Brown's 'Dog's Breakfast Diner' was closing down,
the falling standards of food preparation coupled with a 'Ramseyesque' style of management, not to mention a few instances of over Nokia'd cuisine, and the villification sufffered by diners when complaining of 'trivial' matters, leading to them being called 'old bigots'and worse, the general public were voting with their feet and the business model, which had faired tolerably well under the auspices of the previous concessionary Tony 'teflon' Bliar was failing miserably. Though to be fair to Brown, when we saw the books later we realised he had been sold an already debt burdened business (still he should have known he was Bliars accountant, can't have been a very good one eh!).
The banks were calling for their loans to be repaid and there just wasn't enough reserve left in the Brown's treasury to cover it all, hence he was over charging the punters abominably to make ends meet, whilst frittering away what little income he did have on a new chinoise here or a new set of knives there...
It was inevitable that one of those knives was going to end up in Brown's broad, though stoop shouldered back, so he put the concession up for sale to the highest bidder...
Thats where I, Dave came in.
After talking it through with my partner Sam (no I'm not that way inclined, its short for Samantha, but we had long ago dropped the 'antha' bit to fit in more easily with the locals, whomight of thought it a bit too posh), she was very supportive of the idea of us opening a little bistro of our own at the old site, though she did insist that, if we won the bid, there would have to be a complete makeover of the place or the public would not forget who had owned it before. "Besides" she said "I couldn't live and work in a place that was that dingy and reeked so strongly of the smell of fear", I had to agree really!
As it turned out circumstances forced us to go into partnership with another 'firm', a nice enough couple.
The Claggs however drove some hard bargains through our plans and forced us to alter our menu significantly (more on that later) even though they were only minority shareholders in the venture...we were stuck, as we could not hope to make a go of it on our own and besides 'Neeko', as he likes to be called, has a really sexy Spanish wife who knows a thing or two about 'continental' cuisine, I can tell you!... let me just say she adds a lot of 'SPICE' to the venture...
and so as they say the rest is history.
I went to see the 'old' landlady in her big house up the road with Sam and she seemed really quite pleased that we were going to actually make some real changes, even with our slimmed down business model (compared to the last incumbents) and so the contracts were signed.
She even promised to pop along to the official opening ceremony, which was nice of the old dear, well, she is about 180 yrs old and not as steady on her feet as she used to be. I think she was even a little excited at the thought of getting an income from the old place again, I'm sure she had given up on EVER getting rid of the last tenant (who by the way tried to claim squatters rights, we nearly had to call the police!!)
The initial cleaning up job took, several steam cleaning teams, and well over a fortnight to remove the smell and stains. Then, after a 'fast makeover', it had to be fast as we were haemoraging cash at a frightful rate, we ended up with this...
As it turned out it was 'THE' worst time to open a restaurant in the history of the world!!!
Restaurants were going out of business all over the place, just down the road from us a lovely little Greek Taverna just burst into flames one night, some say it was an insurance job but I'm not sure if that is true!
Lovely little place it was too on a nice sunny corner with outdoor dining areas and grape vines festooning trellis's everywhere...
...and there's a Spanish place not far away thats laying off staff and limiting it's open hours to save money, not to mention a Portugese place near it thats on the rocky road to ruin...there's even rumours that the big luxury German and French concerns are feeling the pinch too...
Neeko says, in that funny accent he likes to put on "Donta u woory chiff alla mor cussomers comma tu dis plaiz, yez no!", and he may have a point there, but still it's a very big and worrying gamble.
It's not helped by some of Brown's old 'customers'(read denizen's), mostly low class prostitutes and perverts (hence the stains) and con men, putting about lots of ugly rumours and generally slagging off everything we do!!... no really its's NOT good enough and Sam has been very tearful of late as well as putting on a lot of weight. Every time she comes in the kitchen 'Neeko' jovially runs his hands over her bulging tummy and says things like, "No ,No my leetle puzzycatikinz, you wuz alwayz too zkeeny beefor, now yu iz my zexy preenzezz yez no?", LOL! that 'Neeko' is such a laugh!
Will publish our menu in a few days time, just to make your mouth water a bit...
In case you come to 'our place' for a meal here are a couple of piccies so you'll know who we are, LOL! as if you haven't seen the press releases, hahahahaaa!!! (you have haven't you?)
See you when we're open to the public, if you can afford the reservations...
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