Opening Blog

The Nook

So leaving a kitchen job and handing in your notice is a very big thing in the kitchen industry especially if you are an important part of the team and it’s even worse when you do so in the middle of July in a seaside town that’s as seasonal as Weymouth, I mean most of the restaurants earn more in June, July and August than they do in the rest of the year (Christmas aside) so you can imagine the look on my bosses faces when I did just this.

This was not an easy task and I needed the couple of beers for my nerves as I had never done this before, also the owners were nice people and I had built up a good working relationship in my time there but I had to do what I had to do.

So why was I leaving The Nook, well of course the offer of more money, more hours and the fact I was going to work at a place I knew the owners and staff very well had a lot to do with it, in fact the chef is my girlfriend but to be honest one of the major factors was passion, I felt like I was stuck in a bit of a rut and if I had done the summer there it would have been too late to move on. I loved the making my own chilli, soups, pies and burgers but my passion is fish and shellfish. Also the Nook was more of an established cocktail bar than restaurant and you tend to find on Saturday nights there are more people here to drink than there is to eat and for someone who had spent all of my career prepping up for a Saturday night I still felt a bit strange finishing at 10 o’clock or even earlier when usually I’m still cooking at that time.

I started my trial shift at the Crow’s Nest that Sunday night and it was great, the kitchen was tiny but the amount of good quality food being produced was outstanding. I had a quick show of what goes where and the menu etc. and before I knew it the first check was on and there was like 12 dishes for the two of us to crack on with, the food here in the evenings is Spanish tapas and I was working with my girlfriend tonight who was not going to treat me like any old newbie with soft words and 'please and thank you' after everything, she just grabbed 4 pans stuck them all on the heat thrown oil in some garlic butter in others and had both fryers full before I could even work out what plates go on what, and by the time I had the plates out and the garnishes ready they were all cooked and being dished up.I was impressed, dinner was never this quick at home.

The night was very faced paced but I got to grips quickly and some 100 or so tapas dishes later we heard the sweet sound of ‘’last check’’ come in from the waitress, less than 5 minutes later we were all done and packing away and clearing down I thought it was brilliant this is what I had been missing out on, luckily they were as impressed with me as I was with the evening, as it would have done so much damage to my ego if they said I wasn’t good enough yet my girlfriend was running the kitchen!

My decision was made and once my notice was in I was expecting the worst, hours cut, people being bitchy to me constant reminders of the fact I was letting them down, but in fact I was pleasantly surprised that everything carried on pretty much the same, I spoke to the other chef strait after the owners and whilst he was concerned  as to what he was going to do for the rest of the summer he could understand my reasons and shook my hand wished me the best of luck and told me I was not going anywhere until he had written down all the recipes he needed in my book.

So that brings me to now where I am just finishing my last few days of one place, making sure I remember to take all my knives, jackets, books and whatever else I have lying around the kitchen and then getting ready to move on and start from scratch at my new job, I may have ordered myself a couple of new knives as a little treat as well :)

The Crows Nest