Out and About 2013
We are moving rapidly towards September and the phones are ringing away merrily in our offices as we move towards the butt-end of the summer season.
The demand for chefs still remains high and I expect it to for at least another month.
Top Guys and Girls of the season on relief
Pawel Halicki has been excellent on the very few jobs so far this year, currently at The Lovat, before that at The Western Isles Hotel on Mull and Isle Ornsay on Skye. Has achieved a grade 1 status very quickly. Dziekuje bardzo as they may say in Poland.
Gary McGirr seems to go about his business in an excellent way getting on very well on relief and completing jobs. Kinnaird House in Perthshire, Dumfries Arms, The Pierhouse in Appin and Gartmore amongst others.
Antonio Demir has also been excellent and has a one hundred percent completion rate, currently up in the Scottish Highlands and getting on very well.
Grant Buchanan is over on Bute and is posting some lovely photographs on face-book (cue for me to try and make a link to photos.
I should maybe just cut and paste, lovely photos Grant and all jobs going well. Many thanks
Jamie Greenhorn is over working at Onich way at The Four Seasons Restaurant and will be getting on well I am sure as ever. All relief jobs seem to start at either Tongue or Onich.
Jamie has a new website on the go and all the best.
www.chefquick.co.uk for anyone looking to fill a permanent vacancy.
Peter Snelgar has only been on 3 jobs via Chefs In Scotland, going back to 2006. Seven years at The Dryburgh Abbey Hotel in Melrose (this was a perm placement) a month or so at Burts in Melrose and now up to Habitat Café in Perthshire. 100% completion rate over 7 years is a good effort. Thanks Peter.
Heidi Cuddy is a new lady on our books and hails from Cults, outside of Aberdeen where I spent the first ten years of my life. One job at Moorings and another at Knockomie Hotel. Third job starts next week.
Andy Mill is the man in situ up on Tongue at the moment, working alongside other Chefs In Scotland placement Mark Wildman. Two excellent chefs up in Tongue, both members of the “Magic Fifteen” club.
Meanwhile, up at Sligachan, without which a short written word is never complete, we have Scott Russell from Ayrshire alongside Piotr Miga from Glasgow to complement the head chef Simon Miners. Three Chefs In Scotland placements getting on well.
Billy Gibson, who spent his own time, on Skye at The Isles Inn and Sligachan is currently working on relief up on the Shetland Islands, he may have found a wife? Not sure but all the best Billy.
Paul Waters, Number 1, is currently over in Banchory working at the Burnett Arms.
Tongue, Skye, Melrose (travel expenses from gary??) Onich, just a few times, Banchory yes before, The Pierhouse. Yes, Paul has been there, seen it and written the book. Our gain was England’s loss when Paul moved up the road.
OK, good to get “Out and About back” on the new website and will make an effort to get it back on every
Slop Jocky
Amongst Golfers and Buddhists
Dad’s Putter (Wednesday medal 14th August 2013)
thirty years since I had a set of new golf clubs, maybe a few more, I remember them well. I was a young teenager playing at Lockerbie golf club and had saved up from some work done on my next door neighbour’s garden, digging down into the ground and taking our all stones and rocks, paid £1.20 per hour.
Wilson Sam Snead and they cost about £90 I think, a lot of money back then and a lot of gardening.
This set of irons cost £199 including delivery, bought over the internet from Carlisle Golf Centre. Calloway Diablo is the make. Seven irons five iron through to sand wedge.
I am away Tuesday night and arrive back to Sunnybrae, ready to do some work at twenty past ten on the Wednesday morning and there is the box with carefully wrapped clubs in plastic. The excitement is tangible, not as pronounced as when I got the set thirty years back.
I do some work in the upstairs office; there are three of us I can take things a bit easier.
Emails, check share prices, arrange interviews, hunt for head chef job, update credit control list and check it.
Sort Golf Clubs
Over lunch, the sun is out and I take my old set of clubs out and change for the new ones, keeping the new woods which I picked up at The County Golf Club in Dumfries two years back and the cheap ten pound putter which I got five or six years back in the Pawn Shop in the centre of Dumfries.
Back to work
Golf tees and balls, all laid out and ready, fresh water, some new mixed nuts and fruit in a small round tin which used to hold a golf game and was a present from my brother a couple of Christmas back.
Before heading up, I change the putter for my dad’s old Ping putter. He has given my all my golf clubs going back twenty years.
5 pm and I am up at the golf club, keen with Colin, my next door neighbour and Vin and Phil from Eskdalemuir, two of the three golfing Buddhists.
We draw and I am out with Phil
We both start badly
An eight at the first hole followed by some more missed putts and the game is a struggle. I three put the eight and the par three ninth, up the hill, Moffat’s signature hole. Out in 45. Eleven over par and struggling. Phil, a lovely man, aged sixty five and as good natured as can be, is struggling also.
A smiling Vin is waiting on the tenth tee, Colin has called it a day.
We settle down.
Vin and myself par the 10th, par the 11th, both longish par fours.
I pitch from thirty yards to fifteen feet at the 11th and hole the put.
Vin and myself par the 12th and the 13th. Phil and Vin have puts of less than ten feet for twos. I don’t. I hole one from ten feet for a par.
The par five 14th and I hole from ten feet again for another par.
There is hope.
The fifteenth sees me back with a one over par bogey. Vin has fallen off a little by this time and Phil is struggling on.
The sixteenth is another par three and another long put sees me make par.
Two more pars and I will make the buffer zone and my handicap will not go up.
Six feet for a part at the 17th and it is my honour on the 18th tee.
I take one of the new rescue clubs, a bit like an old five wood, and pull the ball a little left. The new pitching wedge hits truly through the ball and sends it high onto the green, if the fading late summer light. I chip back to about twelve feet above the hole, a testing put with a lot of borrow. Not to be and for the first time in the back nine dad’s putter doesn’t hole out.
We shake hands and smile, they laugh a lot these guys. Vin and Phil have half pints of lager in Moffat clubhouse, I have a pint with lime.
It is shortly dark and time to head down the hill.
We will meet up again soon, dad’s putter and my golfing partners.Slop Jocky
A small road trip
I have the keys to my puggy and have emptied it of eighty pounds or so, pound coins which now sit in the back of the Mercedes along with the new set of golf clubs (first for thirty years) and a couple of fleeces bought from the woollen mill in town.
It’s her birthday today although our current status if fallen out. I have her presents, a cuddly bear with “hugs” written on it which I picked up in the Loreburn shopping centre in Dumfries mid- week. A bottle of Opium perfume by Yves St Laurent is the other offering. and a card.
The drive takes just over an hour and I leave the car in the town and walk up the last 300 yards to be met by my favourite dog Berry.
I soon leave and with no plans and time to kill, drive the back road through Kirkcudbright, past the MOD range at Dundrennan and down through the top and into Auchencairn. A village I know well having worked there at the Smugglers for almost three years in the early nineteen nineties. I stop outside Monty’s flat in the high street, unsure of myself what I am doing or where I am going. His car is absent, so I don’t knock on the door and instead sit in the car for a couple of minutes checking my mobile for any message; nothing.
I drive the familiar short distance down the hill and park outside the front door of The Smugglers, half past three on a Saturday in August and it is quiet. I open the boot and take a handful of coins from the Tesco plastic bag, open the front door and walk in. Little has changed, the pool table remains in the right hand corner where I played pool on a Friday night.
The owner has a creased white shirt and is polishing cutlery. There are two real ales for sale. I choose the one on the left facing me, Arran Blonde. Strength is 3.8 % and the owner offers me a choice of straight glass or handle glass. I take the handle glass. £3.05 and I go back to the car and on the dashboard, I take some coppers to avoid changing one of the precious pound coins.
West Brewery, I ask? No. He used to be an assistant manager of a brewery for five years in Glasgow. Maybe that is his forte.
Borders Brewery over in Jedburgh, yes I know that one, we get some business from the owner, placed a head chef with him for a new venture in March.
Isle of Skye Brewery, I ask? Too far up north bus they used to use them in Glasgow. Red Cuillin Black Cuillin, named after the famous mountain range.
I stopped working at the Smugglers in December 1994. Many memories.
I turn my attention to the fruit machine. It gladly takes some of the coins and I get some satisfaction in losing maybe ten pounds, I have a couple of small wins and the charity bottle remains on the bar, is it the same one from twenty years back? I wonder.
“Nice beer and good to put some money in the fruit machine” I have met the owner a couple of times before; I don’t think that he remembers me.
Slop Jocky
Ten years in and the bread want rise, ten years in and the owner is a lazy bastard whose idea of work is to sign three checks after surfacing from his bed at 2 in the August afternoon and insulting all who have the misfortune to work for him.
Hospitality in Scotland in the 20th century. What a life.
Lunch is a lazy, hung-over affair today, Tuesday on Skye listening to the totally relevant “A Summer on Skye” by Blair Douglas ex of Runrig, who stays in town and is oft seen in the Royal Hotel on the corner of Bank Street overlooking the harbour of the bustling town.
Out the back smoking a roll up, aged 33 and in mid-life crisis, ten years into my career in hospitality and I can see endless possibilities for working dead end jobs with little prospects and little hope for other than abuse at the hands of the owner, grief from the owner and then the season comes to an end and what, no work, no future, winter depression or with luck some travel.
There are dark nicotine stains on the index fingers which I use to roll the old holdburn cigarette and put in a roach made from the cigarette packet, inhaling deeply. Exhaling, blue grey smoke wafts up into the back garden, over the empty langoustine boxes, up through the back garden and into beyond.
Check list
Seafood chowder made, bread, in the oven, tonight’s menu, written, potatoes cooked, orders done, veg put away, salad prepped.
Seafood chowder
A large block of butter, fennel, onion, some of yesterday’s potatoes chopped roughly, old tomatoes, chopped roughly, pepper, salt, white wine, tomato puree.
Sauté, add flour, make a roux, cook out and add water and whisk to make a decent smooth paste, add more water, keep on whisking and letting the soup simmer, add a bit of white wine, some chicken bouillon, taste for seasoning.
The owner saunters in, looking a mixture of hung-over and askance.
“Classic Simplicity, heavy soups have gone out of fashion with the French”
I mutter to myself under by breathe, this self- confessed king of Gael-dom has no inclination to work and a strong liking for the easy life, just back from Nerja in the south of Spain whilst I work seven days per week, breakfast lunch and dinner to make him money for a paltry £220 per week. OK, the tips are good.
Yesterday’s fish completes the chowder, mussels, and smoked haddock, bits of salmon and smoked salmon, squat lobsters. Added at the end for a minute to cook, perhaps a fennel leaf for garnish. His recipe, my recipe or a bastardisation of the French bouillabaisse?
Another smoke, another lunch, two customers sipping the soup with home-made bread which is a little flat.
Newspage Thursday 1st of August
How to use the new website
We are getting quite a few employers posting their jobs directly onto our website. This is a new facility where you can post the job, pay for it via paypal and it remains on our site for 4 weeks.
Five or six days into the new website and it is encouraging, we seem to have managed to retain the simplicity of the old website whilst modernising the look, obviously keeping the iconic logo of the chefs in tartan hats.
http://www.chefsinscotland.co.uk/content/add/
post away
We are getting a lot of enquiries and questions about holiday pay for relief chefs and indeed for permanent chefs and I am interested if people would like to have a section on the new website regarding employment legislation. I would appreciate it greatly if those interested, both employers and chefs could post their thoughts on facebook.
I am not sure how strongly we will remain a jobs website and a permanent chef recruiter or if we will move also in the direction of being an online magazine with current topics and evenings happening (again maybe via facebook)
I will be checking over the new website five days in and seeing if any adjustments need to be made by fuzzylime, the website people who have done an excellent job creating this new website. Many thanks to David Bennett and the team at fuzzylime.
Into August
Kind of self-explanatory
Yes, into August and all good relief chefs would appear to be out working or on holiday. There is a large demand for relief chefs currently and unfortunately too many jobs and not enough chefs. Was it ever thus.
Good chefs holding things together over the summer
A top ten of summer chefs who have gone beyond the call on relief this summer.
Pawel Halicki has been excellent on his first summer on relief, 100% track record and excellent references from well- established places such as Isles Ornsay on Skye and The Classroom in Nairn. Did I expect anything different? Nie.
Billy Gibson. Billy has Skye in common with Pawel, they worked at different establishments, one at the world famous Three Chimneys and the other at the equally world famous Sligacahan Hotel in the midst of the Cuillin mountain range. Two different types of places and two differing food offerings, but both important parts of the Scottish Hospitality scene. Back at Ballachulish then up the Shetland and back to Shetland.
George McCahill, a new guy who we encountered on the chef de partie database looking to move to Glasgow and with a couple of references, who we duly asked to go to Auchrannie on Arran for a couple of weeks, he went and has stayed and is sticking on to complete the season.
Phil Smith is at Oban Bay and haven’t heard much from him whilst there has been some coming and going on the chef front. Phil was booked for a couple of weeks but has stayed on beyond his original stint and holding the season together. Well done Phil.
One more. Young Fraser Simpson, age 23 and straight into our offices in a suit, smartly presented, ten years of experience and then off to Skye again to the Cuillin Hills Hotel, where he has remained working away since June.
Good stuff.
OK, new website or not, same past time.
Better get back to sous chef hunting and see if I can get a couple of candidates out
Many thanks for your continued support and patience
Michael in Moffat in the 21st century. Maybe a new sounds system next.
RSS