will get there....

We had cherries from Katikati, and the best new potatoes from Te Puna, to eat over the break - both of which were quite sublime. I brought some of the restaurant bread starter over to the house and made bread on a couple of days, as you do, and the living was easy.

All most restorative really, even if I did have to go up the Mount an extra couple of times in an attempt to compensate for the eating and drinking. You get that.

There were no unpleasant messages on the answerphone this year, from people incredulous that we would choose to close, over the Christmas/New Year period.  If anything I've sensed a subtle switch in reaction. We used to think that successful businesses were those that were incredibly busy all the time, and open all the time. But maybe its a sign of us getting older, or maybe it is a general movement in the zeitgast, but I feel as if people are more appreciative of the need for everyone to have some down time. That life is not simply all about business and money, and that we all need some restorative time to balance out our lives.
This year, rather than the abuse that we used to get, there were far more complimentary comments made over our decision to close, which needless to say is heartening.

Here's to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010!

We've just been for a bush walk down below. We don't often take the time to mooch thru the bush and that is a shame becos its beautiful down there. A bit muddy underfoot in places from the natural springs, and the dogs are currently being hosed down to remove the mud, to their chagrin.

One day we'll build a pond/lake down there, something my mother always talked about  wanting to do, but never got round too in her lifetime. It'll be a nice legacy for her, to create.

Fed the worms and picked some spinach for dinner, and headed back up the hill.

Closing on the 23rd, gives us this day to chill before Christmas itself arrives, and it's been a nice day. We're going to have dinner soon, and then go and listen to the carol singing that one of the local churches has instigated in the centre across the road, before heading up to friends for a late Christmas Eve drink.

With Courteney in the car, I suspect the trip home will have to be via some of the  Christmas house lights.... She is our Christmasaholic - the one who insists on certain things having to happen, becos that is the way its always been, and Rick and I go along with the process, without too many issues. She flies out on Boxing Day for the Tour de Femme, and then on to Christchurch for Elite Nationals, so we're making the most of her cheerful presence while we have it.

 Hannah went out on the bike ride with her sister and Rick this morning - she met them after they'd already done a loop, becos she'd been kayaking, and wasn't back when they left. Its amazing how social it is out there on the bike - they told me over breakfast at Slowfish, ( I drive over to the Mount, and walk up it, and they ride via Welcome Bay and various other places...and we meet up at Slowfish. Very civilised.) about the people they encountered  on the road and chatted too. The whole world rides a bike these days...Hannahs  back  out on the river now - that girl is always going to have to live somewhere close to water. I remember tears in France when we weren't able to organise a kayak for her - 4 weeks without was just too long. She's more than made up for it since then however...

The last few days the restaurant was open, were busy, very busy.  Lots of people popping in to pick up bits and pieces - I'm keeping track now of the volumes of licorice icecream that we sell for people to take home.  I always knew we sold lots, but I didn't realise just how much goes out the door. That, and cream cheese pastry, and chicken liver pate were our big sellers this year.  And countless  vouchers...

But lots of people in the restaurant too - family groups getting together again for Christmas. We have one local family who have been coming to us on the 23rd  for years now . Its a tradition for them - and we've watched the girls grow up into gorgeous young women over that time. And then at the other end of the spectrum, we had an older customer who I'm enormously fond of in for dinner, even though he's recently been given not good news by an oncologist. Life continues to go on I guess, but some people tackle it with a bravery that I find very humbling.

And then at about 11.30pm when everyone had left,  we moved all the tables and chairs onto the slate floor, becos the carpets are going to be cleaned while we're closed - and emptied the fridge of all the open wine, ( not us been mean I might add, but the reality of all these guys having to drive home, and being reluctant to drink too much, especially the younger males who get stopped by the cops on their way home quite regularly) and sat down to toast Helen who finishes at Somerset now, having been with us for a number of years.  Rick and I will take her out for dinner next week, before she heads down to Christchurch - but it was nice to sit with everyone else and say our farewells.

And a nice note to go out on with the staff for the year - I'd been tired and grumpy the last few days, and not especially easy to be around, the year has tested me to the nth degree -so I appreciated the effort they all made to acknowledge Helen, and show me by deed that they are good people really! Becos they are. We're very lucky.

(Helen leaving with cupcakes from Courteney and Thomas Kellers book 'adhoc' from us, along with our very best wishes for the next stage in her life.)

Have just got changed again for what feels like the umpteenth time today, as I switch between the various hats ( figuratively speaking!) that I've needed on, to get done what I needed too...

About to go and get a couple of buckets of food slops from the restaurant, to take down to the worms below, and the dogs will relish the chance of a run. They've been a bit neglected all day, as we got ourselves ready for a catering job.

I'm back from having done the initial set up round at the property, where the party is being held,  and introduced the front staff to the hosts. Rick, Matt and Mike have things set up in the garage - BBQ, oven and all. And Ali, Zoe and Linda, are ready and waiting for the guests. So having made myself redundant, I've retreated and headed back to do stuff here before I wander over to the restaurant for evening service. As you do.

Its very cool having people around you, who you feel totally comfortable about just leaving to get on with it. Ali has been helping us with catering as long as we've been doing it, and she will take Linda, who is having her first experience, through everything - and I trust her implicity to get on with it.

We've had a big week so far, with lots of large groups, lunch and dinner - so tonite is going to feel a bit lightweight with only small tables in. Sometimes though, those nites can end up surprisingly intense, and I shouldn't pre-empt anything in advance.

Last nite was extra busy becos we had a large table on the deck in addition to a full restaurant. Necessitated becos when we'd rung to confirm their numbers for next Friday, they told us that no, they were coming this Friday. A quick email check proved that they had in fact booked for next Friday, but proving yourself right in these situations, doesn't necessarily take the problem away. We simply couldn't fit them in, internally, but agreed to have them on the deck, and they came early, and were very accomodating, and had, I think a lovely nite. They and we, were very lucky with the weather- we put lots of red tealights down the table, and it all looked very festive.
Sometimes bad things happening can turn out to have a positive ending. Always like it when that happens....

The Christmas rush is very real and happening - which I'm pleased about on one level, becos its nice for the bank balance, but I'd forgotten just how physically exhausting it can also be. It's intense. All the guys are doing big hours, as you do this time of year. And my body, which is alot older then when we started doing this back in'86,  gets distinctly creaky at the end of the nite. Thankgod for Susie and massage!

I got to reminise the other nite when good customers popped in on their way home from Prue Gooches' Christmas  ballet recital with their 9 year old daughter, for a quick dinner. It feels like a lifetime ago, that I was precariously trying to  fit in the running around that having a daughter in that production meant, along with all the other demands of the restaurant at this time of year. I never made an especially good ballet mother. 

Remembering that, made me realise that we have things conspiciously easier these days, in no small way, becos we carry a bigger team which allows us to share the load considerably more.

Plus the improvements to the restaurant building itself, make what we do so much easier. Turning on the aircon this week, after a couple of weeks of trying to avoid it, becos I like to have all the windows open, made me very grateful for the not inconsiderable amount of money that we paid installing it. A couple of nites this week have been so steamy and hot, that not only for our guests, but also for our sanity, being able to provide cool air is something we quickly take for granted.

And that wonderful new chiller that we got built this year, has earned its weight in gold. Having the size and capacity ( and coldness!) is simply bliss. A catering job like this one, combined with busy times in the restaurant used to put our old chiller capacity at a premium, but no more. Now we have this fabulously large, cold space that we're not even coming close to filling up yet. And that just makes everything so much easier. Ridiculously so really.
I smile every time I walk into it.

People are celebrating and spending well - and the general zeitgest seems to be one of relatively good spirits, tempered with a soupcon of caution. I get asked alot of questions about how business has been - and the ensuing conversations always seem to center around a sense of relief that the year is nearly over, becos most people have found it a challenging one,  and some reserve about what it is come.

Which pretty much sums up my own personal viewpoint of matters at the moment.

 However the pohutakawa in our gully is finally flowering. I've been watching it anxiously for the last few weeks, becos a burst of red flowers doesn't happen on that tree every year, and when it does, I look on it as a good luck talisman for the year to come.

We aren't awash in blooms, but there is definitly enough colour there for me to be prepared to be cautiously optimistic. Not that I am in anyway superstitious you understand!

And talking of trees - we have a large old plum tree down by the worm farm, one of many plum trees on the property.  This one is currently laden with plums, and they're dropping faster than we or the birds can collect. Will shovel up the rotting fruit tom and feed it to the worms....

This blog is by a female chef who is working in one of New Yorks top restaurants. I started reading the blog when she was working in Paris - and find her descriptions of what her day involves to be lucid and fascinating.

In an earlier blog  ( 26 Nov 09 ) I mentioned how over both Rick and I are, the cocky attitude that tends to emanate from recent polytech graduates who come here for some work experience,  and who have the temerity to call themselves chefs, when all they have really achieved is the first step in that long journey of becoming a chef.

Reading a description like this,  of a service in  a busy up market restaurant, is, I think, a useful reminder, that being a real chef, takes a huge amount of grit, determination,  and sheer physical hard work. Not to mention years of experience.

I wouldn't want to do it.

I took this photo of my husband earlier this week, as we had our normal start of the day, cup of coffee on the restaurant deck - discussing as we are wont to do, what we have coming up during the week.

It is the first of December, and we are very much now in Christmas mode, and for us that means a lift in everything. The pace around the place goes up quite significantly -  and maybe the contrast is even more so this year, becos we're coming of the back of what has been a quietish year.

The last couple of weeks have lifted significantly in terms of busyness - and from now on thru to when we close for Christmas on the 23rd, things will be pretty frenetic during service. Which is all good! Its just that you've kind of got to adjust and ready yourself for the onslaught. Because its a very different type of energy at this time of year.

As I said to Rick yesterday - this is our 24th Christmas season, are you ready for it? - and wasn't completely reassured by the somewhat noncommital reply I got! He didn't exactly look like a man raring to go, I didn't think...

We have a large group in the backroom tomorrow nite - who, unusually, I don't  know. They're an Auckland company who are entertaining local clients, and most of the contact I've had over the format of the evening has been thru email.

But I got a phone call today from one of the partners wanting to discuss a special drink he wants us to make as an aperitif for the guests when they first arrive - a Pisco sour. Not a drink I've ever heard of. He gave me the rough outline of the ingredients, and I came back to my computor to do a google search, as you do - and am now up to speed with what a pisco sour is.

Except! In this video , the guy makes the interesting comment that limes in Peru are what we call lemons, and our lemons are limes to them. So when he told me on the phone that it was two thirds pisco, and one third lemon  - did he mean lime or lemon?

In that video the bartender uses limes, but in another one I've just watched someone else uses lemons - so I'm thinking at this stage that we'll use lemon.

Whichever way - its going to be a potent start to the evening.....

We have alot of depth of talent amongst our current kitchen team. Together with Rick there are 5 other full time chefs - John, Craig, Helen, Jamie and Matt. They do a variety of shifts - on some days one of them will prep all day, and not do service, and other days they will start with lunch time service, prep all afternoon, do dinner time service, and then turn around and clean the kitchen before heading for home, often on the back of a 12 hour day.

I watch the various programmes on TV that elevate restaurant cooking to being something glamourous with a reasonable amount of cynicism, becos to my eyes the work involves a fair amount of sheer hard slog and repetition, and remarkably little glamour.

In a kitchen like ours, everything gets made from scratch. We pride ourselves on the fact. The stocks, breads, icecreams, pastas, even the sausages for the bollito misto are made on site. All our sweets and pastries and the sauces.

An example of the prep that happens every day on a multiple of levels - this is Paris gnocchi being shaped.

We believe that its not only a matter of culinary pride, its also to do with what distinguishes us from other restaurants. Our reputation is tied to our kitchens ability to produce all aspects of our menu from scratch. There are alot of companies trying to sell us preprepared foodstuffs - be it pastries or hollandaise sauce, as 2 recent examples - and these rather arrogant ( and stupid)  reps tell Rick he'd save lots of wage costs, if he bought food already prepared.

All that says to us is that they haven't done their homework on us - and are treating us in the same way as they would a branch of a large chain restaurant, and to my mind that is just plain dumb. Restaurants are pitched at all sorts of different levels in the market, and as such, require different things. For a rep to assume a blanket approach, means they loose our interest pretty quick.

Our guys have pretty much all started on the dishes, and gradually worked their way up. We have been very fortunate in having alot of stability over the years - and our chefs tend to hang around for awhile. Some don't. Some are only there for a few short months - but I don't really regard those ones as having being 'trained' at Somerset.

Trained, means months and months of repetition of small monotonous jobs. Theres nothing glamourous about peeling potatoes, or prepping meat cuts - but its something that needs to be done day after day after day. Our team all share the prep ( minus Rick these days), and then turn around and do the service cooking as well. Thats 2 quite distinct types of cooking, and in some of the large American restaurants, I've read that they have 2 teams of chefs - cheap Mexican labour to do the day prep, and then the more expensive 'named' chefs who come in for the line cooking.

Rick doesn't do much prep these days - unless we have a large function on, but he goes over to cook service most nites. He finds prep boring, but still enjoys the adrenalin rush that the pressure of service creates. One day he may get over that too, and I guess at that point we'll all be looking for a new job!

We are not a big enough kitchen to have seperate departments as you get in the classical french lineup. Everyone tends to share a hand with the prep - at different times covering most aspects. That isn't to say though that certain talents don't start to shine through- a couple become more adept at some of the more complex pastry stuff we do, like the macarons, while others are more comfortable with the savoury prep.

Cooking during service is very structured though - and its the senior chefs that do the hot pan work - the hot entrees and the mains. And becos of the fact our staff are there for a while it can mean that the younger staff don't get a shot at cooking mains for literally years.

Which is why I'm always somewhat bemused by the attitude that quite often emanates from polytech trained students, with us for a weeks work experience, who truly regard themselves as chefs - and figure they're just going to start of on mains. It would be laughable if it wasn't sad. Sad becos some of these young upstarts end up convincing parents or retired dairy farmers ( for some reason the stories we hear always seem to involve dairy farmers!) that they should put their hard earned retirement money into a cafe/restaurant and they will be the chef. More often than not, their practical experience is absolutely zilch, and don't even get me started on what I think of their notions of good food!

We have seen the results of such startups, many many times - I think the average life expectancy of a food business in NZ is 18 months, and there's a huge amount of anguish and lost investment hidden in that statistic.

So I have a bit of an issue with those who think they can fast track their way.  You can't. To be a good chef requires years of hard, at the coal face graft, learning from others more experienced than you. To be a great chef requires that experience combined with a passion to develope and read and experiment and learn as much as you can. Very few have that fire.

We have learnt never to take anyone direct from the polytechs unless they're prepared to start of on the dishes. Not becos we're sadistic, but purely becos it gives us a chance to first  measure just how keen they really are - you'd be amazed at those that react with indignation that they're expected to start there and refuse, therefore denying themselves the opportunity to get in the door of a great kitchen - and gives us a chance to get the measure of the person.

Some of our guys have come to us as college students and have got their polytech qualifications while continuing to work. Meaning they come out the other end, fully qualified, with a great amount of practical work experience and no student debt.  Makes total sense to me.

It is quite common in the great overseas kitchens for young chefs to travel between them working 'stages'. They're not paid to be there, but they want the opportunity to see how the 3 star chefs work, and it will look great on their resumes when they get back to the States.  I wonder how much depth they actually learn in those massively populated kitchen - el bulli has something like 42 chefs for 45 diners - and the only reason the restaurant can afford to have that number of chefs, is that its not paying a reasonable proportion of them.

I'm not advocating that approach here - but it sits in the back of my mind when we have yet another approach from an overly cocky young individual who believes he ( its usually a 'he') has sprung from polytech as a fully qualified chef. He's actually only just began the journey to become a chef - and if he has any real potential he'll discover that fact very quickly and develope a bit of humility and be prepared to start at the bottom in a good commercial kitchen and learn, and then learn some more.

But some don't think they have anything more to learn. And they are the sort of chefs that end up in cafes and restaurants where they buy in such monstrosities as prepared hollandaise sauce, becos they lack the basic skill set to make it from scratch, and worse, they're lazy, as Joof said the other day, and can't be bothered making the effort to learn. The reps strike gold in those sorts of establishments.


What got me mulling all of this today was the fact that when I went over to the restaurant to unpack some wine this morning, James Broad was there with Matt for his last assessment, and I mooched back over to the house a bit later thinking about how the way James has come into our kitchen during the year to assess and grade Matt has been a markedly easier process than the one we'd done with our previous 3 chefs, who'd needed weeks off during the year to go over to Wairiki Polytech to do the practical part of their qualifications.  James is working under HSI's auspices, and for us as employers,  its proven to be a great way of our staff getting their qualifications, with minimum disruption to the kitchen.

Celia Hay in Christchurch operates a private chefs training school, The New Zealand School of Food and Wine, and one day I'd be really interested to have a look at what she does there, becos we have become very disillusioned with the process that Jamie especially, experienced here. Celia wrote an immensely practical book "How to Grow your Hospitality Business' which should be compulsory reading for all those with rose tinted glasses about to throw themselves into a cafe or restaurant, simply  becos they so enjoy doing dinner parties at home! Its loaded with common sense.

We visited Ballymaloe in Cork, at the end of our French trip, back in 07 - something I've mentioned many times previously, becos I think the total package of what Darina Allen has created there, is simply magical. People came from all over the world to train to be chefs there - living in the middle of the countryside for 3 months. We thought it was an amazing concept.

But even a place as special as Ballymaloe can only fuel the fire - it can't make someone a chef. Only years of graft and inspiration achieves that goal, and I think its sad when people expect instant gratification, and simply miss the fact that the journey and the discoveries along the way, are actually what it is all about.

Brenda and Doug Leigh are very special people in our lifes - not only have they been enormously supportive over a very long number of years, with all the various aspects of the restaurant business, they also take an active  and genuine interest in what our daughters are doing.

They are food and wine afficiando's - both with extremely discerning palates, who travel widely, eat out extensively, and drink lots of great wines. They came to Italy with us, and to France, and are already sending me links of potential future destinations for the next trip, which I've been heard to start muttering about.

They are always there when we have a newsletter that needs folding and putting in envelopes, and Doug is the source of many witty email connections, that have me chuckling at my desk- usually quite appropriately at times when I need a little levity.

Their impact in our lives cannot be understated, and we consider ourselves very blessed to have friends like them around us.

Last nite was Brenda's birthday, and as is typical of the couple they wanted to celebrate in a special and generous fashion. Doug had wanted the event to be held in the  restaurant cellar, which he has seen the plans for, and offered ever so generously to start the digging process. The cellar will happen, one day - but its still only a gleam in my eye, so instead we had to compromise with a table in the backroom of the restaurant. Champagne and fingerfood on the deck to start, and then a menu degustation in the restaurant.

I hadn't known what to get Brenda for a present, and decided to take a series of photos of the evenings - both of the guests out front, and of the food taking shape in the kitchen. I am far from a professional photographer, but I love photographs for the links to memories they provide, and am trying to make myself feel less like a twit when I haul out the camera, and to just get on with the business of recording life.

Am always conscious that people wielding large cameras can look ever so pretenscious, and I'd hate to be classified accordingly, but I also know  the very direct pleasure that having photos from the past, flicking up on my computor screen as the screen saver, gives me, so I have to step over that reluctance and get on with it.
Which I did. Not quite sure how I'm going to package them as a gift - will debate that one later...

We'd also done a private luncheon yesterday for a long term customer who was celebrating a milestone birthday. We don't open up specially for lunch very often,  but I walked back over to the house yesterday afternoon once the group were on coffee, with a real sense of satisfaction, that we are able to provide a nice enviroment for people to get together to celebrate some of the those big events.

 Watching families come together always involves a degree of voyeurism I guess, but I'm always conscious of a sense of being priviledged to be able to be part of those celebrations. We have some very special memories.

It was a big nite in the restaurant last nite, which is good - cos some of the Saturday nites over the last few weeks have not been big, and I hate it when that happens, becos a full Saturday nite should be one of the constants in my life. It aids considerably with the bill paying.

So doing a table of 16 on menu degustation ( a series of set small courses), and having another 53 people on a la carte, puts pressure on the kitchen, becos the timing is out. Timing is always an issue for the kitchen and I've mentioned at length previously, the effort we now go too, to spread bookings, so that we don't get a mass of people thru the door at once. It is extraordinary, the difference in the ease of the flow of service, if bookings are spaced in half hourly  groupings of approx 4 tables at a time. The front staff, the kitchen and the customers all benefit, from the ability to be more measured and to simply have more time.

 When 40 people walk thru the door literally at once, everyone is scrambling. (Try explaining that to some people though, when they ring to book a table and we tell them we can't do them at the time they want but suggest half an hour earlier, or half an hour later. For some, we are being unbelieveably arrogant in daring to be so presumptous as to 'tell' the customer what time they should arrive, and the phone can positively vibrate as they express their indignation. We even have some people who will then refuse to come if they can't come at 7.30, or what ever time it is that they have stipulated. I figure they're calling our bluff and expecting us to back down, for fear of losing the income, and I've learnt to just  tough that out, apologise as genuinely as I can make myself sound, and hang up - without the booking. I don't like being bullied.)

This time of year it is especially hard to time the flows in the restaurant becos of the number of larger groups that we tend to get. Some of these groups book in at a time - and it will take up to an hour after that time, before the full number of people arrive and ordering gets underway. If we've timed our other tables on the assumption that that large order would have been in the kitchen prior to that, then we end up with gridlock for the kitchen. And we can never know - becos sometimes other large groups arrive, virtually all together, sit down straight away, and get into the meal.

Like most things in life it is a very inexact science ....

Most people in restaurants order a la carte - an antiquated french expression which basically means, the restaurant gives them a menu ( a carte) which has a variety of dishes listed that they can choose from. A restaurant like Somerset designs its menu to incorporate 3 courses, which is what the vast majority of people who come to us have. We are a destination restaurant in the sense that most people come for the evening and we take it as a sign that we are doing our job well, when people eat a well spaced 3 course meal, followed by coffee and maybe some sort of digesif, and then sit on in a relaxed and amiable state, in no rush to depart.

There are variations on that theme though - and every nite in the restaurant we get hit with a request that doesn't fit that particular structure, and you learn to roll with the punches, otherwise you'd just get too aggravated, too often.

So, the point I'm trying to make here is that the kitchen is used to having no predictable flow in a nite. There are simply no guarantees about what people are going to order. We may have a nite when the vast majority of customers work their way thru the menu, or it could be that a number of tables don't order entrees and go straight into mains, moving the pressure in the kitchen from one side to the other.

Some well known restaurants overseas give their customers no choice - no, a la carte. People eat a series of small  courses in the order determined by the chefs. That is what 'menu degustation" is ( and was originally intended, I read somewhere, as a way of giving wealthy Americans who were in France "doing" the 3 star restaurants, a taste of what each restaurant had built its reputation on, becos they were eating lunch and dinner at major restaurants over the limited number of days they were on holiday, and had a very real physical restriction as to how much food they could consume in that time frame.) Those kitchens have a degree of predictablility about what is going to be ordered, but ours doesn't have it quite so easy.

On a busy nite, the pressure is on the kitchen anyway , to get out the meals in what is considered a reasonable time frame, to a wide range of people, all of whom have different expectations.. Add into that mix a multi course set menu for a table of 16 that has to be timed and plated around the other tables, and things get very busy!

So Rick had a pressurized nite - I didn't indulge in too much idle chit chat as I waited to take photos of the food being plated - I know the signs of intense concentration only too well, and stay as quiet as I'm capable off, until he heads for the bar and his wind down beer.

But challenges are never bad things in life - and when you put yourself out for people as special as the Leighs, who were very appreciative, then we all gain in the process!
But bed did feel especially good....

I've been sitting on my lovely red leather seat in the bar writing in my diary about the last couple of days which have been pretty full on. The restaurant is quiet tonite - not sure why that is, becos the rest of the week is busy, but tonite is not, so I've retreated and left the customers in the capable hands of Rhonda and Vicki.

I took my camera over, intending taking some photos of the new dishes that came on the menu tonite - but I didn't quite get to be around when they were being plated so I missed that opportunity. The kitchen staff hate it when I bring out the camera, they all kind of slip away to the periphery of the room in the hope that they're out of range... so I figure I just have to do it more often and then they'll get used to it!

New dishes on - mainly changes to the mains, but also a couple of entrees. Rick has put on a bollito misto becos he has a passion for those types of dishes - he made sausages today, hand piped them into sausage casing.  But we often comment in cookschools that the average kiwi doesn't do 'boiled' meat. They prefer their meat to be crispy and brown on the outside, rather than gently cooked in a pot of broth.

So we will have to wait and see how it goes.

Interestingly, our experimenting with the hind lamb shanks has shown that by cooking them sous vide for 8 hours at about 80oC, means they end up moist and tender - quite perfect. Then reheating  them in the oven to order, they crisp up on the outside, and brown in the manner that people like.

I have had an American penpal and his wife with us for the last couple of days. Larry is a delightful gentleman that I have inadvertently ended up in this lengthy written communication with over the last 11 years or so. He discribed me as a penpal the other day, and I thought that was a very apt description of our relationship.

He and his wife Maggie  came to the restaurant back in about 1998 - they found us quite by chance when they were travelling thru, and were sufficiently impressed to come back the next nite. In response to his enthusiasm about our chicken liver dish, I sent him the recipe all the way to Portland, Oregon, and his response kicked off a wide ranging and much enjoyed correspondance that continues to this day.

They are very special people who's enthusiasm for what we do is much appreciated. When we were planning the big overseas trips, to Italy originally, and then to France, Larry was a source of much information and emotional support when the going got tough.

I've valued his opinion and his take on things for years - so it was a pleasure to have them both come back to the remodeled version of Somerset after all these years.

I suspect the bollito misto would have been right up his alley - but unfortunetly he wasn't here to give it a go. They'll be eating somewhere in Wellington  tonite...

 2 blogs in one day -  which could be considered a touch excessive I guess, but the urge to sit down and write, tends to wax and wane depending to a very large degree on what else is going on in my life.

Today, we've had a stay at home day - I've made the Christmas cakes and generally mooched as you do sometimes. Saturday nite is well underway at the restaurant - we had an early hit, and I've come back over to the house to remove the 2nd cake from the oven, and decided to stay becos I'm pretty much redundant now over there.

The house is perfumed with that beautiful aroma of cooking spices and fruit, and I'm quite content to stay put and catch up on a few things at my desk. We have a bit coming up over the next couple of weeks, and I'm just wanting to dot my 'i's' and cross my 't's', and make sure that all is sorted. As you do.

Before I went over to the restaurant tonite, I'd been on Michael Ruhlmans latest blog - a reference point I return to regularly - and he was talking about Thomas Kellers latest cookbook 'ad hoc at home'  so I immediately used the link to order it thru Amazon.

 We are big Thomas Keller fans, and have all of his previous books. This man is widely touted as the top chef in America today - and his influence on the food scene is enormous.

By coincidence Rick and I were going thru his sous vide cookbook 'Under Pressure', today, as we were discussing some menu changes. Quite a different style of cooking to that in this latest cookbook, and that is one of the aspects that I enjoy so much about Somerset, in that we don't need to cleave to any one style of cooking - we can afford to experiment widely in our search for good food.

In setting up the Somerset at Home concept, we bought a vacumn packer, becos it would allow us to package food in an hygienic way, that makes food more transportable. A factor we considered to be important given we knew we would be transporting food to a much wider radius. And so it has proven to be.

I bought this 'Under Pressure' cookbook last year, and read it, thought some of it was fascinating, but essentially unworkable for us at that stage becos to follow a lot of the concepts, you need a vacumn packer. Now that we have one, some of these interesting techniques become possible for us, and Rick and I worked our way thru it this morning, discussing some of the ideas and how we could interprete them.

Menu planning is always an interesting process. Sometimes I step right back and just leave it to Rick. I might be absorbed in other stuff, and just don't feel I have much to contribute. At other times I get a bee in my bonnet about something I've seen or read about, and want to get him similarly inspired - so I interject myself right into the middle of the discussion.

I have, however, learnt to back right of after a certain point. Its all very fine for me to come up with fresh ideas, but if Rick doesn't believe them to be workable on a day to day basis in the commercial kitchen, then they will never get to the menu stage.

We play around with food ideas all the time. Some are suitable for the restaurant, some are catering and some are cookschool. And some just remain nice ideas that we try on friends at home, but which we decide won't translate to the commercial environment, for a whole host of reasons. Thats just the way it is.

The menu at Somerset is larger than a lot of restaurants. We ate out at some of the top restaurants down in the Nelson region recently, and one of the things we noted was how small the menu choices were. I am aware that restaurant 'critics' often speak positively of restaurants with small menus, the inference being that small, means  they are tight and focused.

I don't necessarily disagree, but nor do I believe that the automatic coralie is that a larger menu implies that the restaurant can't be on top of its game.

Our menu is larger than is maybe currently fashionable for a number of reasons. We appeal to a wide range of people, and if we were too much of one style, we would possibly  limit that appeal to a degree that would affect us economically.

No restaurant can be all things to all people - you have to create a certain ambience and style, but we believe it is also OK to have a simple nourishing dish like lamb shanks on the same menu as dishes that require considerably more craft and technique. We happen to be doing quite a bit of work with the lamb shanks at the moment, becos we've switched to hind shanks from the fore ones, and Rick has discovered that they are substantially more meaty and require much longer cooking to break down the connective tissues. In fact one of the reasons that the sous vide cookbook came of the bookshelf, was becos I was looking for alternative ways of cooking them.

We have a significant number of return customers -  people who come to Somerset for a whole host of reasons, but one of which is paramount, is to eat that dish that they so loved last time. So we need to keep those dishes on the menu, and the strongest ones in that category are the squid entree, the duck main and the licorice icecream.  They will be there forever, just becos they have to be! I was up at the hospital during the week, and came away somewhat bemused by the fact that both the nurse and the specialist I dealt with talked about the licorice icecream.

 Whether we like it or not, that is what people associate with Somerset, and even though we're currently having problems accessing RJ's licorice straps to make it, I don't think we could ever seriously consider deleting it from the menu lineup.

When Rick sits down to make menu changes as he is currently doing, he is motivated as much as anything by seasonal ingredients. And by the awareness that the balance needs to be lightened, or made more heavy depending on what the weather is like.

He called up to Somerfields in Oropi yesterday to get the first of this seasons strawberries. Strawberries have been appearing in the supermarkets for a few weeks now, but the ones we'd tried lacked the sweetness of flavour that we want, so we waited until the Somerfield family told us they were good to use. And, as we've come to expect from these guys, they are quite beautiful.

So the changes he's making will incorporate those and a few more salady, lighter type entree dishes,  and different accompanionments with the main meats. Because we're moving into summer and lighter food is more appropriate.

We hear the criticism occasionally, that we don't change our menu enough, and we're never quite sure how to interpret that.

We feel that we are constantly tweaking the menu - subtle changes occur quite regularly, but the critics are correct in that wholesale change never happens. And that is purely becos we feel we can't. We are a long established restaurant that does a certain style of food, and it is our consistency that most people like when they return, repeatedly. Maybe some don't - but I think I've learnt to live with the knowledge that no matter what we do, we aren't going to please everyone, all the time.  ( But difficult customers are perhaps the subject for another blog one day....)

Thomas Keller is a very good example of a chef at the top of his game, who owns a number or restaurants, that do a variety of food styles. French Laundry and Per Se are examples of cusine mixed with science - molecular gastronomy if you like - a series of small courses incorporating all the latest techniques, that to my mind stimulates a mental celebration rather than an emotional response. The photos in this book ' Under Pressure' are truly spectacular, but the food and the techniques involved are complicated and involved, and in some of the dishes there are up to 10 different, distinct component parts. It is food that you look at with a logical and visual appreciation - food that appeals on a cerebal level, but not an emotional one.

He then has 2 other tiers of restaurants - Bouchon and  ad hoc  in which he does food that I call 'emotional'. Food that elicits a gut reaction, a 'yum' response, if you like - its food that we're familiar with, but done with a level of care that lifts it up to a whole seperate level.  This is the sort of food that excites me becos it is communicating on that very simple, instinctive, level, of: ' that looks so good, I want/need to eat it'.

 We only own one restaurant, and in that premise we attempt to incorporate a combination of all those factors. We want food that tastes good, that looks good and that satisfies, but we also occasionally deliberately seek out the wow factor.  Sometimes the dishes that present the simplest on the plate, are those that involve the most detailed prep in the kitchen - but the average customer in the restaurant is never going to fully understand that. And thats OK, as long as it tastes good, and they enjoy it.

But we are lucky in that there is also room for us to play around with new techniques and incorporate some of those ideas, when they appeal and prove to be practical. That stimulates us, and extends our kitchen and offers our customers a new and interesting option. Some like it, and some don't - and that is the way it will always be.

One of the things I have learnt to appreciate about the cookschool model, is that they give us an opportunity to talk directly about some of the stuff we are working with, in a way that you would never impose on people when they are dining in the restaurant. The cookschools allow us to get into a discussion, which can head of in all sorts of directions, and which I view as enormously healthy and positive. It heightens appreciation  all round, and that has to be a good thing.  Which is why I found this article in the Wall St Journal to be slightly out of kilter to my experience. Cookschools have taught us that people do like to cook at home. In general they aren't scared of technique becos they want to be confident of cooking food that tastes good and they enjoy that process. This article I thought, implied that people today can't be bothered. I don't agree at all.

Our menu is large, deliberately, to appeal to a wide range of palates, becos that is what represents our client base, and for us to go off on one select tangent would represent economic stupidity. Thomas Keller can afford to have different restaurants representing different food styles, but we need to be a little more broad in our approach at Somerset, and that is what our menu  reflects.

so when Rick is working on changes as he currently is, he is bearing all that in mind, sometimes intuitively rather than consciously, and sometimes with me adding my ha'penny worth in the background, and in the process he creates a menu with depth of appeal, and flavours that speak to a wide range of people.
Its good food - food that may appear simple, but which those who come to cookshools know is never quite as simple as it seems on the plate.!

We popped down to Mills Reef today to have a look at some new stretch tents, that were having a demonstration down there, and I've come away with a severe case of grass envy!

Alot of the wedding catering that we do is in marquees, and these are  a new type of stretch marquee which are quite different. As someone near me commented - it looks a bit like the Opera House.  And they were right, in the sense that the vaunted ceilings and lovely feeling of space were quite lovely.

 We have a concert I'm planning here early next year, with an operetta style singer, and it did occur to me that this would make a lovely canopy. Especially if I make sure that the budget stretches to allow Anna Robinson from Silver Bubbles loose to do her thing. That lady could create magic within a space like that...hmmm..

She couldn't however, do much about our grass - which when compared to the spectacular grass at Mills Reef, on what used to be their petanque court, pulled up very poorly by comparison. Linda told me its instant grass - so I told Rick tonite that I wanted some, and he just gave me one of those smiles that he does, when I go off on a tangent, as I'm known to occasionally do.

One day we will have grass, which will be like velvet to walk on, as one of the staff down there described it, but I doubt it will happen before this concert, and thats OK, becos by the time Anna has worked her particular brand of magic, no-one will be looking down, they'll all be oohing and aahing about what's happening on the tables and up above. And thats OK.

I'll get my grass - eventually!

And unlike this - it will be flat and smooth and thick and velvety...

 But in the meantime, I'm OK about the outlook we currently have. Honestly!

Last nite in the restaurant we had a classic example of what is described so well in a speech that I linked to in an earlier blog this week, namely that sometimes people who may cause you grief up front, are not quite what your initial impressions may have led you to believe.

We had a family group in the restaurant, who had arrived, ordered and were drinking predinner drinks, when the father got up, left abruptedly, hopped into his car and headed to the shopping complex accross the road.

I had overheard the grandfather, who typically of deaf people, spoke in a loud voice, comment on our prices ( which are no more expensive than alot of other restaurants around town, but probably sizeably more than the RSA), in a grumbly kind of fashion.

We think our prices are very reasonable for all that we offer - so I guess its inevitable that you react defensively when you hear someone quibble. Albeit my reaction occurred in the background - I whinged at my husband!

So, when we watched this gentlemans car head over in the direction of the supermarket, having overheard the previous comments, we , ( as in Rick and I, who were watching from the bar) immediately leaped to the not unreasonable conclusion that he was going to get some BYO wine. So I sulked. Becos I just can't get my head around people who will come out to a restaurant like ours, realise we have a BYO option when they get there, and choose to get in their car and go to the supermarket to buy a bottle of cheap wine to which we then add a $10 corkage fee, and they save, what exactly.

I have no problem with BYO  -we always have been, and probably always will offer BYO - but what bothers me, is the rudeness that I percieve for people who have sat down and started their evening, to suddenly interrupt proceedings, and leave, purely so they can save a few dollars on a bottle of wine. To me that is rude for your fellow guests - and I just can't see that the money saved warrants that. If price is such an issue for people, you've got to wonder what they're doing at a restaurant like Somerset in the first place.

I would perhaps understand if we had no wines at a cheaper level, but I quite deliberately cover the spectrum of options with the wine list, and have a number of wines at the $30 and $35 price point, which means that by the time they've bought a $15/16 bottle of wine at the supermarket and had a $10 corkage fee added to it, they really aren't saving, what I would consider to be an appreciable amount of money. Certainly not the kind of levels that warrant getting up from the table.

Well thats my opinion anyway! But it does happen - not often, but occasionally, and I'm always made grumpy by other peoples meaness.

So I got grumpy last nite, and used it as an excuse to come back over to the desk at the house to continue working on some stuff, becos I was feeling annoyed about people. Rick rang me in short order when he returned, to point out that he'd brought a camera at the supermarket, not a bottle of wine!

So I laughed - reminded myself that things aren't always quite what they seem, and sometimes we shouldn't leap in the deep end and rush to conclusions, before we have all the facts...

And as it was, I was back over at the restaurant when the table left, and they were delightful, and the older man raved about his meal, and told me he'd be back most definitely, and the guy that I'd thought such nasty things off, explained that they'd forgotten their digital camera and it was their son's birthday and they wanted to capture it - so he'd rushed over to the supermarket to get a disposable camera.

I didn't own up to my initial suspicions, but felt more than a twinge of guilt, that I hadn't read the situation better and offered to get my camera from the house and take some photos and email them thru to them.

Which I could very easily have done. So, touche Anne...lesson learnt!

The annual blitzkeig of media pronouncements on the Significance and Importance of Cuisine Magazines annual Restaurant of the Year competition, is currently doing the rounds. I'm picking  up on it thru a number of different mediums - various papers, the TV ( although I was told about that, I didn't actually see it myself), and various industry emails that I get.

And then today on our way home from the Mount I picked up the weekly  pile of magazines from Mag Addiction, which included the latest Cusine, within which  the winners and the various finalists are announced, together with some modulated opinion by the judges on what they think restaurants in NZ need to work on. ( Yes - that is a snort of irritation you hear in the background!)

There are a number of restaurant awards that restaurants can elect to go in during the year, Cuisine tauts theirs as being the best.

 I quote:

'The Cuisine NZ Restaurant of the Year Awards is the most authoritative national restaurant competition, setting the benchmark in dining excellence, and within the hospitality industry is regarded as the ultimate award.'

Umm...Says who exactly?!

But that form of self promotion is not my beef here, although it is one of the many underlying reasons why Rick and I have deliberately pulled back from entering any form of competition on a national or local basis for a number of years.

We simply aren't competition people. And in stating that fact I am not making any sort of value judgement on those who are. There is simply no doubt that publicity from an award can generate a significant amount of additional business for a restaurant - it can be a very successful form of marketing, and we get it that some people choose to go down that path.

We don't aim to in any way disparage those restaurants that choose to enter awards, and who quite deservingly generate a huge amount of positive publicity as a result of being named a winner. It can however  also create a double edged sword . I've never forgotten the comment of one of the partners in Pierres in Wellington, where Rick used to work,  who told us many years ago, that winning awards generates a whole new type of customers through your door, who arrive with the very literal attitude of ' OK, so you think you're good. Prove it." And woe betide you if they find something to critique.

Grant was adamant that the nice aspect of the increase in turnover, was sometimes undermined by the hassles of people who weren't your normal customer base making life difficult for front of house and kitchen alike.

Logan Brown, who has been named this years winner is a great restaurant - one we visit every time we go to Wellington. We love it, but do we think its better than The French Cafe in Auckland? No, definitly not. And that really gets to the nub of our problem with competitions - any competition that is. How can one great restaurant be said to be better, than another. What are the credentials of the people making such a distinction?

Our reasons for not wanting to go into competitions  are myriad - but not least is the fact that I find the whole notion of 'best' contrived, and artificial. Not to mention completely personal.

We went to a dog show yesterday to watch the brother of our pup and his dad compete, and the judge very obviously liked fluffy breeds rather than the more streamlined ones, and awarded the ribbons accordingly. I happen to think our pooch is the most gorgeous in the whole world, and I would never put him in a lineup with other dogs for someone to tell me otherwise. I'm just not designed to be told by someone else that what I have, or what I do can be held to want by comparison to someone else.

We don't feel any sense of need to be regarded as the best. We are comfortable in our skins with who we are and where we are.  And I suspect that it is longevity that allows us to be like that, and not  feel a need  to indulge in comparisons, becos to be judged the best, you have to be compared to others - and I tend to think that comparisons are odious things.

We eat out at other restaurants not to compare them to us, but to enjoy ourselves. Many years ago we were judges for the Beef and Lamb awards, and we gave it away after a couple of years, becos we genuinely felt uncomfortable about sitting in judgement on other restaurants. It just didn't seem right - but was a very interesting and illuminating experience, all the same.

Somerset Cottage is completely predicated on return business and the goodwill and recommendations  created by our customers,  not by media releases or the published articles of restaurant 'critics'.

 Our customers - those that we see weekly, monthly and yearly -  who come to cookschools, who travel to Europe with us, who've eaten in the restaurant on innumerable occasions  over the years, who have seen our ups and our downs, and with whom we've shared all sorts of lifes experiences... those are the people who matter to Rick and I. And no amount of publicity will ever take away from that simple fact.

We chose not to go in the Cuisine competition for the first couple of years, and then succumbed one year when we got a very direct approach from one of the conveners, and I got caught out and couldn't quite articulate why I didn't want too. So we did - and found the whole experience one we didn't care to repeat, and now when the forms duly arrive each year, I pause, wonder whether I'm cutting of my nose to spite my face ( which I'm all too capable of doing!) and throw them away.

And yet last year, and now again this year, I note that we are included in the list of other ' restaurants worthy of note', at the back of the publication. To a casual reader  it would appear that we entered, didn't quite make the grade, but are being included as still being worthy of a visit.

How nice of them.

Except for the fact that the underlying premise is false. We choose not to go in the competition, and the entire publication is about the competition , but no where does it state that we weren't actually in it.

Which I might add, it does for one of the other restaurants listed in the back, becos the owner is a writer for Cuisine ( and was a judge in previous years) and it clearly states under their listing that they were ineligible to enter the competition.

I wish the magazine had thought to extend a similar courtesy to us and point out under our listing,  that while we didn't go into the competition we were still worth a visit.

The irony is, that I don't doubt that they think they're doing us a favour. The fact that I interprete it as being patronised, doubtless speaks volumes about me. But thats OK - I think I can live with that.

And as a footnote - can I just add that it was my husband who urged me to write this blog. I was inclined to ignore it once again as we did last year, but reading out the comment to Rick in the car on the way home, he said 'Bugger it - you should write a blog." So I have, and I have to say I feel better already!!!

Sometimes I do truly feel that I have a guardian angel, cos when things get a bit frenetic in one aspect of my life, there always seem to magically evolve a balancing somewhere else.

This week has been a bit like that - when there's been lots going on in some aspects of the restaurant, and with 2 longterm front staff finishing, and new ones coming to grips with whats required, it should technically be quite stressful. But the restaurant hasn't been too busy all week  - in fact ironically on a couple of days we did more customers at lunchtime then we did in the evening, which is very unusual for us - but meant that there was no undue pressure-  and was appreciated, even though I don't like the impact that quiet nites have on the bank balance. I haven't had to fly around at quite the rate of knots that I thought I was going to have too. Although tonite is going to be interesting - cos theres only 3 of us on, and normally we have 5 on a Saturday nite - but thats Ok, we will survive.

 By next week we will have started another new person, and while I say it takes at least 3 months for front staff to come fully up to speed, at least we will enough bodies around to cover the basics. I'm feeling good about the new people coming in, so it bodes well.

As mentioned earlier - the new coolstore is now up and operational, and is not only a thing of great beauty, (seriously!), but has made an immediate impact on the stress levels in terms of room and convenience. All the beer and juice has been moved out of my wine chiller - meaning that there is now room to get inside without having to step over boxes. Suddenly theres space! Its glorious! And it means that the beer is being stored at a cooler temperature, which is good I'm told, by those who drink beer, becos I've kept that  chiller at wine friendly temperatures, which are a few degrees warmer than those for beer.

It had been our intention to keep the old chiller, and use it eventually to hang our meat in - but looking at it in its disassembled, shabby state, we have both decided that it is time to move on - and that when we get to the point of needing a meat chiller we will get Tom back to build us a new one. His guys assure us that someone would be delighted to have this for homekill, so rather than having it lying around gathering dust, Ricks decided to see it on its way to a new home.

As is always the way when we make changes at the restaurant - we ooh and aah for the first few days, then somehow slide back into the daily routine, and before we know it, all the changes have just become part of our accepted normality.

I struggle now to remember what out the back of the kitchen door used to look like when we first bought the restaurant - there was a punga fence, on what was then our boundary - and hung between that and the restaurant roof, a very dodgy and grubby taupaulin, and a couple of upright, domestic fridges. I can't remember how long we coped with that, but I do remember the jubilation when we finally got a proper room constructed on that side. It felt like the height of luxery.

And then came the second hand chiller, that worked magically for a couple of years, until we got a wine license, and it rapidly became patently undersized to hold both food and wine, so eventually Tom built us a seperate wine chiller, which was just marvellous, until my wine list got larger and larger, and the boxes of beer and juice and ginger beer and bottled water and water carafes, started cluttering up the space, and getting to some of the bottles of wine in the far corner, became a major feat of balancing..

And now that is suddenly no longer a concern - we can walk in and relish all the empty floor space, becos those boxes have been moved to the big new chiller. Heaven.

But I guarantee that within 2 weeks, human nature being what it is, we will all be completely nonchalant about the change, and will be taking it all totally for granted.

Safari Paints, Gerrand Flooring and Paramount Sheetmetal will be doing their stuff next week - converting the now emptied room to a food prep space, that will allow us to get Somerset at Home up and happening.

We took another major step in that direction by having a day on Tuesday, when most of the photos that will be used on the website shop were taken. An incredibly tiring process for Rick and I becos it is so different to what we normally do - and to a degree you put yourself in the hands of others to interprete on your behalf, and for people who are used to calling the shots, that process can be stressful in itself.

(Props generously lent to us for the day by Kelly at Nest )

The photos I've seen so far on Chris' camera are fantastic, and I'm looking forward to viewing the final product.

In the meantime we now have to turn our attention to the packaging and the labeling, and then the systems behind everything - all of which is starting to come together. Its been quite a process...

The new chiller went operational today. During the cookschool this morning the compressor got installed, and everything fired up and worked.

It is not an exageration to say - it is truly stunning! The kitchen staff cleared out all the old chiller during the afternoon and moved everything over. When I went over to the restaurant tonite, the old one looked forlorn and empty and more than a little careworn . And tiny. The new one is 6 times the capacity of the old - a huge step up, and one that is causing us all some serious glee.

Tomorrow, the old one gets degassed, and then disassembled, and we will then have an empty room to paint and line and install the new freezer, and vacumn packing machine, and heat sealing machine, and benches and shelving - all of which is due to arrive over the next couple of days.

Most exciting!

We probably have the best kitchen team that we have ever had in all our 23 years here. They're a group of great people, who combine really well, all with different skills and strengths, but all of whom give us real depth. I thoroughly enjoy them all.

Helen is the lone female - and has coped as such for all the time she's been in the kitchen. Not becos we've made it that way - we don't have a policy of primarily hiring males, but simply becos its evolved that all the other chefs are male. She started with us on dishes, as most of our chefs have done over the years, about 5 years ago I think, and has worked her way thru polytech and become a fully qualified chef.

Ahead of her on the rungs of senority in the kitchen are Craig and John, both of whom have been cooking mains for a couple of years now, a nd who can run the kitchen in Ricks absence.

There is a hierachy in any kitchen - and chefs usually start of on cold, move to hot entrees and then eventually hit the line and cook mains. Becos Helen has always had these 2 guys ahead of her, she has never got the chance to step up to mains, and all that that entails.

She is very experienced and very good at what she does do, but until someone further up the line decides to leave, an opening doesn't present. Which is one of the problems with a kitchen our size, becos you want to keep extending your good staff, and make sure they are still growing and learning.

Helen flagged a month ago, that she's planning on heading down to Christchurch next year to do a pyschology degree, and we are going to miss her enormously when she goes, becos she's been such a core member of this great team.

I have to confess its given me some real satisfaction, believing as I do that girls can do anything! - to watch Helen have the opportunity to step up to do mains, with Rick at her side, since Craig is currently on annual leave, and John is recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident a couple of weeks back. As chance would have it, she's been presented the opportunity to step into the role. Rick had thought that he would have been doing mains all week, but Helen was at his elbow, keen to give it a go, and its been great to see her bringing it all together.

Its a huge step up - to take on the mains, hard to explain really,  but the balancing act and the timing is no mean feat. Its a buzz to see her doing it!

It can be strange - the things we get excited about in life...

We are slowly but surely bringing together all the multiple strands required to get the "Somerset at Home' concept of the ground.

A big step in that direction is happening at the moment as Tom Mc Cormicks team build us a brand new shiny coolstore. This is a very significant step for my husband and the the kitchen team, cos since forever, they've had to work with a tiny walk in chiller, 1.5msq. We bought it second hand about 20 years ago, so it owes us nothing, but has been way too small for far too long.

Those weeks that we do large outcatering functions combined with busy nites in the restaurant made the jostling for room in the chiller a real mission for all concerned. It was a regular occurrence for me to be heard hollering in indignation on opening my wine chiller to discover trays of food atop bottles of wine. I had to acknowledge however that here were times when the culprits had no choice. ( Not that I'd ever tell them that!)

So a large chiller has been high on the wish list for a very long time, and Rick is currently wandering around the place with a constant grin on his face as he watches it take shape.

This new chiller is going on the outside of the building - we'll access it thru a door in the external wall, and by removing the old one, which currently takes up space internally, we get to create a new prep room, where we'll be able to put the vacumn packer and heat sealing machines, plus more benches.

One day this will all be absorbed by the major cookschool kitchen alterations - but we can't afford to do those at the moment, and this is an interim step which is costing considerably less money, but which will make the kitchens life so much easier, while allowing us to create a further income stream for the business. And the plan is, that that in turn will help pay for the future alterations.

One thing leads to another ... story of our lives really!

Matt, who's just back from a weeks holiday, been shown the dimensions. None of the chefs can quite believe how 'big' it is!

One day this land will all be the new cookschool kitchen and underground cellar, but for now its very cool to be able to use it for this. Going to take that dirt down to my raised garden - a few wheelbarrow loads in that lot...

I have just recieved an email from a lady in Argentina, who is heading to NZ in October and is looking for work, and wondered if we had anything to offer her. The email came in via the website so I assume she's done a google search for restaurants in the area that she's heading too. Her English was impeccable - I wish my Spanish was even a tenth as good -and she says she has experience, but I will shortly send her a declining email, although with an offer to come and have a chat when she gets here, so we can recommend other people we know, if she's still looking for work.

We don't do shortterm staff, mainly becos we haven't needed too. Most of the guys who work with us, both in the kitchen and out front tend to stay for awhile, and I for one enjoy the familiarity that that association gives us. We are however, right in the middle of a changeover in waiting staff - Nicki's just headed back to Christchurch, Holly leaves for America next week, and Katie is finishing her pilots training, and just wants to fly, which means we're starting new guys, and Rhonda, Judy and I are stepping into the breach created until these new ones come up to speed.

Its been a long time since I've done a full nite on the floor, becos we've been carrying the kind of staffing levels that have meant that at some point in the evening I become redundant, have nothing to do, get bored and head for home. For the next little while however, I'll be there along with everyone else, doing what is required, during the various stages of service, right thru to the set up at the end of the nite.

And interestingly that doesn't bother me, becos I enjoy waitressing - I enjoy the people interaction, and I enjoy being busy, so its no hardship. ( And god, I sleep well, after a hard nite on the floor!)

It takes awhile to bring people up to speed with training though, and that is Rhonda's role and she is much better at it than me. I listened to her with Brad last nite - there is comments and advice running at all times, and explanations as to why we do things a particular way. She would have been exhausted at the end of the evening, becos you're having to think twice when you train. Not only are you serving the customers but you're explaining each step to someone as you do it.

The world is full of people who think that waitering is a mere matter of ferrying plates between patrons and kitchen, but we happen to believe that good service is a whole heap more nuanced than that. Some people have it innately - they just have the right personality mix to bring it all together, both on a skill level and on a people level. Those sorts are a dream to train, becos they grasp the point of what we're trying to achieve  and just naturally fit in. Naturally we love it when that happens.

Good waiting isn't easy, becos no 2 nites are ever the same, and when you deal with the public you can never factor in all the variables - you never quite know what you're going to get. For some of our staff over the years, working with us has been a means to fund other studies, and their involvement in the restaurant has been up to a certain point, but as with Katie and Holly, when real life calls, they're ready to move on. And with our blessing. You need all kinds to be part of the team, so as to give flexibility.  Some people like Judy, do it as a second job, but one that offers her light relief by contrast to the seriousness of her full time one, and allows her to indulge in her interest in food and wine. And then we have Rhonda, who like me, sees working out front in the restaurant as a vocation - she has developed a multiple range of skills, and has become a very important mainstay at Somerset.

I like to think she embodies the future of the hospitality industry in NZ, when more people will regard it as a career option, not just something to do on the way to their proper job. I have been waitressing for now, um, 30 odd years, and the body of knowledge that I have built up over that time makes me far better at what it is that I do now, than I was in the early years. And that makes sense - experience is a wonderful teacher.

So, when we make the decision to employ someone, we are always subconsiously looking for people that we hope will be around for awhile, and who will contribute in a positive sense to the team. Too much effort goes into training, to have people leave after a few short months - Rhonda would be constantly running on empty.

And now I have to head over to the restaurant - we have a Sunday morning cookschool about to start and I need a coffee before everyone arrives. We have a number of men coming to this class, and men, for reasons I can't fully explain tend to change the dynamic in the class a little, although in this case I happen to know them all extremely well, so I suspect we're in for a reasonable amount of levity, which will make for a perfectly pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning!

Have made some gnocchi for Rick and I for dinner, and just waiting for the saucepan to come to the boil, so I can cook it...and ended up catching up on some reading, as you do.

This Waiters Rant blog that I'm going to do a link too is one I discovered last year, and dip in and out of occasionally. He became famous in the blogshere for writing searing commentaries about the customers who frequented the restaurant he worked in, in New York. As a result of that he ended up writing a book, and is now doing research on his second one, which is going to be on the subject of tipping.

Reading some of his earlier blogs, I was tempted to launch into my own analysis of why I couldn't understand his justification of the tipping system, but I never quite got round to gathering my thoughts enough, to state my position unequivocably.

This latest blog of his and the subsequent comments makes for really interesting reading, and reassures me that our approach to tipping is the best for our scenario.

In other words - we follow the European system, where we pay a proper wage to our staff, and charge our customers according. Therefore staff are not dependant on the volume of customers they get to generate enough tip income to live off, a system which must contribute to the pressure to turn tables, so as to maximise the opportunity for staff to earn income.

Here - a quiet nite, and resulting drop in  income,  is something that Rick and I wear as the business owners, and it doesn't make any difference to what our staff earn.

We split our tips amongst the entire team - kitchen and front of house - becos we figure they all contribute to making the customers nite enjoyable. In the States, kitchen staff are paid properly, but front staff are paid a minimum wage and then expected to top up, from tips. So their wages are not a business cost. This would seem to cause all sorts of inherent disparities, and I've always wondered why it has been allowed to develope to the degree that it has.

I know our Restaurant Assocation would like to see tipping become more common place in NZ , they make noises to that effect reasonably often, but I think I would be sorry if in doing so, we ended up heading to the extremes of the States.

And I think some of the comments in this blog highlight why that would be a retrogressive step for an industry, that wants to be seen as a postive career path and profession.

Hmmm.....

Been an interesting kind of afternoon...

We had a cookschool this morning, and very pleasant it was too - a number of people who'd come with us on our trips to France and Italy happened to be in the class, which, given we're doing French Bistro Food, led to some interesting discussions, that I always enjoy.

Had come back over to the house to do more accounting work, and Rick had headed out in the car to do some picking up of stuff, when John wandered over and imparted the news that the septic tank appeared to be overflowing.

I don't do septic tanks - even though I've brought 2 daughters up to believe that girls can do anything - there are certain things that I figure, that if you're married, you maybe don't need to feel obligated to get involved with - and the septic tank certainly comes within that gambit for me.

However Rick didn't have the mobile phone on - typical - and it was a Friday afternoon, and we have a reasonably busy restaurant tonite, and if people can't use the loos -well, its going to be kind of tricky, so I made a phone call to Petes Takeaways, and didn't exactly play helpless female, but did say it was an emergency, and was totally blown away when the gentleman on the end of the phone said he'd be there in 15 mins.

For the merest second I considered pulling rank and getting the 2 males in the kitchen prepping to go out and start digging, but my conscience got the better of me, and I headed over to attend to it myself, as you do, when you're husband isn't around when you need him.

Was patting myself on the back at what I'd achieved when the truck pulled up, so was therefore a little taken aback at the temper tantrum that the guy had when he discovered that I hadn't dug out all the dirt as well.

 As I say, I don't usually get involved when the septic needs cleaning...

To give him credit, he got over his temper tantie, very quickly - obviously realising he was dealing with a complete ignoramous, and took over, and I gratefully retreated back to my desk.

I am less precious about the whole excrement business than maybe once I was - but I still didn't really see a need to  hang around. Had stuff over here to get done that the accountant needed, so...

Rick, who finally arrived home, has been over and had a chat, and just told me that it looks like we're going to have to hook up to mains, which are now on our boundary, thanks to the friends who did the subdivision next door,  even though we were hoping to delay until after we'd done the major alterations. Apparently the very expensive grease trap system we put in with the last round of alterations - which I think if I remember correctly, we were required to do becos its eco friendly, does not infact work efficently, and the gentleman from Petes Takeaways is currently having another wee paddy at the stupidity of it all, becos the new system doesn't trap all the fat - instead it slips thru and congeals and settles on top of the septic, blocking any water getting thru.

Fabulous!

Ah well. Shit happens, sometimes a little too literally for my liking.  I am just very grateful that he is here and dealing with it, even though it has ended up more of a process than he anticipated.

I think I'll go and have a shower....

We won!

A worthy boast, becos there was some pretty intense competition on the last nite, and we didn't perform that spectacularly,  but managed to hang on by a slim margin, which, fortuitously is all you need to win!

Rick had gone up to Auckland to pick up Courteney who'd flown in from Australia, and didn't get back until the last 2 wines, providing a boost that we needed by then.

All good fun....

I am just about to head over to the restaurant for dinner service. We're in for a busy Saturday nite, which is good, becos the start to the week was very quiet, and its always somewhat of a relief when the weekend sales pull the weekly total up.

I am in a much calmer, happier frame of mind, then  I was this time 23 years ago, when we opened the restaurant - 4 July 1986. It was a Friday and we did lunch and dinner - and the lunch service was one of the worst experiences of my life. I have said often that I can distinctly remember standing in the middle of the restaurant consciously wishing myself back in Wellington, from where we had come 4 days previously to take over the business.

My parents who were our business partners, arrived in the middle of service and got thrown into duties straight away becos we were running around like scalded cats. The staff we had inherited  were not enough to cope with an extremely busy lunch.

After it was all over - in its shambolic, horrible state, Rick and I went for a long cool off wander to the orchard down below, and figured that it had to be all uphill from here, becos it certainly couldn't get any worse. He took himself of to Gilmours to buy some pots and pans, becos one of the things he discovered in the middle of the lunch was that the kitchen was woefully inadequately equipped with that sort of thing. Previous cooking had been centered around the microwave, not pan work.

And we limited bookings for dinner that nite and the next 2 nites, until we felt that we had systems in place and everyone was more comfortable with what they had to do.

I can still remember some of the people that came in over those first couple of days, and I'm relieved to be able to report that some of them are customers still.

There were lots and lots of things about the restaurant we bought that we wanted to change - the physical appearance, the lighting ( gingham lampshades just weren't my thing!), the cutlery, the glassware, the crockery, and everything about the kitchen - but we had to start on a shoe string, and with what we had.

It looked like this....

And we looked like this:

Rick had worked at The Coachman in Wellington, where the chefs attire was reasonably formal becos the chefs worked out in front of the customers, so he persevered with the chefs hat for a few months at Somerset, and then decided to jettison it, becos it wasn't really his style. A stylist who tried to get him to wear one for a photo shoot a few years back was told in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to happen!

This photo was taken a few years later, must be early 1990, becos thats Hannah in the carseat, while Rick preps, and my father and mother do stuff in the background.

The kitchen lacked any commercial equipment, beyond the stand of 4 gas rings that we brought up from Wgtn with us, becos Rick insisted he needed gas for pan work.

The first alterations we ever did, were to upgrade those facilities somewhat.  Theres been alot more money spent on it since, and we're about to make some further changes, so its all an ongoing process, for which I doubt there will ever be an end point.

I spent a good part of this afternoon going thru old photos so I could find some of the restaurant as it was back then, and digging back down thru history has an interesting effect on me.

People see owning a restaurant as a fun thing to do, almost glamourous. I can attest to the fact that  that is far from the truth. Those early years were sheer, unremitting  hard work,  with the added layer of stress from significant financial pressure. I find it very hard to look back with any affection.

And yet now, we're in the position of doing something we love, something that has got conspicuously easier as the years have gone by, and we simply can't imagine doing anything else.

What the business is now, is vastly different to back then - everything is bigger and more complicated:

-our menu over those first few years was very small, about 5 entrees, 5 mains, and 5 desserts. It is considerably longer now, and each individual dish involves significant amounts of prep work. We have 4 chefs on a shift prepping through the day, to make everything - the butter, stocks, icecream, bread,  all from scratch. We strongly believe that that makes what we produce unique to us, and we like that thought.

-we were BYO only when we opened - but now have a license and a reasonable sized wine list, that requires alot of attention. Wine is a big part of the business now, as it should be. We put alot of care into our glassware, and how we serve the wines we sell, and also into our ongoing education.

-Cookschools started back in about 1997 I think, and are now a substantial contributor to turnover. They demand alot of Ricks and my time, and are an aspect of the business that we really enjoy. Back in 1986, there simply wouldn't have been enough free time in the day to do them, becos our staffing levels were by financial necessity very low, and we were at the restaurant from first thing in the morning to, literally last thing at nite.

-Catering has grown into a substantial side business, and has required a whole seperate array of equipment and staff.

But we also have alot more people around us to share the load with, so ironically, Rick and I probably work less hours now than we used too, even though the turnover is 5 times what is was back then.

And one of the things I love about it  all is that we're not done yet. There are still dreams and schemes and things we're planning on doing, which will extend the business yet further. One of which - Somerset at Home- is about to kick in over the next 4-6 weeks.

No time to get bored, and thats a good thing, I figure!

Our dining room  at home, currently resembles a bike shop as Rick and Courteney get organised for her trip to Australia - bike bags, wheel bags, rollers and all sorts of assorted screws and bits and pieces are awaiting being packed. They'll drive up to Auckland soon and stay overnite near to the airport, so she gets a good nites sleep before leaving in the early morning, and Rick will head for home, hopefully getting back in time to get the kitchen organised before the start of the cookschool at 10am.

 Courteney needs to talk and discuss, and challenge every little step of the way, so its a prolonged and very vocal process. I'm not quite sure how she copes in Australia without her father on hand to do her bidding! Trying to keep within the weight parameters with packing is causing alot of discussion currently... and I have noted that she's a lot more focused on keeping things as light as possible now she knows that the charge for excess luggage will be coming out of her bank account, rather than ours.

She'll be racing in 2 Tours, one in  Canberra and one in Adelaide, as part of the NZ U19 squad - a big challenge for her that she's very excited about. The local cycling club have fund raised for her, for this trip - and their generosity and enthusiasm for Courteney, has meant a huge amount to Rick and I.  There's alot of people out there who feel they have a vested interest in how she goes, and rather than feeling that as a weight, I think she's using it as a spur to dig deep. And from our perspective theres nothing quite like seeing one of your children decked out in NZ colours to make the heart swell pretty significantly...I'm sorry I'm going to miss the spectacle of them all at the airport tomorrow morning.

We had the second in the current series of Wine Options last nite - and I'm including the picture below of the current score board totals, purely becos we are currently top team,  and I have a nasty feeling that our hold on that position might be a little tenuous! Its been a number of years since we've featured in the top places ( not that we're competitive!), so we rather enjoying our short burst in the sunlight, while we can. Although I am trying really hard not to crow! Doug initially sent me thru the photo at the end of the first week, when their team was beating us by .70  of a point, but he's finally relinquished the one he knew I wanted - which I think is a far better look!

Good friends of ours, the Leighs and Gerrands started Wine Options back in June 1997, and Brenda dug thru her notes to inform me that the first wine, back then, was a 92 Grove Mill Lansdowne Chardonnay.

The format has changed over the years, and now the 8 teams all bring a wine, for which they've devised 5 multichoice questions, and we get to try the wines one by one, in teams, and answer the questions, which cover the obvious, ie

'What grape type is this?

a. Chardonnay
b. Viognier
c. Pinot Gris

 through to some other rather more escoteric ones.

All intended to be good fun, and I have to say it is. I find the process fascinating, becos you are trying wines with absolutely no idea of what it can be - although sometimes we do focus rather too much on what the various people are most likely to have brought- and are therefore reliant on your palate and nose and wine memory, or, as sometimes happens, pure guess work. You can be right, absolutely spot on, and you can be horribly and utterly wrong. There is no room for big egos, and I've also learnt to avoid saying ' this is definitly a...' becos you have a reasonable chance of being 100% incorrect. And then looking like a total prat.

Wine is such a huge field, and I have a tendency to get in my comfort zone and stay drinking only the styles of wine that I like, so its good to be challenged occasionally, and to try things that I wouldn't normally in the ordinary course of events - all becomes useful gist for me when I'm working on the restaurant wine list.

We have the Dog Point Winemakers dinner here next Thursday - and will sit down probably tomorrow nite when Rick gets back from Auckland, and try the wines and then start compiling food matches that we think are going to work with them. They are extremely elegant wines, so we want the food to complement rather than challenge the flavours of the wines, and that will take a bit of fine tuning.

Whereas with Wine Options, we do a very simple dinner for everyone, once the questions are over and the scores are tallyed - the tables all get joined up, and people open other wine they've bought, and we help ourselves to large platters of food - fish pie last nite, followed by sticky toffee pudding - lots of starch to soak up the alcohol!
Easy, nice and satisfying. A bit like the nite in general really.

Well 2 quiet nites actually. I knew when I cleared the answerphone after being closed Monday, and we only had 3 messages that it didn't bode well for the week.

You can kind of get a feeling for how things are going to go depending on the level of bookings, and by lunchtime yest we only had one booking for last nite and one for tonite. The rest of the week was looking a bit better thank god...
Is it this icy cold snap thats come thru? Is it becos the hyperbole around swine flu is making everyone wary of being in a public place and catching some thing contagious? I don't think so. Regardless of all the extravagant claims in the media I really find it hard to believe that people would be modifying their behaviour to that degree, at this point.

I've worked the restaurant with Nicki tonite - and actually enjoyed the pace. We picked up a few more bookings and then had 3 casuals during the nite, ie. tables that walk in without a booking, which tonite just wasn't a problem. The heatings been on all day, and Rhonda pulled the curtains before she went home in the afternoon, so the restaurant was warm and toasty. I swear my toes got frostbite though when I walked over from the house. It is so very cold out there.

Times like this I am extremely grateful for our beautiful, heavy curtains, that take all the glass chill away from the windows.

And nites like this can be rather enjoyable - once I get beyond the notion that no-one loves us anymore. The tempo in the restaurant is different - and sometimes that variation can be stimulating, just by sheer virtue of the change.

 Ricks been working on a number of recipes - for Diane Ponzio's lunch on Sunday; the cookschool series which starts next week, wine options which begin on Monday nite; and the Dog Point dinner that we have in a couple of weeks - so he's been doing lots of reading and giving recipes to the guys in the kitchen to trial - there's time in the day for that when nites aren't as busy as normal, and its an important part of research for the restaurant.


The pace slows down, and you get some contemplative time, which once I've adjusted to it, can actually be rather refreshing. And today its been very useful, becos I've been on puppy babysitting duties - being around as our little boy gets to socialise with the 2 older dogs and discovers that the rules have changed from when he froliced with his siblings. The hierachy is different now, and his performance as an energiser bunny is met with some disdain by the older dogs. But they're sorting it. He's also having to learn the house rules, and I'd forgotten just how much attention they demand, when they're inside.

He is, however, no longer sleeping in his kennel...

So - quiet nites do not have a positive impact on the bank balance, and that is one aspect that always makes me wince. But I also figure that since you can't do much about it, you may as well focus on the positives, and enjoy the space to consider other stuff.

And that for me now means curling up with John Thornes book about intuitive cooking...

When we bought the restaurant back in 1986,  it looked like this,

There was a small gravel courtyard to the rear (with that nasty grey gravel, and nasty plastic chairs and tables that I refused to use - I can't remember what happened to them, but I know I am always bemused to see in photos of otherwise very cute French cafes in rural villages in France the ubiquitous ugly plastic chairs! ), and surrounding the area were large banana palms, that gradually become bedraggled and ugly as the frosts and winds got to them. They also had the added disadvantage of attracting mosquitos to the pools of stagnant water that formed where the enormous leaves connected with the trunks, so after a couple of years we pulled them out.

We're very adapt however at throwing weeding debris over the bank at the edge of the courtyard, and I suspect that as a result of that habit, we've had self sown banana trees crop up down in the gully. Prominant enough to attract alot of comment-especially from overseas visitors who think they're some sort of NZ speciality. We have a bush full of glorious NZ natives, which I point out to these people, but sometimes they take some convincing that the bananas are a recent addition.

 Right at the moment there's a veritable miniforestation of them, and I took a photo one afternoon when I'd parked in the restaurant carpark and was walking over to the house, and was stopped in my tracks by the way the light was shining on them. Quite lovely.

They're not fruiting ones - we were given some of those by friends, years ago, but they never developed any fruit. I suspect the climatic conditions just weren't conducive to it developing, but we haven't minded their presence a little further away from the seated area, just becos of their visual impact.

Last nite the guys tried out a recipe, as a special for the nite, that Rick had seen in Bruce Aidalls,  Complete Pork Cooking,   where a shoulder of pork is wrapped in banana leaves and slow roasted. We're continuing to get whole carcasses from Free Range Farm, and are been made to come up with interesting ways of using the meat, which is making us cast our net wide. Not a bad process at all really.

Not sure who clambered down the bank to pick the leaves - but when I got to see the pork it had been tied in to neat bundles and roasted for about 4/5 hours. The meat was beautifully tender, and ever so slightly perfumed. A simple, lovely way of eating this magnificent pork. I bought some of the crispy end pieces back over to the house to munch on as I got the puppies supper ready. Just what I needed at the end of a Saturday nite that hadn't been busy becos the bloody All Blacks were playing at 7.30pm. We had our Saturday nite on Friday nite - when everyone decided to come out, so they could be home in front of the TV on Saturday. Hopeless really!
But tonite, Sunday nite, is looking pleasantly busy also, for this time of year, and I suspect that is  also related to the fact people didn't eat out last nite, which is the traditionally busy nite of the week. Ah well maybe things will average out respectably over the week anyway...

One of the unforseen and positive outcomes of having a litter of puppies, is that our day starts significantly earlier then we are used too (  a chorus of concentrated hungry yelping is impossible to sleep thru), and it means that I have usually done more by 10am than I've ever been known for. Remarkable really!

Whether the enthusiasm for this burst of early morning activities will survive the eventual departure of the puppies remains to be seen! Human babies, way back when, didn't convert my body clock, and I'm not totally sure that canine ones will have a longterm impact on its default position either. After a lifetime of working late at nite, I've never been one to be too enthusiastic about early mornings...

But the feeling of virtuosity at having achieved so much, so early in the day, can't be denyed. I'm especially smug right now, cos I've even managed to convince myself to sit down at my desk and deal with 2 jobs that have been hovering around, as I procrastinate over confronting them. Done and dusted and its not even 10am!

One of those jobs was a carefully worded email to lawyers in Auckland from whom I recieved, what I think could adequately be described as a threatening letter last week demanding payment of the Phonographic Performances NZ Licence.

Becos Somerset is a business, and therefore a 'non domestic' environment, which is accessible to the public, we are required by law ( The Copyright Act), to pay an annual fee of $150 for the the priviledge of playing recorded music. Music that I have paid full retail price for the CDs. Its not just restaurants or cafes caught under the requirement, its any business  that plays recorded music where the public can hear it, ( even music on phones).

I think its totally absurd, which is why I've ignored the letters demanding payment up until this point. Its revenue collection at its worst. They say they represent the people who make the CDS, and who are therefore entitled to recompense when the music is played to the public. I say they were recompensed when I made the decision to buy certain CDs.

I'd love to know what makes music such a special case. We purchase art works and have them sitting in a 'non domestic'environment where they are viewed by the public. Should I be paying an ongoing annual fee to the people who created  those works for the priviledge of doing so? Of course not.

We sell recipes via our cookschools, some of which we know go on to be used by other commercial operations. Should those people be paying us a fee for Copyright use? That would be absurd.

So I'm curious as to what makes music in particular different to other forms of creative activity, and I have to say the whole thing irritates me in the extreme, in no small part becos I believe its a rort, and I have no choice really but to swallow it and pay up.
I did contemplate playing no music in the restaurant - but my mother used to have an expression for that kind of kneejerk reaction, 'cutting of your nose to spite your face', I believe it was!

I did also consider digging in and fighting it on the grounds of principle,  even though they inform me that failure to comply could lead to fines of up to $150,000 or 5 years imprisonment ( I kid you not!), but as a very wise man pointed out to me in the restaurant the other nite, standing on principle is all very fine and dandy, but it always ends up being a drawout expensive process. And do I really want to drag that around with me. The hard cold reality is that I don't have the money or inclination for it - so a whinge in here is going to have to suffice.

Instead, I'll pay up, begrudgingly, and with ill grace, but sometimes thats what you have to do.

I feel very proud of the restaurant tonite. Its about 9.30pm and I've come back over to the house to feed our mother pooch who is putting so much into feeding her pups,  that she needs regular top ups of calories,  just to keep going. As it is,  she looked postively wilted in the whelping box when I got over, and has now had some meat and milk and a walk in the fresh air, and is currently surveying her brood from the beanbag, where they can't get to her. She needs a break from their incessant demands. I understand that!

I am proud of the restaurant on 2 levels - becos it has a particularly nice hum about it tonite. We are doing big numbers and the staff are busy, but it doesn't feel frenetic becos efforts have been made to space bookings, and customers in the main have responded well to that. One table didn't. They objected on the phone when they were asked to come half an hour earlier than the time they wanted, becos we already had a number of tables arriving at that time - but said with ill grace that they would. But they haven't - they've turned up at 7.30 with 5 other tables, becos they see it as their right to do so. What can you say? Most people these days understand when we explain that we try to space customers for the customers benefit, and most people are perfectly happy to be amenable. But occasionally there is one, who thinks it is completely in for a dig to be asked to alter their plans, however marginally,  for the greater good. What fascinates me personally about these people is that they don't seem to be able to grasp the very simple truth, that if they are pleasant then we will be pleasant in return. If they're rude, we can't exactly afford the luxery of being rude in return, but we can certainly withdraw, and are much less inclined to go out of our way. We are human after all...

The other reason that I'm proud of the restaurant is that I am effectively surplus tonite, and Rhonda and the team of Judy, Katie, Holly and Nicki have got the front of house moving smoothly. I've chatted to the people I know well, done a few trays of glasses, and stepped in in a couple of places when gaps emerged, but basically I wasn't needed, and I have to see that as a positive. We're going to loose Holly and Nicki over the next 2 months - Holly's heading for an amazing rowing scholarship at an American University, and Nicki's following her heart back down to Christchurch, so my time to work the tables is going to reemerge. For so many years I needed and had to be there, whenever the restaurant was open, and that becomes a major milestone around the neck after awhile, and I'm sure is why so many people burn out in this trade. To be able to see the restaurant humming with big numbers and to know that it doesn't need me to make it happen, is a liberating feeling.

 I do however have an exceptional person in Rhonda, who manages things in a superb manner - and the team we have around us at the moment is the best we've ever had I think. They're nice people who enjoy what they're doing - and that feeds thru to everyone. We ate at a good restaurant in Auckland recently - well at least it is a restaurant that is getting alot of rave reviews, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what was not jelling with me, until I realised that the staff were miserable. No one was enjoying themselves - and the interaction between the kitchen and the front of house which you could see thru the open kitchen was non existant. That gloominess was pervasive, and I thought that was fascinating.
Tables in a busy restaurant tend to be little islands unto themselves, intent on their own conversation, and maybe I picked up on the general ambience there,  just cos I tend to be looking around more than the average client, but certainly I found their overly serious faces and abrupt communication between each other, had a depressing effect on me. All interesting...

I am sure there are people who come to Somerset who wish I would be a bit quieter on occasion - maybe they would prefer a less ebullient style of service, so the moral really I guess, is, as a very wise man who sends me many pearls of wisdom when I need them, said in a recent email: ' you can please some of the people some of the time, you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time'. Touche.

I had a purpose to this rant when I started - but I've kind of gone off subject just a titch! Think I'll go and cuddle a puppy...

One of the unexpected, positive side effects of the cookschools, has been the amount that Rick and I have learnt from people who come to the classes. We've seen a hugely varied group of people over the years that we've been doing the classes - all of whom have done different things in their lives, and some of whom can unexpectedly be experts on subjects that we occasionally riff on. That means that we get to learn even as we are teaching - which I've always seen as a real bonus.
I tend to get excited about whatever my next great new idea is, quite regularly, and often discuss it during the classes, and as a result get all sorts of feedback. More often than not though, I'm usually humbled by the awareness, that something that is new and exciting in my life, may be something that other people have been quietly going about in their lives for aeons.  So I shut up, take a step back and listen - and usually learn in the process...

Ever since we bought this property from my father I've been wanting to extend the gardens considerably - but time and money and expertise have always been limiting factors. We did plant a number of various citrus trees in our first year, and got totally disheartened by the destruction that the pukekos caused. But a reasonable number of trees have survived, and I no longer feel any guilt at all when our dogs deal to pukekos. But there is a whole heap more we could be doing,  and sometimes the thought of how enormous it is, ends up being limiting becos I can't quite decide where to start.

We have an enclosure in the orchard below where we experimented with keeping pigs - all interesting, but not one we are in a rush to repeat. The daily committment of feeding, in amongst everything else we do in a day, felt like too much. But the fencing built for them has given us a dog free area which I've had designs on for a vegetable garden for awhile. My initial efforts weren't a resounding success - and like most things in life I decided I'd be much more successful if we went  back to the basics - good soil. So earlier this year we installed a  compost heap -  whichin typical 'me' style, I'd prevaricated over  for some time, over complicating what essentially should be very simple. A pile of decomposing food scraps. Have managed that with the house stuff, and have been wanting for some time to start  on the restaurant food waste, but volumes there,  are conspicuously bigger and I wasn't quite sure where to begin. So it was a good idea thats been sitting in the 'too hard for now' file.  I'd tried a worm farm a few years back,  for the house- bought a plastic layered job,  but that hadn't worked. 

One of our good customers is a worm expert having run a huge commercial operation - so he got quizzed the other nite when he was in, and dropt me round some coconut fibre the next day to use. Just what I needed to give me the impetus to get all fired up - so Rick started digging...
Becos of the volume of waste that we produce at the restaurant I'd suspected that farming worms in the ground was going to be better than the old bath style containers that lots of people use - and that is what we've started this week.

Some wonderful ladies who come to the cookschools, got us started with our first load of worms, but we realised quickly that they weren't going to be enough to break down the kind of volume that we needed, so I went to a commercial operation and bought 10 kilos as you do. My husband was heard to mutter in the background, that they were more expensive than whitebait! - but hopefully if we get everything right and they thrive, they will more than pay their way. And more importantly, it just feels like the right thing to be doing. I love the concept of leftover food not being wasted, but instead going down to feed the worms, who will in time produce a vermicast that we will use to feed our fruit trees and vegetables.  I love the circularity of that notion- it has a symmetry that appeals.

However being us - we're currently agonising over whether we're doing things correctly, and the worms are inspected each morning when we take down the container of slops to see whether they're happy and eating and doing their thing.
Do we lie the food on top of them, or do we put it next to them?- will it go stagnant if they don't eat it soon enough? so should we be making sure that its broken down into more 'worm' size bites?

We start the next cookschool series next week, so I have this opportunity handed to me on a plate to quizz people who know more about these things than us. Perfect really!

We've just been watching Gordon Ramsay on TV ,even though I'm distinctly off him since the revelations about his female on the side - and even though I was never particulary impressed by the American series where he goes into restaurants that are struggling. It all just felt a bit too much contrived for me.
However, what we've watched tonite is him going back to some of those restaurants, a year later, to see how they've progressed and whether they've held onto the changes he instigated. Its been heartwarming, I have to concede, to see the turnaround in the attitudes and the lives of these people, some of which are literally transformed.

Running a successful restaurant is something we aspire too, but quite how you define what makes a restaurant work, is something I think I'd struggle to quantify succinctly.  By happy coincidence I've just read a fantastic synopsis of exactly that, in the latest edition of Saveur ( April 2009 - Dining in America). It goes like this:

'Restaurants succeed for all sorts of reasons. Some are funded by investors with deep pockets. Others have the backing of a luxery hotel group. Still others come with a brand-name chef attached to them. Such restaurants usually have a well-tailored culinary theme. They have a public-relations strategy. They have a business plan.
Then there are the places that grow and thrive because, well, it's in the stars. They're in the right place at the right time. They're tenacious. They labour under the steadfast belief that every customer and every dish counts. And they draw their energy not from publicity but from the community around them."

So very, very true...

Saveur is one of my favourite food magazines ( and I read alot in a month!). Its written intelligently and is centered around ethnicity rather than mere fashion in food, and I much prefer the deferentiation.

It is hot!  Not as hot as in Australia admittedly, but nonetheless, hot by our standards.
In the old kitchen, here at the restaurant, our heat extraction used to be totally inefficent, and the temperature in there used to soar over summer, as evening service progressed and the ovens pumped out heat. David, one of our previous chefs, was over six feet tall, and by the end of the nite, his head used to disappear into a fugue of hot muggy air. We all suffered, but he especially so cos he was up higher! When we did the alterations we put in new, state of the art, heat extraction that has been so incredibly efficient by contrast,  that over winter its been known for people to comment that it feels cold. Something that would have once been completely inconcievable.
The young guys who now work in the kitchen have no idea how lucky they are, but it is amazing how quickly you adjust and adapt to the new and take it for granted. Every so often I pull myself up short, and just remember how bad it used to be. And feel very glad that we've moved on from that stage. We were in a restaurant recently that had a wood fired oven in the kitchen, and I watched the chefs with considerable empathy.

Likewise out front in the restaurant, we realised that first summer after completing the alterations that we had a major problem and were going to have to put airconditioning in, even though I'd long resisted the concept. But we had a couple of weeks over that summer when the air in the restaurant was so hot and oppressive that people just kind of melted at the tables. Not a good look for a restaurant that wants people to feel comfortable and settle in for the evening.  I'm the sort of person  though, who likes to be able to throw open doors and windows inviting fresh air in, so it took me awhile to move on from my somewhat recalicatrant position, becos one of the downsides of aircon from my perspective was that you had to close up things for it to be efficient. But I've adjusted and adapted, and am intently thankful for its efficency now, I have to say.

The other thing we had to do subsequent to finishing the alterations was to install blinds over the front windows, becos when the shelter belts were cut down across the road,  the evening sun sinking on the horizon, started shining unimpeded into the restaurant right at eye level, between about 6.30 and 7.30pm. That didn't create quite the right ambience either, so we now have these fantastic awnings that the boys in the kitchen wind down across the front of the restaurant during the afternoon, and the impact  doing that has on temperature is quite considerable, as they deflect the sun away from the interior. One of the things that intrigued me in France was the habit in the afternoon, that we noticed as we drove thru small villages,  for people to retreat indoors and to pull their shutters closed. I had always assumed those shutters were there for warmth in the old buildings over cold weather.  It never occured to me that pulling them shut on the sun would cool down the interior.   As a Kiwi, who thrives on indoor/outdoor flow, and lots of glass and fresh air,  I thought it a rather strange concept to retreat and  close things up so as to cool them down. But I think I understand a little more now...

We have a private lunch in the restaurant today - and its a stinking hot day. I came over earlier this morning to stock the wine chillers and resisted the temptation to open the windows, instead turning on the aircon and keeping everything closed, which means that when the guests arrived it felt pleasantly cool to walk into the restaurant. They have however, spent the first hour outside and on entering the restaurant one of those female types that I always find especially abrasive, has gone around opening windows. When it was suggested to her that things would actually get cooler if we closed those windows again to give the aircon a chance, becos the air is hotter outside than it is inside,  she sat down with barely concealed ill grace, and on my last 2 sweeps by the table I've been regarded extremely balefully,  as she frantically fans herself with her menu. I don't think I'm going to win there!

One of the other beneficial side effects of aircon that I hadn't anticipated is that in keeping the doors and windows closed at nite, we keep out flying bugs, something that I always thought were an unavoidable part of summer dining. But we've diminished their presence quite significantly. Haven't cancelled them out totally becos thats not possible, which is why I always get somewhat bemused at the extreme reaction you can get from some people at the sight of the occasional fly or insect. Having said that though, we did have one bizarre evening shortly after we reopened this year, when we hadn't got back into the habit of shutting everything up in the afternoon to get the temperature down, and guests had opened windows on their arrival which had stayed open during the evening,  and for reasons I don't fully understand the chandelier above table 16  late in the evening attracted what constituted a  swarm of flying beetles, and the gentlemen sitting around the table were understandably somewhat perturbed  by what amounted to a veritable bombardment. Not nice. But shutting the windows at nite has meant we haven't had a repeat, I'm pleased to say.

I remember an afternoon wedding we did here years ago for friends, a small intimate garden affair, that nearly dramatically came unstuck, when a swarm of bees starting arriving prior to the guests. I've never seen a swarm of bees flying before, and watched incredulously as individual bees starting bombarding the windows in increasing numbers and intensity, and we realised we were watching a hive population move. They eventually alighted into a bush in the then front garden - funnelling down like a tornedo, and we might have got away with leaving them there, but I was so worried that if they got inadvertently disturbed then we would end up with thousands of angry bees buzzing around unprotected guests, and that didn't bear thinking about. So some frantic phone calls were made, and this wonderful man came and removed them, while the wedding ceremony was happening.

We did a country wedding recently in a large marquee in a field, surrounded by dairy farms, and where you get cows you get cow dung. And guess what cow dung attracts? Flies- lots and lots of flies. Hoards of the bloody things actually! It was a useful reminder for me that the compost heap that I've started is better positioned down in the paddock rather than up close to the restaurant as I'd orginally intended. I happen to believe that some people get extreme in their belief that the natural environment should be totally and utterly sterile, but by the same token it would have been a little  silly to have placed something close to the restaurant that would have been such an obvious fly magnet.
And as it is, the dogs and I enjoy our occasional wanders down below to dispose of the scraps, and that more than compensates for the inconvenience of having it a reasonable distance away...
Time to make coffees for the group...

I am just about to head over to the restaurant for evening service  - and becos we're not too busy tonite,  will probably only stay for awhile, before I leave things to Rhonda. We have a large catering job in Opito Bay tomorrow, and I have to get my head around the stuff I need to take, becos its a 3 hour or so drive to get there, and therefore not possible to pop back and grab something I've forgotten! Lists, lists and more lists!

We had some changes to the menu come on last nite, and changes to the menu always create a bit of a disconnect, becos of the difference they make to our normal routine. The kitchen staff have to prep differently, and the front staff have to learn to explain the changes. Seasonal changes to ingredients though, mean that its a neat time of the year to be coming up with new ideas - stonefruit, corn, tomatoes, watermelon. Yum. My breakfast at the moment, comprises plums that I pick from the tree outside our bedroom, together with peaches from the tree next to the restaurant, and nashi and passionfruit from the orchard down below - a bowl of sunshine mixed with Canaan yoghurt. Helps make the daily dose of depression in the morning newspaper more palatable!

A new menu always means a degree of uncertainty in terms of how the new dishes will be recieved.  We can never predict what is going to be popular and what isn't - and ideally what Rick is looking for always, is balance in ordering. He wants to see a reasonable cross section of dishes being chosen, not just one or two, and he works hard to effect that appeal. We hate running out of something, and it constantly amazes me how he manages to avoid that happening. We never know prior to any service what we are going to sell the most off, and it varies from nite to nite. The only time we ever get caught out, and it happens every year, is on that first unexpectedly chilly nite at the approach of winter, when suddenly  everyone decides they need lamb shanks, and they're not something you can suddenly whip up out of thin air.

I don't like over stating food descriptions on the menu - for someone who's normally reasonably verbose, I like keeping the menu descriptions succinct. I'd rather understate and over deliver. But how you word things can make a difference to what people choose to order, and we've discovered over the years that sometimes just tweaking the wording rather than the dish itself, can increase the ordering. We have a tomato soup on  now. A beautiful tomato soup thats made from sunripened tomatoes that have been skinned and deseeded, with basil from our garden, and  then pureed to be smooth and creamy and delicous. But you don't say that on the menu - you call it 'tomato soup', and hope that people will trust the kitchen enough to know that, while  tomato soup may be somewhat ubiquitous - a soup made properly, from seasonal tomatoes, is going to have a flavour profile that elevates it into something special. Its a connundrum we often debate. If food appears too simple, then people may not get the care and attention thats gone into it, but by the same token we don't want to make things complicated purely for the sake of making them so. That seems pointless to us.

I have however instigated something I've been wanting to do for awhile with the soup. Its presented at the table initially as just an arancini ( risotto ball), and then the soup itself is poured around the ball by the waitstaff in front of the customer. A little bit of theatre. That accomplishes nothing beyond being exactly that. I was trained at Bonapartes, many years ago, in Auckland, where we used to do a lot of table cooking in the European style - whole crayfish tails, peppersteaks, crepes suzettes. I was young and totally inexperienced, and it was that niaivity in retrospect that got me thru. I didn't know enough to know what I didn't know, so I'd just soldier on, and as long as you put enough alcohol in to create the requisite burst of flame, people were impressed. We had trolleys - girdion trolleys I think they were called, that I'd dearly love to have now, but reps look at me strangely when I try and explain them. I see them in European magazines though, so I know they're still out there, and maybe one day we'll be able to import a couple.

Pitching service right in a restaurant is never easy, in the sense that different people require different things from the wait staff. Some would be happy if you stood and chatted all nite, while others see every approach to the table as an irritating intrusion on their conversation. Good service learns to differentiate and give people what they want. Knowing how to take an order so that when the food goes out to the table you don't have to ask who ordered what; and being able to clear plates onto your arm rather than stacking them haphardly on the table are 2 basic skills that all waitstaff should be able to do. But its also nice to be able to introduce other little touches that create a special factor, without any corresponding degree of starchiness, and that is what I'm aiming to do with the soup. We'll see how it goes...

This party in Opito tom is the start of a weekend affair that we are supposed to be staying on for, but can't, becos Rhonda's away on holiday from Saturday, and Courteney has track racing in Taupo, and we have a private lunch at the restaurant on Sunday - all of which has conspired to mean we'll be driving back. As you do. Haven't quite plucked up the courage to tell the hostess that yet, becos she won't be happy with us, but hopefully we'll be forgiven!
Its our wedding anniversary on Sunday - 23 years - and becos Rhondas away, I'll be working, so to celebrate I suspect the evening will finish with a bottle of bubbly on the deck at home, lit by the lantern, that the bride and groom from the wedding we did last weekend, dropt in on their way back to Wgtn yesterday. Its homemade, and quirky and gorgeous - just like them, and I can't think of a nicer way of celebrating 23 very full years!

We did our first big outcatering function for the year on Saturday nite. For reasons I don't fully understand all the catering jobs for this season are large - most of them well over 100 people. This one was extra large becos  the degree of organisation that went into it, was significant. I'd enlisted Anna Robertsons help, since converting a hanger into an appropriate venue for a black tie event, was  going to be well beyond my range of capabilites. Especially becos we had the added complication of the client booking a major band who were going to need better acoustics and lighting than you would normally encounter in a hanger.
Anna worked her magic, as she is seriously proficient at doing, and she enlisted the guys from Baycourt to take care of all the sound and lighting issues - and they were truly awesome. And confirmed for me in the process, how important it is to get experts in to do stuff. Their degree of knowledge and experience in their particular field, means that they anticipate all kinds of stuff that I'd never have thought of in advance. Plus they've made the investment in the appropriate equipment, so they do what they do really well, and in the process remove a huge amount of angst from our shoulders. ( And there was quite enough of that weighing me down as it was!)

Outcatering at this magnitude is a serious amount of work; from the  organisation in advance; the food prep; the lugging of stuff to and from the venue;  the need to be flexible becos numbers and timing never go as pre-organised; and  the requirement of lasting the distance, which can mean waiting until the last person has driven off in a taxi, and we've cleared all the glassware and tables and chairs of the carpet which is going to be uplifted at 9am the next morning. I think we departed at about 2.30 am. As you do.
They're hard work, physically and mentally, and I'm in awe of those companies who cater multiple functions in a week. I'm not sure I could do it with that kind of consistency - I always need a few days to recover!

Setting up stage...

Stage/sound and lighting...

You need to be exceedingly versatile when it comes to kitchen facilities. Preciousness doesn't work at times like this!

Final preparations happening just prior to the guests starting to arrive...

We have just put a clean broom thru all our plates, and replaced them. Over the years we've tended to end up with a few bits and pieces as we buy square plates for presentation of a particular dish, or rectangular plates when they were in vogue - and we've ended up with a bit of a mish mash, that was  long overdue rejuvenation.
We saw these plates at one of our Auckland suppliers - and had to place a special order for them becos they didn't carry them in stock. I brought back what they did have to the restaurant to try it out, and decided that I was very happy with the look, but then had to endure a 3 month wait for the plates to arrive from the UK.
The delivery was huge - a palete no less...

We unpacked and washed, ( and removed all our old plates over to the catering quarters) and started plating the food with a certain degree of apprehension. Becos if they didn't look good, I was somewhat stuffed, becos I didn't think that Schott Commercial would welcome a return, and it hadn't exactly been a cheap exercise.
I spent most of the nite exclaiming with genuine pleasure at just how good they did in fact look. They lift the food, and frame it - the red and gold in the border, is reflected in our  curtains, and all together I feel that they bring a timeless classic look, that is one I am very comfortable with.
And they have the added bonus of making clearing tables easier, becos they're all the same shape, and we are no longer having to stack awkwardly mismatching piles of plates.
They're lighter, being a better quality china than what we had  previously, and that is always a bonus when you're carrying an armful of china and someone wants to have a chat.
It's funny - they're almost oldfashioned, and I thought I would have preferred something more modern. But there is something about the timelessness of good classic design that I feel very comfortable with, and am really chuffed with the decision. I get a frission of pleasure quite often as I glance at a table and see the food set out, looking even better on these plates.
Good customers are required to exclaim and proclaim them to be fabulous! Being a sensitive soul I need confirmation that I've done the right thing when I make decisions this big, and I've been delighted to recieving alot of that.
And perhaps even more importantly, the kitchen team are really enjoying working with them, and relishing the way they have freshened up the food and our approach to it.

I lay in bed this morning, at about 5.30am listening to the rain pelting down and wondering whether I needed my head seriously examined. Rhonda and I were planning on heading up to Auckland early to attend a seminar at Taste, but I wasn't feeling fabulous - far from it in fact - and wasn't sure if driving too and from in torrential rain was exactly what I needed.

However. We'd been planning the trip for some time, and it felt a bit like a cop out to pike out over a bit of water, so I was up and ready to depart when Rhonda turned up on our doorstep via the restaurant and the coffee machine. ( One of the many reasons I respect this woman so much is her ability to anticipate need!)

We got to Auckland in what should have been ample time to have another coffee at Gala, just round the corner from the Restaurant Assn building - but the buildup of traffic on the motorway was horrific, and we crawled into Mt Eden, at a seriously slow pace, arriving at the seminar late, after a fracetious time trying to find a carpark!

The seminar was on staff training and was run by Nicola Richards from Monsoon Poon, a pan asian restaurant, which we've eaten at in both Auckland and Wellington, and rate extremely highly. She talked alot about the importance of hiring the right people, of the importance of the induction process, rather than just dropping people in and leaving them to sink or swim; and then about having a system of follow up and measurement of performance, and how to keep staff motivated and postitive about their role in the business.

It was all extremely practical, very positive advice that reminded me very much of Danny Meyers tone when he talked about staff in his fantastic book 'Setting the Table". Monsoon Poon is a large business. Between them the Directors own 4 large hospitality businesses in Auckland and Wellington ( in fact I think Mike Egan is or has just, added another one to that stable in Wellington) - so their business is substantially large than ours. That doesn't mean thought that so much of the philosophy isn't directly transferable. The concept of wanting to train staff to exceed peoples expectations - to install systems that train them in how to achieve that aim, relate to all of us in hospitality, regardless of where we are placed in the market. And I think its seriously important that we in the industry have access to this calibre of advice - becos it inspires us to upskill ourselves to a new level of professionalism, and that has to be good for the industry as a whole. Its a fantastic service that the Restaurant Association offers to us, that I am very grateful for.

We got alot of  mental stuff to chew over - while we headed out for lunch at Tabou, a restaurant I've been reading good things about. Small, intimate and French bistro in style - we had a great lunch there, over a glass of rose Tattinger ( as you do!), and relaxed totally in a professionally run, seamless environment.   Good restaurants have that note of 'je ne sais quoi!', a touch of assuredness that just means you relax and feel cossetted, and that to me is pretty much what it should be about.

We are going to be enlarging our bar area when we do the alterations to the restaurant building next year - its the one aspect of the last round of alterations that we got wrong, and made it too small for the corporates that we get thru. We want to make it larger and more flexible in its use - in the French/Italian manner - where people can sit in lovely surroundings and eat tapas style food.  I knew that Tabou did that sort of thing, which was why I was keen to see how they'd set it up, and Rhonda and I did certainly sit back and analyse, and I'm sure it was patently apparent to the owner that we were in the trade ( an oft heard interchange at Somerset, is me commenting on the fact that people at such and such a table are ' in the trade', becos you can just sort of tell, from the interest people take in the surroundings, the kind of questions they ask. They almost have a certain smell!,) and this lady was one very savy individual who missed nothing.She did however keep her council, and was pleasantly charming throughout.

From there we negotiated our way to St Benedict St to find Kohu Road Icecream- a small artisinal icecream producer that I've been reading good things about recently. Wanted to see how they sold and packaged their icecream, becos we are looking at lifting our production and our range of icecreams up a notch. We would currently sell between 10-50 pottles of licorice icecream ( which is the only flavour we currently have for people to take home), a week,  and we are looking at promoting it more and gearing it up, and adding more flavours. I brought back some of their vanilla and espresso to Tauranga, and they were both excellant icecreams. We were impressed, and in the process, got some good ideas in terms of packaging. I guess it amounts to industrial espionage, but we never intend to be underhand about it. I prefer to look on it as an interchange of information!

And from there, home! We have the big Hospitality Trade show coming up, so Rhonda and I planned what we'd do with the crew when we headed up for that, and I think lunch at Monsoon Poon is now on the agenda while Rick goes to the demonstration with the chef from el bulli.

Home to more rain - and an absolutely dead nite at the restaurant. Have had a chat to the people I know who are in, and now retreated to help Courteney fill in some forms that she needs for next year. Oh - and we may just catch a bit of the Olympics...

We are in the middle of Wine Options for this year - last nite was the second nite in 3 consequtive weeks, when we get together with other teams, at the restaurant on a Monday nite, when we are otherwise closed, and blind taste wines that each team has bought and prepared questions.

Points are tallyed, and we have a nightly winner - amidst much humour and enjoyment. After Options we join all the tables up into one long line, and serve dinner, which is some sort of bistro style, easy meal that people can help themselves too.

These guys are well experienced now at moving tables into place; its not unusual to find one of them behind the bar looking for a wine knive to open a bottle of wine that they've brought to share over dinner, and someone usually heads into the kitchen to help Rhonda, Rick and I get the food to table. All done without missing a conversational beat!

After weeks of trial and error the restaurant kitchen have finally mastered macarons, and we celebrated in fitting style last nite by serving up lots of different flavours that John had been playing around with during the week. I thought they looked fabulous! So fabulous in fact, I had to run over to the house to grab my camera so I could take a pictorial record, and I'm firmly of the opinion that they're as good as any I spyed in patissieres over in France.  We may just have to work on a little more  on uniformity of shape...but you have to concede, they aren't half bad...

We had chili, lime, orange and they were everything I'd hoped they'd be. I think I understand now why Parisians have to eat at least one macaron every day. They certainly could get addictive!

Our team is not especially competitive with the Options, but that is immaterial, becos the good company and good food more than compensate for the fact we're closer to the bottom of the points table than the top. After all, I keep telling people that its not meant to be competitive. Yeah right!

Actually, I'm being only slightly facetious, as those that know me well, will guess. It is a well documented fact that when the Allblacks play and are televised at peak dining hours on a Saturday nite - then  that one nite of the week that we can normally count on to be full, is sometimes less than totally busy. Something that has always frustrated me, becos I've never understood why people can't set their videos, come out for dinner, and then watch the game when they get home. Many people ( my husband, who is a rugby afficiando, included) would beg to differ!

But tonite we are full, and the Allblacks are playing the Springboks - in what I am sure will be blizzard conditions in Wgtn. One table arriving tonite said that there is snow on the Kaimais, so I imagine that it will be cold and miserable in Wtgn. Which needless to say, begs the question - why do the powers that be feel it makes sense to play a game in the middle of winter at 7.30pm at nite, when the chances of the weather conditions being less than favourable are quite strong. It wouldn't have anything to do with advertising revenue from evening TV viewing would it?

I've come back over to the house becos the nite is now well underway, and everyone is very relaxed, and my presence is no longer required. Hannah is home from varsity and actually in residence tonite - we don't see much of her when shes home, between the catching up with friends and paddling on the river, so kind of nice to be able to come over and join her on the couch. Even if I do have to watch her choice rather than mine on TV. Rick will burst thru the door soon enough - and switch to the rugby, so shes making the most of the time that she has.

Courteney is in Canberra racing in NZ colours, which is kind of cool - but frustrating for Rick becos he's not there, and isn't getting a blow by blow and kilometre by kilometre break down of every race. The computor simply reveals the end placings, and that doesn't give him anything like the detail he wants to analyse each and every aspect. She rang tonite, and sounds hugely positive about the whole experience,  so we're very happy for her. Its a huge experience on every level,  and we see it as enormously positive for her.

This week has been very busy at the restaurant - which flies in the face of the current trends, that have been distinctly down. The newspapers continue a boring litany of doom and gloom, and certainly June was not a good month for us, numbers wise. Why this week has suddenly and dramatically perked up, I wouldn't like to gauge, but I am definitley hoping that is  a trend that we may see a little more of. We are seasonal, in that numbers definitly drop off over winter - but not as much as they used too. Our percentages don't tend to drop hugely,  but winter is definitley quieter. A combination of factors I suspect. Some of our market head overseas this time of year - some to Europe, and some to apartments on the Gold Coast; the weather can act as a disencentive for people to go out ( we experienced a classic example of that last week, when Rick, Courteney and I had decided that we were going to head across the road for Thai, but having lit a fire, and feeling warmly ensconsed against the ghastly weather outside, we opted for Thai takeouts instead, so we didn't have to leave the hearth- except for the quick burst across the road to pick up the food!); and we don't get the extra customers in the form of tourists this time of year, that we do over the summer months.

So all told, things conspire to make winter quieter - the volume drops, and usually I respond with panic, until I check previous years figures and remind myself that this is what happens every year, and that it is OK.  June this year though, was quieter than last, and I don't like it when that happens. It makes me wonder when that downward spiral is likely to end. Memories of the early nineties, and the ghastly economic climate back then, will never totally leave me, and make me forever cautious. Which is why a week like this lifts my optimism, and makes me feel more confident going forward, becos we're busier than we were this week last year - and even though I may not be able to figure why that should be, I'm very happy to accept the welcome shot of confidence that it represents. Maybe things aren't spiralling down into a recession after all...

Yes things are gloomy out there - but enough people still want to come out and enjoy their dining experience, and  therefore we will continue to be a viable business, and there is no need to get bogged down in the doom and gloom, becos that can become a self fulfulling prophecy, and that is not somewhere I want to go again.

Hannah has just switched over to the rugby, even though her father hasn't appeared yet, and the Allblacks won, which is good news. Not that I'm really interested...

Summer, who adopted us as a starving stray was killed this morning. Hit by a car we presume, and hopefully died instantly.

Rick dug a hole on the bank overlooking the bush, and buried her. I kept away, not dealing especially well with death.

In a way we were relieved - becos we've been debating for a number of months now whether we should have the gumption to make the call to have her put to sleep, becos she was an elderly lady with breathing problems, and we really didn't want her to suffer.

I'd go home at nite convinced that the next morning we would ring the vet and organise an appointment , and  then when we'd go back over to the restaurant  in the morning she would greet us in her normally bolshy manner, and seem just fine, so we would dither, and decide that we weren't quite ready to play God.

Early this morning however, Rick took a phone call from an agitated friend who'd driven past the restaurrant and seen the prone body on the side of the road, and knew who it was.  So, in some ways it was easier becos we didn't have to make any decisions - we were instead presented with a fait accompi.

She was only a kitten when she turned up on our doorstep, nearly 15 years ago - and she has stayed as the restaurant cat since. I was convinced fairly early on, that she was actually an old customer, who'd come back to us in a new life form, becos she seemed so knowing and in command. Hannah, who was only a toddler at the time, named her Summer  - which felt totally appropriate, and she stayed on, determined to rule the roost and eat as much duck as she could smooch out of customers.

Most people responded to her presence in the restaurant with affection - but there were always some who objected. Some very stridently. One lady announced a couple of weeks ago suddenly - 'either the cat goes or I go'. Good manners forbade me from saying what I really wanted to say...

For these last few months however, she's spend most nites curled up on the cushions in the bar, her back turned in disdain to the world, weary of the world and people.

May she rest in peace.

In the next newsletter, which is currently being printed and due to go out next week, I talk at length about how we are now endeavouring to be proactive about spacing the times that tables arrive, so as to avoid a major hit, and in doing so attempt to ensure that customers get better care and attention, both from front staff and kitchen staff - who aren't scurrying around like fleas in a fit!

I have no doubt that we will meet some resistance from people who will not take kindly to being told what time they can come - but I'm hoping that an awareness will gradually seep thru, that we're not doing it to be pigheaded, but purely becos we want to make things as smooth as we possibly can.

I've headed back over to the house tonite, to address another box of envelopes for that newsletter - marvelling at how spaced the nite has been, and how much easier that has made doing 70 covers. It helps with the conviction that we're doing the right thing.

Flicked thru Michael Rulhmans latest blog - one I go on regularly - and got a link to an American lady who works in a 3 star restaurant in Paris, and writes a blog- Ms Glazes Pommes d'Armour. Of special pertinance was this blog which I've copied below describing what its like to be in a French restaurant kitchen, when tables all get seated at the same time. A problem that is obviously and not surprisingly, universal!

February 16, 2008

Its the day after a large outcatered wedding - 130 people, in a marquee at a Lodge. The body is feeling  a little weary - so much so  in fact, that Rick and I have eschewed our normal Saturday morning practise of heading over to the Mount, and stayed in bed to rest our bones instead. Had croissants for breakfast, read the paper and then mooched over to the restaurant kitchen to put together some salads that we were making for the morning after function, which is typical of most large weddings now.  They tend to run over 2 days. Ricks in the process of delivering them round to the parents house...

Outcatering is something that tends to happen most at this time of year - becos most people prefer to get married over summer, when there is a greater chance of the weather playing ball. Having said that, there are absolutely no guarantees, and we've catered weddings under extreme weather conditions.  Last nite I cast more than a few anxious glances skyward as we were getting ready to take mains thru to the marquee - the kitchen was set up in the garage of the Lodge, and the front staff had about 10 metres to walk in the open air until they got under cover, and there was a bank or black, ominous looking clouds looming on the horizon. If it had been raining and blowing as it is now, it would have been a whole extra layer of stress..

Most of the wedding catering we do  is for good customers, and being involved in someones special day, is a privilege that we take rather seriously, and which means that a huge amount of angst and work goes into it.  After getting everything organised and prepped in the restaurant kitchens, we have to physically lug it all from the restaurant to the function venue, unpack it, then repack it, and bring it back to the restaurant to be washed and stacked away. Investing in the chiller truck a few years ago, has made that process a whole heap easier, not to mention the fact that I am much happier with the notion of moving food around , chilled, over hot summer days. (Memories of chocolate ganache on a cake, starting to melt in the boot of the car as we changed a tyre, enroute to a wedding, many years ago, are the kinds of impressions you don't tend to forget )And of course you have to remember to pack everything - so lists, lists and more lists are crucial to the smooth running  of the event. It is not unknown for us to ring staff who are due to start a bit later to get them to swing by the restaurant on their way and grap a couple of things that somehow got overlooked. The restaurant kitchen staff are always pleased to see Rick and the other catering staff depart, so they can reclaim their benches for the restaurant prep. Yet another reason why we look forward to building the cookschool kitchen - it will give us more room...

Timing is always a major with weddings - becos I've yet to meet a photographer that will run to  a promised schedule, and speeches never, but never take as short a time as people anticipate. But thats OK. You learn to roll with the punches and be flexible.

So far this year the weddings we've been involved with have been for the children of extremely good customers of ours - people we look on as close friends, and I therefore regard it as special to be there for a celebratory time in the lives of people that we care about.

In no particular order I've downloaded some photos taken at various functions to show how we set up mobile kitchens in garages or, weather permitting, outdoors. Everything is upscaled becos of the number of people we're cooking for.

Its a challenge, and has its moments, but is a process that we've worked at over the years, and now find it markedly easier than we ever used too.

My approach to Valentines Day is pretty much the same as Scrooges regard for Christmas. However, in my case I don't see a major state of redemption coming down the line, becos as the years roll by, my sense of irritation at the whole overstated affair just gets stronger. And that is becos Valentines Day and the expectations imposed on it, seem to get more widespread every year.

We had a couple in last nite celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary, for which they come to us most years. Their anniversary is on the 14th, becos back when they got married, the date had no other connections beyond the fact that it was the 2nd Saturday in February, and suited their purposes. But now, more often than not they can't get reservations in restaurants on the nite of their anniversay becos restaurants are full.

We have been fully booked for Valentines Day for the last 2 weeks - and even Rhonda, who is formidable at being able to squeeze extra tables in, has finally run out of options . We have 18 tables at Somerset - and they vary in size. With the exception of the round tables they are either what we call '2's', or '4's or '6's'. When we did the alterations a few years ago, I got new tables made, so they were lighter and didn't have legs that people had to straddle - but we kept the sizing the same, becos we've found the flexibility that having a variety of table sizes has given us has been fantastic - rather than one generic size being made to fit all. What often happens then I find, is that its too big for a 2, and too jammed for a 4. We used to have four '6's', but with the new tables I got them made as 2 tables, so that joined together they are a nice sizing for a 6, but we can pull them apart to give us two '2's or two '3's' - and on a nite like tonite, when the restaurant is predominantly 2's, being able to do that is a godsend. It keeps our numbers up - otherwise we would be full with 36 covers, rather than the 65 we normally do.

I went over to the restaurant for lunch today, not becos we were especially busy, but primarily to be on hand to answer the phone, which has rung constantly and consistently ( and insistently!) over the last week with people wanting to book a table for tonite. If I stood and answered the phone, ( and sorted a wine delivery), Rhonda could concentrate on the customers...

I cannot quite figure the herd mentality whereby people feel under such enormous pressure to perform to societal expectations of behaviour - especially when such behaviour is entirely a commercial construct that has only been given credence in the last few years. We get complete desperation on the phone when we tell people that we are full and we can't do them early or late or at any time on the 14th.  I really am unable to get why it should matter so much.

But thats me! And is probably becos I don't like being told what to do. And that is what it seems to me has happened with Valentines Day. This whole expectation has built up around  the need to buy red roses, or take your partner out for dinner, on a certain day. Why? -I bleat. I don't need to be told when to tell Rick that I love him, and am very thankful to have him in my life. In fact I much prefer to do that in my own way  and in my own time - and I would be genuinely distressed if he thought he had to buy me something to keep me happy on Valentines Day. I like to think our relationship is underpinned with a little more realism than that.

However. Very dear friends of ours grow roses - the best roses you will buy in New Zealand, really - and Valentines represents a huge part of their annual turnover as you would expect. Ag borrowed our catering truck to do a run down to Wgtn on Monday, so as to make sure that the flowers were there in time for the Flower Market first thing Tues morning, becos the financial consequences for them if they didn't make it were too dire, to trust to a courier.

There is nothing wrong with buying roses for someone you love. My problem is with the people that do it once a year, simply becos they're told that they should. Why not show true independence and do it on a day unique to you and your loved one - and share something special and unique.

The restaurant reservation book for 2007 - well thumbed and well used...

- and our 2008 version, brand new, and ready to be filled with all the details of the new year.In a few short months it will end up looking just like the one above and the 20 odd that have preceded it!

We've been closed for the last week, between Christmas and New Year, and I've just come back over to the house having spent a few hours in the restaurant kitchen with Rick helping him prepare vast quantities of salmon escabeche for a catering job we have on tom, on the day we reopen, and also for a large outcatering wedding that is looming on Friday. Becos the restaurant reopens tom, it means it will be a huge prep day for the kitchen team as they prep everything from scratch to get service up and happening again. Rick therefore has been over there, yesterday and today getting some of the catering prep out of the way so as to ameliorate the pressure. The fact that we don't have any deliveries either today or tom, compounds the need to have stuff organised in advance, and my husband is good at that!

We're heading out to dear friends for lunch and what I strongly suspect will segue into a leisurely afternoon of chat, so have no doubt that the work exertions of the morning will rapidly recede and we won't feel too deprived of holiday time.

I've been clearing the answerphone over the week that we've been closed so it doesn't fill up - and that is never a job that I look forward to this time of year, becos people ( some people), are often somewhat incredulous that we would choose to close and they are therefore forthright in expressing their indignation. Its an interesting one. I'm totally comfortable with the call that we have made - that after a huge December, the staff and we all need a little rest and recuperation. Its about quality of life, not economics, and means that everyone returns refreshed and recharged ( once they're over the New Years Eve hangovers - the younger generation anyway!). But the problem I encounter is that hospitality is now a 24/7 concept and not everyone agrees with my priorites, which means I occasionally get to wince at some of the comments that people leave on the answerphone. But I think my shoulders are broad enough to deal with that..

The carpets have been cleaned while we were shut, and Wendy spent alot of time in the restaurant yesterday, literally scrubbing it from top to bottom. So things feel clean and sparkling which is especially apt for the start of a new year.

Boxes of cherries have kept arriving - we have a standard weekly order with an orchard in Central Otago - even over the holiday period. I guess they keep ripening regardless of what the day is, and therefore need to be picked and dispatched. Most of them are being destoned and cooked in a red wine syrup, and will eventually end up on our dessert menu, once Simpson Print get back from their holiday and print us some new menus. Yesterday I pickled one of the cases in verjus and cloves, and they will find their way into the menu with the terrine and possibly also with the Hohepa cheese, once they've had a couple of weeks to macerate.

We get up cases of verjus from Gibbston Valley Winery, and as people who come to the cookschools know, we are strong advocates for using it in lieu of white wine vinegar, especially this time of year, when its lightness seems to particularly suit summer food. The mention of verjus always reminds me of Maggie Beer, becos she was the person who first introduced verjus ( or verjuice) commercially in the Southern Hemisphere, and I can remember back when we first tried hers, thinking how novel it was. Which of course it isn't. The Italians have been using it in their cooking for centuries - we just came to the idea a bit later!! Bought her latest cookbook just before Christmas, Maggies Harvest. Its beautiful, and has the added bonus of been full of great ideas and lots of information. Not dissimilar to the Cooks Companion of Stephanie Alexander, in that the recipes are linked by ingredients.

Looking ahead to the upcoming year - there feels like there is lots happening. We're not sure at this stage whether the trip to Mexico will get of the ground. I believe we need another 2 people for it to be viable for the organises, and Annie Sale the travel agent, has indicated that she'll have to make a call in the next couple of weeks. So if I can't convince someone we know to come, we may have to shelve that idea for another year. Will be a shame becos most people I talk to who've visited Mexico talk very positively about it, but we just may have to wait a wee while longer. And thats life!

Have been firming up dates with Juliet Harbutt, in anticipation of a return visit from her for 2008. The cheese lady - a guru on all things to do with cheese, and one of those rare experts who is able to impart her knowledge in a way that is a totally enjoyable learning experience. We've had massive amounts of comments since her last visit, and I know those classes will be heavily booked. She's not due till June, and I will sent out the dates in a newsletter closer  to the time.

We have a few other projects bubbling away in the background, and if they come to fruition in the way I hope they will, then we are in for an extremely stimulating year. The prospect of which, I look forward too!!

Happy New Year!!

For a variety of reasons we are normally overstaffed out front  in the restaurant on a Saturday nite. That allows me to be surplus, and to leave the desk to Rhonda, but to also be in the background should I be needed. Rhonda is my manager, and if I'm not present at the restaurant then she runs front of house, and I decided earlier this year, that it was only fair for her to get the opportunity to learn to do that effectively, by actually doing it  on a busy night ,on a regular occurance. And the reality for us is that Saturday tends to be on average our busiest nite of the week - not always, but on most weeks. It is the nite that people are most likely to want to go out for dinner, unless of course the All Blacks are playing and its being televised at 7.30pm at nite, and then wild horses wouldn't drag out the average kiwi male. ( Thank god the world cup is being played in the Northern Hemisphere, so televison times don't coincide with dinner times in NZ! but I digress....)

However that is all an aside - the subject and need for my whinge tonite, and what has brought me over to the house to my computor is the fact that 2 tables tonite have turned up with less people than they booked for - and that bothers me. It bothers me becos on a Saturday nite we turn away a reasonable number of tables, becos we are usually fully booked earlier in the week. We usually ring and confirm most tables ( but not all I have to concede), to ensure that people will turn up in the numbers that have booked. The configuration of tables varies every nite in the restaurant - we have capacity of 65 people, but can have every table occupied with less than that, and sometimes, when we turn tables ( ie have more than one sitting at the same table) we can end up doing more than that.

But with the layout of the restaurant we can alter the formation of the tables - for instance where a table of 6 people is usually postioned can become 2 tables, one of  of 4 , and one of 2 if that is what is required. However if a table of 6 has been booked, we set it for 6 - and then ( as has happened twice tonite) people turn up at the restaurant door, and state ever so casually - oh sorry, we meant to ring, we're now only a 4 - those extra seats go begging, and that is lost revenue to us, but more important to me is the annoyance caused by the fact that we've turned away customers, telling them we are full, when in fact we could have fitted them in.

 I know from my reading that alot of top restaurants around the world, deliberately overbook, so that they can always slot customers in when they have no shows. One of New Yorks top restaurants,  talks about a 10% average of no shows every night. Fortunetly that is not our experience - possibly becos people dont' book quite so far ahead here in NZ ,as they need too, to get into the top restaurants in the major metropolitan areas overseas. But it does happen - and when it does its irritating, ( although markedly less so, when people apologise genuinely, and explain why they didn't get the opportunity to alert us to the drop in numbers in advance). But more normally I've found - people arrive ,we seat them and ask about the extra people still to arrive, and get told almost as it we've asked a stupid question, that no, they aren't coming, and could they move to that table over there, becos the table we've seated them at is too big. If we get annoyed with them at that point, for their inconsideration, then we become responsible for setting the tone for the evening in terms of the interaction between us and them. And it becomes our fault becos we have showed our irritation over their inconsideration - and if we do that, then we set ourselves up for them to find fault with everything else. So the moral of the story is you really can't win.

Don't get me wrong. My problem is not that people have the audacity to change their numbers. I fully understand and respect that life can provide many perfectly valid reasons for why there may be a alteration in the numbers that arrive on those that were initially booked. We set up the restaurant late on a Friday nite, for the following Saturday nite ( we don't do lunch on Saturday so the restaurant isn't used during the day), and the configuration of that setup will follow the bookings in the book. It is not unusual for me to come over at the start of Saturday evening and to find the Rhonda has altered the seating arrangement quite substantially , becos people have rung during the day to cancel or to alter numbers. It happens. All the time actually - and we are well used to rolling with the punches and just getting on with it, becos we do understand that we are not the centre of everyones universe. And that is OK. Thats not the point - what gets me going is peoples attitude - their rudeness and lack of manners if you will!

The Prickly Pear in Auckland, a very small restaurant that I remember from 20 odd years ago, attracted alot of negative publicity back then, when it charged a fee to a group of 8 who turned up as a 4, without any  warning. The restaurant disappeared about a year after the customers who were charged for the non appearing members of their group  complained vigorously in the media.The restaurant owners had my natural sympathies, becos I understood their position totally, but it hasn't been a method I've been inclined to duplicate, becos as a business we are so dependant on public goodwill, and the reality is, that a reasonable percentage of the paying public just don't get it in terms on the financial impact on a business like ours when they turn up with less people than they've booked for. It is simply immaterial to them.

And becos that public goodwill is crucial to our long term survival, I am not allowed the luxery of responding to rudeness from a customer, with rudeness of my own. If I do - and imply that the customer has done something wrong, then during the evening, human nature being what it is, that customer will go out of their way to find something wrong with what we supply so as to shift 'blame' back to us. It creates a double negative, from which no one emerges as a winner.

So.  Tonite when it happened for the second time,  and I could feel my reactions souring, I poured myself a rather large glass of Kina Beach pinot noir, and told Rhonda that I was over people - I knew that I was being unprofessional becos my irritation was going to win out and show itself to customers that I  had deemed to be rude , and therefore I decided it was safer if I removed myself and come home to my dogs! 

Maybe I need a holiday

We had a cookschool this morning, which is taken in the restaurant kitchen, after which the attendees head out to the restaurant, and the staff move into the kitchen and serve lunch. Today, that oft repeated, and normally relatively seamless process was interrupted by an unpleasant acrid smell - the source of which wasn't located straight away.  It took a few minutes for John to realize it was coming from our main power box, and pulling that open revealed that the mains switch was in fact smoking.

Do you ring the fire brigard or is that total overreaction given the lack of flames? Are there no flames purely becos we've been so fortunate to catch the fire in its infancy, and is it likely to get dramatically worse suddenly? Should we  just ring the electrician? How do we turn off the power, when in fact its the main switch thats smoking?

Rick made the decision to dial 111, AND ring the electrician- both of which proved to be the appropriate calls. I warned the ladies in the cookschool not to panic should they see a fire engine suddenly arrive, and suggested to Rhonda that it might not be a smart idea to take anyone else for lunch, cos at that point we weren't quite sure what the outcome was going to be.

2 fire engines arrived in incredibly quick time - lights flashing and the whole routine, which I did feel wasn't especially great from a PR perspective, and slight overkill - but was assured by the gentleman in charge that that is standard procedure for what could have rapidly developed into a structural fire. Ahh...  They were great -we offered coffee while we waited for Powerco to turn off the supply of power from the road, but just as they were deciding whether they wanted flat whites  ( firemen picky about their coffee! - does that mean the coffee culture is definetly mainstream now!) one of them managed to get the main switch off, meaning the coffee machine was inoperable.

Once Powerco had done their thing, the fire department departed, having earned my heartfelt appreciation for the manner  and speed of their response. Our own electrician duly arrived, and replaced the switch and we got reconnected, meaning that prep could continue for dinner service tonite, but too late unfortunetly to serve the cookschool attendees coffee. ( We had an extra glass of wine instead!)

For a period there we weren't sure if the problem was going to be fixed in time for us to carry on getting ready for tonite, so we were hugely relieved not to have that fear realised. We've dealt with Rob Weatherley from Laser Electrical for  20 odd years, and it is always immensely reassurring to be able to ring these guys in an emergency and have them respond so quickly.

Both he and the Fire Department explained to us what could have potentially happened if the smouldering had started at a time no one was around - like last nite, or even worse, when we're closed for 3 weeks in a couple of months. It would have ignited the whole switch board and all those wires, and potentially gone up into the roof, and well ...... suffice to say we are feeling very, very lucky.

Oddly I've had issues about fire all week - and had just been discussing in the staff meeting yesterday, what we should turn off when we're closed, becos we can't hit the mains switch due to the chillers and the burglar alarm. And then Rick said he'd got up during the nite, convinced that a noise he heard was fire at the restaurant, and that just isn't normal for either of us to be unduly conscious of it. So - premonition maybe, coincidence more likely, but I'm currently saying my thankyous to the guardian angel, that I do feel looks out for me on occasion!

We made butter today. Quite deliberately and not an accidental by-product of beating cream for icecream in the large mixer, and forgetting about it until its too late, as does happen periodically. No – this we did from scratch, with David Munro, a friend, who just happens to be a dairy scientist, and a fascinating person to get involved in discussions with, on why things happen when you cook. The type of queries that I manage to come up with quite regularly and usually go delving into Harold McGhee, for an explanation. David is a regular attendee at our cookschools,  and he and I often have aside conversations .Given that chemistry was far from a strong point of mine during college years, I'm intrigued by how interesting I find it all now, that it is relating to a practical application.

He and Rick and I were all fired up by the visit of Juliet Harbutt earlier this year, and there had been much discussion about all things dairy- the upshot of which was the glistening of the idea that it would be rather cool to make the butter that we use in the restaurant from scratch. Why? No special reason, beyond the fact that I happen to believe that in todays world we are too far removed from the basic processes of so much food preparation, and since we’re a restaurant that makes all our own bread and icecreams and stocks, then why not our own butter?

Being me, I’ve mentioned this idea to a few people, and met with one or two raised eyebrows and skeptical looks. Someone did ask when we were going to be getting the cows, which I think was missing the point just a bit. Life is all about continuums I think – and where you choose to position yourself on that scale is all about your personal circumstances. How far back to basics we go is governed by what is practical for us, and logistically viable with the restaurant. Cows no, but making butter from pasturised cream, definitely. Especially after todays exercise, which turned 6 litres of cream into butter and butter milk. I brought home some of the butter milk, intent on making soda bread, in memory of my Irish mother, who made the stuff frequently during our childhood, never without bemoaning the lack of butter milk in the supermarkets.

Stages in the process:

 After beating the cream beyond  the whipped  stage into a very dubious looking curdled appearance, the colour changed from whitish tones to  gradually deepening yellow hues. Rick and I didn’t fully understand at the time, but we were waiting for it to seperate into a type of  curds in essence,  with the butter milk flowing free. David looked anxious for a period – unsure if we were going to effect that separation, but it did eventually, and the top photo shows the butter milk being drained off.

The curds themselves are then re churned (we found the dough hook worked best for this process), and eventually turn into beautiful creamy butter.

Thanks to David’s contacts within the dairy industry we got our hot little hands on some culture, and we now have another 6 litres of cream fermenting, that is souring, overnight – and we will then go thru the same churning process, only this time our cream will have fermented, and the butter that results will be cultured butter. The culture contains bacteria friendly to dairy ( no listeria or salmonella, it specified in the instructions, to my considerable  relief!) and that extra step of souring the cream is all about adding flavour. The butter we made today tastes of sweet cream, for want of a better description, and it will be interesting to compare its flavour to the cultured butter we get tomorrow. A fascinatingly descriptive blog on the subject, which helped me understand the whole process can be found at http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/journal/2007/6/21/getting-some-culture.html.

We go thru between 20-30 kilos of butter a week at the restaurant, and the idea of making our own, definitely appeals to me. We sell rendered duck fat, as a by product of all the ducks that we cook in a week ( potatoes cooked in duck fat are one of lifes little treats, that we all need occasionally!), and I wonder if we’ll be able to get the butter to a production level, that we’ll be able to sell that too. Somehow I don’t think we’ll ever get to the kind of quantities that will cause Fonterra any concern, but it would be rather nice to be able to offer customers who care about these things, an alternative. I still harbour a romantic memory of going to the food markets at Queen Victoria in Melbourne, in the mid 90’s and being stunned by my first sighting of butter in large lumps – so different from the packaged and wrapped and uniform, ubiquitous 500g, packs that is our only option for buying butter.

 All interesting!

This Monday was the last nite in the current series of wine options -which we've been running at the restaurant since 1997. Good friends of ours - the Gerrands and Leighs - were instrumental in starting the options, and for years they organised and ran the tasting, with us merely providing the venue and dinner to follow.

Over the years it has segued into a rather social and very enjoyable happening in the middle of each winter, which we now do for 3 consecqutive Monday nites. Each team now brings its own wine and  questions - eliminating the pressure for anyone to organise the whole thing from scratch - and once we've done the options, we move all the tables into one long table, and have a casual one pot style meal.

Becos our team languishes near the bottom of  the scale, I keep saying that its not competitive, which of course it is, but I've decided with options that  good luck can factor in more than anything. I've learnt not to state anything in definitives, as in : 'this is definitely a...." becos you can be profoundly wrong!; and I've also learnt  that  normally I drink to the label, knowing what I'm about to taste, means that I have preset expectations of what it will taste like.

What I love therfore about the Wine Options experience, is that you can have no preset ideas, beyond the very obvious fact that its a white or a red, and from there you have to work your way thru grape type, area, vintage and vineyard. Its amazing how wrong you can be sometimes!  We have wine makers come, and I've heard them get stuff totally wrong ( I will  mention no names, Steve!), so I'm comfortable with the notion that guesswork has a reasonable amount to do with the process.

Although I'm sure the winning team this year would beg to differ!

I got read my pedigree tonite by a customer, who'd taken umbrage at the fact we charge corkage in the restaurant. When I tried to explain to him our rationale for doing so, all I achieved was to bring forth a renewed and envigoured cascade of accusations about my mercenary bend.
So as I wandered back over to the house, filling a little bruised and misunderstood, I decided to attempt once more to explain ( but this time to an unemotional computor screen!), why we charge corkage.

When we first opened the restaurant  we were only BYO - and in those days were BYO for wine and beer. That was back in the dark ages before the Sale of Liquor Act in 1989, that changed the whole licensing perspective dramatically.  Acquiring an on-license was going to incur a number of costs that we simply couldn't afford at that stage, so we sat tight. When we finally did take the step, I retained the BYO option, becos I believed it to be an important option to offer our established client base. To take something away that we had once allowed, didn't strike me as a smart business decision. I did however reassess my attitude to BYO beer, after one especially torrid christmas party season, when it dawned on me that our appeal to some of the naff groups we'd had to endure, was becos the BYO option allowed them  to trundle in with chillybins of liquer that they could then down in copious quantities. They weren't there for the food or ambience - they were there purely becos we offered a cheap drinking option, and in the process they made our lives and those of other customers miserable. So BYO beer got stopped and its a decision I've never regretted.
BYO wine continues becos I genuinely believe in it as an option for customers, and thats even in the face of repeated comments from our business advisors that I'm nuts. ( And ironically in the face of the fact that if we were to open a new business, distinct from Somerset, in todays world then we wouldn't have the BYO option). But Somerset comes with a legacy of learned behaviour and I simply don't want to alienate customers who matter to me, by prohibiting them from doing something they've taken for granted.

Two kinds of people BYO - those that have good cellars and who want to bring a particular bottle of wine with their meal; and then those who are price conscious and who figure it'll be cheaper for them to bring a bottle of wine, then to buy it from us. I may get a slight philosophical twitch from the second logic, but never strong enough to actually ban BYO. I never want to be percieved as being too elitist, and if we are more accessible to people becos of the BYO option, then I am quite comfortable with that. The only time I get distinctly twitchy is when people who have been seated and given menus, suddenly get up and head over to the local supermarket, after reading BYO on the menu. That particular type of meaness I can't quite get my head around - and it was that behaviour ( together with a side issue about wine glasses), that prompted me to introduce corkage about 3 years ago.
Our numbers continue to grow, so its introduction hasn't triggered an exodus of customers - in fact having flagged my decision to start charging it in a newsletter I got universally positive comments from good customers who understood my rationale. But every so often like tonite, someone decides that it means that I'm being unpleasantly sharp, forgetting in the process, that most restaurants in todays world  actively discourage BYO.

Why do they? Becos it represents lost income to them. A simple, irrefutable fact. Restaurant owners may couch charging corkage in terms of the cost of providing glasses and breakages and washing and etc - but thats essentially hogwash. If a customer brings a bottle of wine, then I have lost the opportunity to sell that table wine and that is a direct drop in income for that nite. My personal believe is that that drop in income is offset by the bums on seats argument - they may not be buying our wine but they're eating at the restaurant and keeping the numbers buoyant.
The maths is interesting - in the last 12 months we had 2419 bottles of BYO wine brought to the restaurant. Multiply that by an average price of a blttle of wine in a restaurant, and that is the income that I would otherwise have earned. Possibly. Becos possibly amongst those figures are people who wouldn't have come to the restaurant if BYO wasn't an option. But somehow I don't think that applies to very many.
Charging corkage is a nod in the direction of income that I would otherwise have earned, and I am comfortable with that ( I like it when things sit comfortably with me, metaphysically speaking!).
People come to Somerset with an expectation of certain aspects of quality in glassware, table linen and service, all of which come  at some considerable cost  to us as a business to provide. The hard cold reality is that we have to earn more than those things cost us, if we want to stay in business. And we'd rather like too! If people don't like what we charge, they have a large number of other options in todays eating out world, so they don't need to come back. Unfortunetly though - every so often, you get one, who feels the need to make his opinion heard and felt on his exit. I don't think that particular gentleman will be back, and I think I'm OK with that thought!

One of the realities of restaurant life in Tauranga ( and I suspect in most other towns in NZ), is that Saturday night tends to be the biggest night of the week, in terms of demands for tables.

Tonite we have been full - and have turned away a number of tables. I read with interest about restaurants overseas, who have 2 or sometimes 3 seatings in a night, and in that way do substantially more than their seating capacity. For us that approach just wouldn't work. People who book a table with us, expect it to be ready when they arrive, and they expect to have it for the duration of the time they want to sit there. There is the rare exception when we squeeze someone in, on the understanding that they will vacate the table that has been prebooked at a later time. So turning tables is not a major part of our business.

Saturday night remains the major nite out for the majority of NZers - and we will turn away a number of tables on  a Saturday -  even though we may have some quieter nites earlier in the week. Sometimes when people ring and we say we're full, but mention that we still have tables available on Sunday, then people will choose to book for that night - which is a bonus all round.

Tonight Rick hasn't been at the restaurant - he's been doing a private dinner party for 8 people, which was bid for at a charity function we're involved with each year for the CCS Society ( Crippled Childrens Society). He and Julie have gone off in the catering truck, leaving the rest of us to cope with a full restaurant. I've spent a reasonable part of the night in the kitchen, at the pass, just watching and talking about whats coming up and where its going, and reasurring the chefs that they're doing a great job. Tonight John is plating mains, with Craig acting as his 2IC, Jamie and Helen doing everything else that is required. Have just had a chat with Rick on the mobile to see how his night is going - and to tell him how awesomely I think the team are coping back here. Food is going out punctually and looking good. I would defie anyone in the restaurant to know that Rick wasn't in the kitchen cooking. And that is a reasurring thought. Reassurring because it means that the kitchen team can cope admireably in his absence. He's been very absent over the last 2 days becos his youngest daughter is racing in the Te A cycle tour over in the Waikato, and he has been there from first light, egging her on, and thrilling in her triumphs- so his presence in the restaurant kitchen has been meagre at best!! We are lucky to have the calibre of staff that we currently do, who care enough to make things carry on seamlessly. There are certain aspects of the business that only Rick and I can attend too - but it reassures me when I see staff rising to the occasion and handling demanding nights with no drama, and a sense  of caring.

I'm reading a fascinating book at the moment on the history of Chez Panisse, which I'll go into in more detail in a future blog - but one of the points I've grasped, is the need to keep revitalising yourself, to keep being stimulated. We've found that a little difficult to achieve, partly becos of our children growing up, and the daily committments they represent, but also just becos of the day to day stuff that happens at the restaurant. It always requires imput. Things always have to be ready when customers arrive - there is no switching off, just becos you may not happen to be in the mood. That is a luxery we've never been able to afford.

But nights like tonite reassure me, that in the future Rick and I will be able to have days off at a time, to go and explore the wine regions in NZ, or maybe even venture further afield, and the restaurant will be able to continue to operate.  When you have good people around you, that becomes a definite possiblilty, which is very cool.

We had a meeting this week, with a man whos keen to organise a tour to Mexico in 2008 - and while my initial reaction had been  that we wouldn't be able to fit it in - the more I listened to what we could incorporate in the tour, what we would see and learn, the more I decided that we really couldn't afford not to be part of it. And we can leave Somerset in our staffs capable hands for a couple of weeks. Ironically, having just had this lenghty discussion and getting all fired up about the idea ( as you do!), a book I'd ordered thru Amazon, about Alice Waters and her history at Chez Panisse duly arrived in the mail. If we do this tour next year, we will fly into San Francisco. If we fly into San Francisco we will HAVE to go to Chez Panisse, which has been one of our icons, from our earliest days. Now wouldn't that be an amazing experience?!

The tour is far from confirmed as yet - but if we get involved, then we will be aiming it at our customer base, and we will be extending our boundaries in yet another significant direction. That is a thought that has infinite appeal! Will keep you posted on developments...

Standing at the pass ( an old fashioned term. that refers essentially to the bench, where plates that are to be taken out to the restaurant, are finished and garnished), tonite, watching the team in operation, I decided that I'd come over with my camera one night, and take some photos to fill you in on what it looks like as they're pumping out food.

We are currently working on some kitchen alterations that we aim to do - and one of the concepts that we'd like to incorporate is the idea of a kitchen table - a table that can be booked especially for people to sit in the kitchen, and watch what actually happens during service. We had a lady at a cookshool a couple of months ago, who was visiting from London, and had been to the Connaughts kitchen table. Sounded amazing - but the bank of TV screens that recorded the action in the kitchen, might be a bit beyond our budget, so we may aim for a bit more realism, and rather than having them sit around the corner, may actually have them in amongst it all.  The language in the kitchen is pretty tame - I'm the one who will have to watch the expletives as I charge into the kitchen and shut the door behind me.( My mother always told me that swearwords showed a lack of vocabulary - but my vocabulary is reasonably extensive and I still feel a need, maybe somewhat too often, to let off steam with an aptly chosen expletive, althought I do try and do it out of earshot of anyone who could be offended. A table of paying customers in the kitchen means I'd have to rethink my approach to that kitchen door!!)

Think I've just heard the truck pull up outside, which means Rick and Julie are back - so will head over to help them unload, and listen to their tales of the evening. We have to get up very early in the morning to go drive over to Te Awamutu to watch the last day of Courteneys racing - so am hoping that tonite won't be too late!!

Good Friday - a slow start to the day, and I've brought my laptop out to the sun, to enjoy the autumnal warmth on my back. Rick and I have been down to feed the pigs and run the dogs - made a couple of coffees - and are luxeriating in the feeling of having nothing that we absolutely have to do. We've been flicking thru magazines and discussing a couple of issues, as is our wont at this time of the day,and all have that has led me to here to have a chat about my perception of restaurant critics.

By chance I've read a couple of reviews about Somerset over the last couple of days, one on the net and one in a magazine, both of which came as a surprise. I wasn't expecting the review, nor could I remember the nite that the respective reviewers were in the restaurant, but I could tell from the food they discussed that they had both been in, in the last 12 months. Both were positive to a degree, one in fact glowed about us, and the other was complimentary, but in that ever so snarky tone, where they make a compliment but then undermine it with a 'quite'  comment. We were'quite' good. To my mind, that kind of giving, but then taking back at the same time doesn't in effect constitute a compliment at all. What I was curious about in both reviews, was the lack of serious analysis about the food- they mentioned what they had to eat and said they enjoyed it, and that was it really. Their descriptions of the ambience varied -with one raving about us, and the other saying we hadn't quite got it right. Needless to say, I agree with the one that liked us, and wonder seriously about the taste of someone who feels that we would be improved if we dotted some toby jugs around! Really that comes down to a comparison between their taste and mine, becos the restaurant very much reflects my taste, and in designing it, we were acutely aware that we weren't going to please everyone, becos that is an impossible target.  I guess my problem, is that my hackles go up, when someone who thinks that toby jugs would be an improvement, then sits in judgement on my business. Possibly proving that I am a snob!

I remember back in the early days of magazines like Metro that started doing restaurant reviews, a certain amount of flack flying around about the fact that the people doing the reviews, were general journalists working for the magazine, not specialists in the food area. The editors response to those criticisms were that the journalists were representative of the general public who ate at restaurants, and their opinion was therefore as valid as anyone elses. He had a point to a degree, but then he lost me when his wife, reviewed a Tauranga restaurant ( I'm going back about 18 years here), and commented admireably on the fact, that they had booked a table for 4 on a Saturday night, and had turned up as a 10, without alerting the restaurant, and were so impressed with the way that the restaurant coped. That said 2 things to me: 1. She has no frigging idea about what is involved in allocating seats for customers, and by turning up with more than twice the number you have booked for, you are showing a marked degree of arrogance and ignorance. 2. a restaurant that could cope with that, could cope becos it wasn't full. If it had been full, it wouldn't have been able to seat them, and the implication in her review, was that that would have been a mark against them. That logic, I just couldn't follow.

I think the eating out world has changed a whole heap since then, and the NZ public is a lot more educated  and experienced about the process than maybe they once would have been, all of which is good for everyone.

In some of the large cities overseas, where the restaurant world is enormously competitive, a good review in a respected newspaper or magazine, can make a significant difference to a restaurants turnover. That unavoidable economic fact has seen the growth of the power of critics to almost obsene levels. It becomes obsene to me, becos it becomes a game, for the egos involved, and  has nothing really to do, with their declared purpose of educating the public. The English critics specialise in hyperbolic extreme language, that reveals alot about their command of the english language, and their desire to shock and titillate, but little else. One of the English magazines that I get, has taken to publishing snippets of 6 different reviewers published comments about the same restaurant. More often than not they are diametrically different to each other. One will love one aspect of the restaurant and the other will hate it, in equal measure - and which is right?

In America, the reviewers are treated as gods, and the top restaurants 'comp' them regularly ( ie. give them whatever they want for no charge)  hoping for a favourable review. The fantastic movie" Dinner Rush" with its brutal depiction of a ghastly  ( image focused, but otherwise ignorant) reviewer, and the sycophantic behaviour of the chef, parodied  how absurd it has  been allowed to become.

Tauranga is a little more of a backwater compared to New York and London, and we've managed to get thru the years reasonably unscathed by reviews. Nor have we ever felt the need to play the game, preferring to focus on our day in and day out customer base. Having blurbs about us in publications just has never felt like a motivating force - in part cos I don't feel comfortable with some of the stuff that goes on around that. We have customers that have eaten with us just about every week for the last 21 years. Those people matter to me in a way, that no reviewer, who sweeps in and out, on a one off visit, is ever going to come close to touching. But I guess declaring that, makes me seem a little arrogant too.  ( Arrogant AND a snob! I'm not doing well..) But our business has been built on that kind of contact and permanence, and that is what continues to matter to me the most.

I'm aware that we have been lucky with circumstances, in that we are in the middle of a significately growing area, and new customers come to our door, without us having to make a huge advertising effort to get them there. And longevitiy creates a critical mass, whereby we get talked about almost by default. We have become part of the local lexicon, therefore people get to hear about us. That has allowed us to be a little more removed from being part of the dirty business of needing to advertise our wares, and I'm conscious that we've been fortunate in that respect. But there was also a certain amount of conscious thought that went into that process, becos neither of us are comfortable with the notion of needing to tell people how wonderful we think we are. We tend to prefer to just get on with what we do, and hope that in doing so, that enough people enjoy what we do, to want to come back enough, to allow us to be a viable business.

9pm. The restaurant is about two thirds full tonite, and we are now sufficently underway, and I have enough senior staff on, that my presence is no longer required, so I have retreated to the sanctity of the house and the dogs ( my daughters are out on a club race), and thought I'd write a blog, while I have some time to spare. Its been a big week, becos we've done 4 cookschools over the past 6 days, and had the Wine and Food Festival last Saturday, and are now gearing up for a large outcatering wedding this coming Saturday. All of that activity takes place in addition too, and on top of the normal day to day processes of the restaurant. The last couple of nites at the restaurant have been a bit quieter which has meant I haven't been required to work quite as hard on the floor as I maybe otherwise would have - and that is a reality that I have gratefully recieved. Especially in light of the fact that cookschools mean that I'm over there at 9am in the morning to have everything ready to go before the first attendees arrive. Rick starts even earlier than that, to get the ingredients assembled, and we try and sneak in a cup of coffee a deux, while we can, becos there tends to be little time for personal chat after that.

The photo below is of the early stages of the Wine and Food Festival, when we were getting the marqee set up. The day is a logistical nightmare. We are one of about 7 food outlets, catering to about 2500 people - but that number is an unknown becos  the turnout is completely weather dependant.  We had a large menu, and a large number of staff, becos at an event like that the only way you can make a profit is to turn over a large volume. You can't charge alot for each individual item - you have to rely on economies of scale. And there is a point in the afternoon, when people get beyond eating, and just want to chill out and listen to the music, so the window of opportunity to make it, is quite small,  and you have to go hard. Of 5 main course options you can never correctly predict what will be the big sellers. What works one year, doesn't necessarily do so the next

so there are no guarantees. Its an interesting exercise, to say the least!

The wedding this weekend, by contrast is much more structured - set fingerfood, set entree, a choice of 2 mains, and set dessert for 100 people. The kitchen however, will be set up in a garage,  and there are all sorts of variables that come in to play - like the photographer always, but always. taking longer then they say they will, and the speeches never conforming to a preset time schedule.  The wedding is in our clients garden, in a large marquee - which creates some interesting obstacles when the weather decides to be inclement. I never fret about that in advance though, becos its the one thing, you can not control in any way, so it always seems like a futile exercise.

I enjoy weddings. I enjoy making a positive contribution to someones special day - it is a priviledge in many ways.

We are about half of the way thru this cookschool series - and its going well. The food very much represents the best of what is available at this time of year - tomatoes, melons from Gisborne, apricots and peaches from Central Otago, walnut oil from Christchurch and the most magnificent butter beans from Spain, that we get via Sabato who import them. It all comes together into a selection of lovely dishes that we encourage people to eat gradually over time, rather than piling it all onto their plate at once. People take that admonishment to heart - and the lunches after the class have segued into long leisurely affairs, which have being entirely the effect we were hoping to create.  Bringing back happy memories of our experiences in Tuscany a few years ago.

Selection of breads with galilee basil cheese, Evansdale farmhouse brie and melon and proscuitto

Poached chicken breast on whitebean and vegetable stew with walnut sauce

Provencal tomatoes baked with red wine vinegar and thyme

Red pepper spaghetti

Apricot tart with cream cheese pastry

Rose with peaches

Already I have been on the recieving end of much anecdoctal comment - including what I thought was the delightful story from a lady who lives in Maine, that lobsters used to be so common in the harbour there, that prison officials had to promise not to feed the prisoners lobster more than 3 meals a week. A concept that seems somewhat alien to our reality. At the class on Sunday I sat next to an elderly German lady, who told me about the pigs her family used to raise every year , during the war- the slaughter of which was cause for celebration, becos of the bounty of food that it represented.  Our conversation then moved onto what had happened to her father, a baker, during the war - and she became so much more that just another face to me - she was a person, with an extraordinary personal story to tell.  How can you not value those sorts of insights?We'd mentioned our pigs during the class and their aversion to onions - and that had led to a discussion about charcuterie. The food we do in each class is exactly the same, but the discussion that surrounds it always moves in unique and interesting directions, becos of the questions people ask, or becos of the comments that people contribute. I can go over to set up in the morning feeling a bit dispirited, and without exception I return to the house after the class, feeling enthusiatic and inspired.

We consider ourselves to be very lucky.

Juliet Harbutt is an expat kiwi, who's lived in the UK for many years, where she's built up a formidable reputations as an expert on the subject of cheese - and all matters pertaining to cheese( and one or two other subjects besides..!).

She comes back to NZ about this time every year to stay in touch with what is happening in the cheese scene here, and travels thru making contact with producers and consumers. In doing so she fulfills the very important function of inspiring cheesemakers with honest appraisal, and helping with marketing ideas, by writing about what they're doing in her House and Garden article.

In order for the cheesemakers to have a receptive public for their product, that public need to be educated and brought up to speed about the different types of cheeses and the flavours they should realistically be expecting. Juliet packages this information in a Masterclass style presentation, which is a relaxed way of getting people to think more carefully about cheese.

Over the last couple of days we've done 2 of these classes at the restaurant for our customers - they got to try 12 different types of cheeses, ranging from fresh to soft white, washed rind to hard, and also blue.

We tasted: Zany Zeus Feta, Mozzarella di Buffalo, Canaan Halloumi, Ash log, Pakipaki Brie, Brie de Fromage de Meaux Rouzaire, St Nectaire, Quickes Cheddar, Hohepa, Curio Bay Blue River, Italian dolce Gorgonzola, Te Mata Pacifica.

And drank ( it aids the digestion!):

Wairau River Sauvignon Blanc

Amante Riesling

Sacred Hill Thiefs Series Merlot

Kina Beach Reserve Pinot Noir

.

And marvelled over the contrast that the different wines had with the respective cheeses. Some were a flavour combination  made in heaven - I recall honey icecream being mentioned at one stage, and a couple left a somewhat less favourable impression on the palate. It was fascinating.

A long the way, she contributed much to our knowledge of the cheese making process, and helped make the flavours on the plate come alive. There was a huge amount of information compacted into a three and a half hour session, and I'm in awe of the way her energy levels never flagged ( while customers were around). Sharing information with that degree of passion and enthusiasm ain't easy, no matter how knowledgeable you may be in the field.

We love venturing into these somewhat educative areas, from the somewhat selfish perspective that Rick and I get to learn from an expert which we figure is always a good place to look for advice, plus its an opportunity for our staff to share in the experience, and of course, those of our customers who are interested.

There was alot of work involved in bringing the classes together - but the knowledge and contacts we have gained as a result of accessing all the cheeses, make it something that we are keen to repeat.

There are so many potential areas of speciality within the restaurant business - and unlike the great restaurants in Europe, we can't hope to afford to have specialists heading up each area. We can however learn from expert consultants and broaden our knowledge, and in doing so get to improve what we are able to offer our customers. I see that as all good.

It has occcurred to me, as I've just finished off some work here at my desk , just now, that today pretty much represents a typical day, when, of neccessity I get to deal with a wide range of stuff - all background - just to ensure the smooth running of the business.

Last nite I sat down with good friends who were dining in the restaurant ( and celebrating 20 years in their flooring business), and we got joined by other friends, and Rick, once he'd finished mains, and it was all very pleasant , and not terribly like hard work at all.

I would hate you to think that that is what owning a restaurant comprises of,  all the time though! Far from it - thats just the occasional treat that comes our way, when people we know very well are in dining- and we have enough staff on, for us to be able to retreat to the background.

Today for instance, I've so far:

-unpacked deliveries of wine

-opened the mail, and sorted the bills into weekly, monthly and direct credit piles.

-chased up a company that sent Sauvignon Blanc instead of the requested Chardonnay

-chased up another company that hasn't delivered as yet wine I need for a function early next week

-dealt with some phone messages regarding cookschools

-made a coffee

-greeted lunch time customers as they arrived, but left the actual table service to Rhonda

-answered screeds of emails

-sent out the cookschool cards for those who have booked

-finished off a couple of quotes for weddings next year

-gone over requirements for hireage of crockery etc for a large outcatering wedding we have coming up in 3 weeks

-spent a frustrating couple of hours drawing up the Tasting Sheets for the Masterclasses that Juliet Harbutt is taking here next week. Frustrating becos I understand virtually nothing of the intracacies of 'Word', and have kept hitting the wrong key, and had all sorts of strange configurations occur. I normally leave that sort of thing to Lynne at Simpson Print, who's ability to make light of anything I throw at her, is a constant source of amazement to me. Quite why I didn't get my act together earlier enough to pass this job on to her as well, I'm not sure. Maybe my subconscious thought that someone who could write a blog, could also master 'Word". Hmm...

I need some input from my daughters to show me how to encase what I've done in a grid, and one of them is kayaking on the Kaituna, and the other is out on the bike with Rick, so I'm going to have to wait.

There are 12 cheeses for everyone to try in these classes - ranging from Italian, to French to New Zealand - and we matching them with a riesling, sauvignon blanc, merlot, and pinot noir - so its going to be alot to absorb- physically and mentally!- but will hopefully prove very enlightening. Certainly, we've found the process of sourcing the cheeses that Juliet has wanted , to have lead us to some interesting people, with contacts that we'll be able to use in an ongoing context with the restaurant. So all good.

And just to prove that it is an incredibly small world - I caught up with an old university friend, who now lives in County Galway in Ireland, and who was passing thru on his way to his sisters wedding in the Hawkes Bay. We poured over a map of Ireland, becos we're planning on spending a meagre 3 days there at the end of our French trip later this year, so we can get to visit the esteemed cookschool, Balleymaloe, and hopefully also Cafe Paradiso, the owners of which we've met. M. showed me where the places I needed to know were on the map - which helps give me some some sense of relativelty to airports and distances. And then last nite I took a phonecall from a lady with a delightful Irish brogue who is in the country for a short period, and wanted to come and do a stint of work experience in our kitchen. Shes just finished her chefs training at Balleymaloe, of all places, and is heading back to Ireland, after her holiday, to work in the affiliated restaurant, Balleymaloe House.  All proving that the world is not a very big place, and there can be all sorts of delicious coincidences. Shes going to come and spend some time in the kitchen, and we sincerely hope she gets to enjoy it!

But now I need to take some overripe avocados down to our pigs; give the dogs a chance to burn off some energy, rushing around the orchard, and then get ready to head over to the restaurant for evening service. Its Friday nite, and we are full , which means we'll have 4 staff on the floor and me on the desk - and which also means that I get to sidle away before the end of the night.  I'll come home to my daughters and my dogs, and the last chapter of Alan Bennetts 'Untold Stories" - a book I haven't wanted to put down.