achefabroad

Hello people, I’m back. Back by popular demand (well, back by a combination of boredom now that I’m on holiday and one of my mates convincing me while I was drunk that this blog might get me laid one day). “Where have you been, what have you been doing, why have you left us for so long, never leave us again, how could you you bastard, and that copy of Dire Straits Love Over Gold belonged to me and I want it back you heartless wench!” I hear you cry. Or that could have just been a flash back to the last time I saw my ex in the pub (she was the bastard by the way)

Please understand that I am in no way comparing myself to a writer. But I have been suffering from what I can only describe as writer’s block.

Or it could be laziness. But for now, lets go with writers block. I am fairly uncomfortable describing my predicament as writers block…as that would imply that I am a writer. And that would be an insult to writers…indeed that would be more like a slap across the face to writers everywhere. It would be an insult to a 15 year old GCSE English lit student….and probably a slap across the face to them as well. But let’s not speak of slapping teenagers, even though on occasion we would all love to. 

The fact of the matter is that I haven’t had a clue what to write about over the last few months. I have also, in my defence, been a bit busy working. I’m on a new yacht now you see. No more swanning around the South Pacific doing the odd 10 day charter punctuated by periods of over a month where I could finish at 4, walk 20 yards to the pub and watch the sunset over a nice big cocktail with an umbrella in it while writing this blog.

 

Gone are those days. Now I have to actually graft for a living.

 I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face while writing that last sentence. I’m not sure their is a job in yachting that you could really and with conviction say that it is extremely hard work. Yes we work hard, but look at where we work and how much we get paid and all the perks. Compare that to a chef in a busy michelin star kitchen or a hotel employee doing beds and heads in a 500 room hotel or the guys and girls keeping a cruise ship clean and tidy and it really puts it into perspective

I mean I am now doing 4 to 6 week long trips with my owners on board which gives me no time to sit about trying to write this crap. I’m not complaining, as I love the new job, fantastic owners and a truly awesome crew. I’m just very busy now, that’s all.

But now I have a few weeks off and can sit down and think about writing again, I haven’t the foggiest what to write about.

Occasionally I will have an idea, a blinding flash of inspiration, and quickly whip out the old iPad, open notes and jot it down. But that hasn’t really ever grown into anything substantial enough to blog about. And also, often it will be on some very random topic that has nothing to do with my blog’s subject matter (foody travel ramblings) and so wouldn’t really fit in with the rest of it. I can’t go from chatting about yacht charters, owners and food trips to Japan to a random blog about how rubbish the Villa are at the moment and how if they go down this season I will probably not care that much as I’m not a crazy football person but that for the sake of making the blog a bit more dramatic I would have to shave my head, paint it claret and blue, then travel to the States and hunt down Randy Lerner. No, that wouldn’t do at all. I would instantly lose my key demographic, the 40 something American stay at home hockey Mom. Or is it the Japanese hard working salary man, or the Ecuadorian lama herder or maybe the North Korean dictator? I can’t really tell. There is a function provided by this blogs host whereby the writer can see how many people have read (or accidentally come across and then immediately left again without reading) the blog on any given day and in what country they were reading it. People have read this blog from every continent on Earth and from some extremely random Places. Nepal, Guatemala, Gabon and Dudley to name but a few. So I have no idea what my demographic or typical reader is. Housewife, quinoa farmer, yachty, bullfighter…who knows?

Here is an example of a random note I wrote after seeing the latest Bond movie Skyfall. I felt very passionately that I had something to say and that people needed to hear it. So upon leaving the cinema, I marched to the nearest pub, opened up the iPad and wrote this:

 

I know my blog is no great shakes but wouldn’t it be even worse if I was to incorporate product placement into it? As I sit here in the Tokyo Intercontinental having just enjoyed another earth shatteringly good meal, I can only think what would be the perfect way to end a perfect day. Mmm, yes, a nice cold Heineken beer. When I visit Japan I always relax with a tasty Heineken. “Sake with your sashimi sir?” “Pah, cats piss! How dare you!? Pass me one of those Heineken bad boys my good man and make it snappy.” 

And then, after I’ve relaxed with my tasty Heineken beer, I like to go to my hotel room and have a nice refreshing Heineken shower. Long gone are the days when I used to use water to shower in. No, for me it’s Heineken all the way, a nice long, golden, Heineken shower. Mmm, yes, yummy Heineken, the best way to relax after your secure headquarters has just been targeted by international terrorists and your former work colleagues and close friends have just been blown to smithereens by a remotely detonated gas explosion. Yes…pass me a cold one M. 

I just came out of Skyfall the latest Bond movie. Now I am a Bond fan, a huge Bond fan and I thought that it was a great movie. But a great movie ruined by product placement…..

Etc, etc, bla, bla, bla.

 

You see, some geeky Bond enthusiast needs to blog about that guff, not me. I can’t just go off on random rants about stuff. And had I published that and unleashed it on the world, it’s guaranteed that I would have incurred the wrath of every Bond nutcase out there. Probably the scene references were incorrect or they would point out that Heineken have been associated with Bond sine 1998. I could care less.

 

So my point, really badly made once again is that I have found it difficult to find subject matter to write about in my chosen genre of blog. I can’t really write anymore about my current boat as I now work within a large crew, some of whom might be foolish enough to read it, and that would be bad. Writing a manifesto for all to read is not a great career move, as was pointed out to me when I posted my blog ‘Owners’ on the yachty website Dockwalk, but accidentally posted it under my actual name and not my alias achefabroad. Oops. So there will be no more tales of current employers. You’ll have to wait until I get fired for that.

There was a subject that I did think about briefly rambling about and that was a kind of open letter to those wishing to enter the yachting Industry. But understand that this is just my unqualified opinion. It’s just what I think, scribbled down while I sink a Heineken, and published on the web to share. So here goes.

 

I don’t consider myself to be a very good chef, despite what people (mainly my mum) continue to tell me. I have great references and pretty much all of my previous employers on yachts, the captains and mostly everyone else I have worked for over the last few years (that I consider the cheffing years) has said and continues to say, how awesome I am. I don’t believe them, never have and probably never will. And I think that stands me in very good stead. No ego you see. None whatsoever. I basically think that I’m shit. 

Anthony Bourdain; I feel your pain. For those of you in the dark, Anthony Bourdain, or Tony as I like to think he would ask me to call him should we ever meet and bond over rice wine and the still-beating heart of a cobra, is a chef turned author of 2 of my favourite books (Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s tour) turned extreme-foodie TV travel show frontman, turned subject of a hugely funny US sitcom starring Bradley Cooper turned annoying yes-man TV whore who should have told the TV execs to go take a running jump when they came-a-knokin’ at his door and asked him to sell his soul to the Food Network for mountains of filthy cash money……and breath. “Don’t hold back, tell us what you really think.” Er, sorry, now I’ve got that off my chest, back to the point that I was trying (badly) to make.

One of Tony’s jobs that he has become more well known for was to front a TV show for the Food Network and then the Travel Channel  that, in a nutshell, involved him traveling around the globe to various locations and eating all of the food at said location. Examples of previous episodes are, a trip to the French Laundry in the Napa Valley, a week in St. Petersburg eating Borscht and learning how to drink vodka, drinking snakes blood in Vietnam and sampling the world’s best sushi in Tokyo. My point (really, very badly made and drawn out) is that I bet the guy is stuffed. Full to bursting, all of the time. Ready to explode at any moment should even the words ‘wafer thin mint’ be uttered in his vicinity.

So…I feel your pain, Anthony Bourdain. Hey that rhymes! I’m a poet but I just don’t realize it.

Let me offer up another analogy to try to explain to you exactly how stuffed I am. Remember Cagney and Lacey, the 80’s lady cop duo. One hot, one…well…not. During the opening credits of the show, when Detective Mary Beth Lacey and her partner Detective Sergeant Christine Cagney are power walking down a New York street on their way to bust some caps in some asses, there is a lady that walks briefly along side the duo. That lady, wearing the light blue dress/sailors uniform/tent holds the record for the longest pregnancy in TV history. Fact.

“What the flipperty flip are you talking about?” I hear you cry impatiently. Well…interesting fact…that young lady was pregnant on our TV screens for 7 years, from 1981 to 1988, in 126 episodes. One would imagine that by the end of the show’s 7 year run, she felt pretty much ready to burst. You see? You SEE? No? Ok, I give up, I’m just sayin’ that I have eaten a lot and I feel quite full, that’s all.

So I am sitting here, one week later, in the Bamboo Bar of the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok on the banks of the Chao Phraya river, nursing a Hemingway Daiquiri (I know he was in Cuba but Thailand doesn’t seem to have a famous cocktail, and ‘nursing a Singha beer’ doesn’t sound quite as romantic), and trying to piece together an overall impression of my stay in Japan. Well just Tokyo actually. As I have often found, when only briefly visiting countries and cities, it is of course impossible to get a true picture of said city or country. To really get into the guts, the beating heart of a place, months of immersion are required, even years. So France, after having worked there on and off for several years and in multiple locations, I think I have a grasp on. Even Bangkok, having stayed here, over the years, for several months, I think I have a rough idea of what its all about. But 9 days in Tokyo, as Donnie Brasco and Benjamin ‘Lefty’ Ruggiero would say, “Forgedabowdit”.

I left knowing nothing of Tokyo’s culture, history, customs or ideals. I know nothing of what it is like to be Japanese and living in that vast metropolis. Or what the whole ‘salary man’ thing is all about, or sumo, or manga, or pachinko, or ryukin or geishas or any of that interesting stuff. To learn these things, I shall have to pay this fascinating country another visit, or ten. I do, however, know a great place for sushi if you happen to have three hundred quid burning a hole in your pocket.

I did put a tick by the ‘eat deadly blow fish’ box though.

In the 9 days I was in Tokyo I managed to eat my way through nearly 30 Michelin stars, which sounds like a lot, but when you think that Tokyo is a city that boasts 384 stars (!) in comparison with London with around 64 stars and Paris with…oh no one cares about Paris anymore, then it really isn’t that bigger deal at all. I am conscious of coming across as a massive snob (that’s snob) but just by stumbling around Tokyo and wandering into random eateries, you are probably more likely to end up in a starred restaurant than not, and with only 9 days in town and with no local to show me around i felt it prudent to book most of my restaurants before i got there. And when choosing the restaurants, i just went with what the inter web told me were the best in their fields. Best tempura, best sushi, best sashimi, best ramen, best dessert served in a coconut by a ninja who then chops off the top of the coconut with a samurai sword (actually happened) etc.

As a city, they just seem to demand a higher over all standard of food than back home in blighty. Well more accurately, a higher standard of ingredient and preparation. Whereas I still can’t get my head around the fact that a piece of fish on top of some rice garners 3 stars, I do appreciate the idea of perfection, even in its simplest form, being rewarded with the ultimate accolade. Not that the old gentleman behind the sushi counter gives a flying fish what the farts at the Michelin guide think of his rice and fish combo. He is just a master of his art and if you want to come and try his sushi, then come along, but don’t expect to be smiled at or in anyway made to feel welcome. Just eat the damn fish and get out!

(This guy really hated me i think)

I think that the difference between ‘our’ food and ‘their’ food has a lot to do with the belief that if you are going to do a job, be it cleaning a hotel room toilet, driving a taxi, preparing some grilled meat-on-a-stick or cooking a 57 course tasting menu, if you are Japanese and doing that job, it goes without saying that you will do it perfectly. There is no question of doing the job any other way. Its no biggy, its just how they do things. It’s a given. Take the toilets for example (believe me I tried, but it wouldn’t fit in my hand luggage), what is the perfect way to clean your bum? Toilet paper? Of course not, lets invent a toilet that washes your bum perfectly, the Japanese way, that leaves your bum clean, polished, disinfected and as shiny as a new penny. Go to the loo in a pub in London and you’ll be lucky not to have to use the 5 pound note in your back pocket to clean up with.

Perform ones ablutions in Japan however and you will be confronted, as I was, with the following buttons: Spray, stop, soft, bidet, dry, oscillating, massage (my personal favorite), power deodorizer, discreet, front and rear. No wander I was always late for dinner.

And by the way, what does the button on the left wash!?

The discreet button, by the way, omits a noise to drown out any embarrassing and unwanted flatulence that may ‘kill the moment’ should your partner be in the next room dressed as Princess Leia, reclining on the rotating heart shaped water-bed with a glass of champagne and a filthy look in her eyes. I had hoped and prayed that it would be either the sound of a ship’s foghorn or of morning bird song. To find out what it actually is, go to Japan.

Taxis! Taxis in Tokyo are the best in the world…fact! Again, another example of people taking pride in there work. Every taxi is spotlessly clean, inside and out. The rear doors open automatically when you approach and close automatically behind you so as not to contaminate the door handle with your filthy geijin hands. Your driver is dressed in an immaculate, pressed suit with white gloves and will then take you wherever you want to go, provided you can communicate the address to him as he probably won’t speak any English.

But all the taxis have Satnav so all you need is an address and you are good to go. Actually, scrap that last statement. Tokyo is notoriously difficult to navigate and even the locals get lost sometimes, but as I said in my last post, if the driver does have difficulty finding the particular pachinko parlor you are looking for, he would rather die than give up trying to find it for you. He will ask strangers, phone relatives, phone friends, ask the audience, go 50/50, walk up and down streets knocking on doors until he has delivered you safely to your destination. And all the while you will be safe in the knowledge that the meter is running, there is no bullshit squabbling over the fare. There is no tampering of the meter or taking the long way around to hike up the price. The price is the price. And it’s fairly reasonable to boot. Cheaper probably than a London ‘talk-the-back-legs-off-a-donkey’, ‘apples’n’pears’, ‘Mary Poppins’, cabbie. I appreciate a good taxi. Especially at the moment as I am in Thailand and getting a taxi here that will take you where you want to go with out you ending up at your final destination 2 hours late but with a new suit, some fake gems and a soapy massage, is often a trial.

Have I wandered off the point again? No, I think I’m still ok. My point I think is that the food in Japan is great and for the above reasons. And that I had a great overall experience, if a little pricey. But I do plan to go back and maybe spend longer and focus less on the food but more on meeting the people. After all, I am a man of the people.

Anyway…time for my new suit/fake gem/ soapy massage ride home. Wish me luck.

TTFN

achefabroad x

So on to my next exciting adventure. Saying a fond farewell to Tahiti, where I have been based since January, I boarded a plane bound for Tokyo, heading for an eight day restaurant marathon.

Day one of my trip was supposed to include dinner at the 2 Michelin star restaurant Pierre Gagnaire, but unfortunately, due to me not reading my travel itinerary properly and forgetting that I would be flying over the international date line, like the dim-witted Nerf Herder that I am, I was still over the Pacific while Pierre was patiently awaiting my arrival. So this was my first meal.

Not bad for plane food and served with actual razor sharp metal cutlery. Apparently, terrorists don’t travel business class, so its fine to hand out knives and forks with which, given a year or two, a terrorist could easily hack his way through the 2 foot thick Kevlar plated cockpit door.

 Landing at Tokyo’s Narita airport was uneventful, although due to my dismayingly random and increasingly severe fear of flying that I am developing for apparently no reason, it took the entire flight crew to undo my grip on the arm rests.

Getting from the plane to the hotel was a breeze. Everything seems so calm and professionally done. Immigration was a doddle and my bag was the first to come through the baggage claim. Straight through to get my ticket for the bus which departed 10 minutes later and dropped my on the hotel’s doorstep. My first impressions are good. It’s a very clean city with none of the panicked rush of other cities like London. The traffic all seems to be moving at the same pace with no one speeding. All the cars are pristine, as are the roads.

 My first restaurant visit, having missed out on Gagnaire (though hopefully rebooked for lunch the next day) was to the 1 Michelin star Mikawa Zezankyo tempura restaurant. I decided to get a taxi to this one even though the hotel had very kindly given me very detailed maps and instructions on how to get to all my restaurants using public transport. Only a few hours after a 12 hour flight, I wasn’t quite ready to tackle Tokyo’s metro yet. Also this place was quite far away and in a residential area of the city. Another lesson for other cities was given by my taxi driver. Seated in his immaculately clean car we drove across town. He had GPS and also the Japanese map I gave him with the restaurant clearly marked. This tiny place is located on a residential side street and took us a while to find, but never showing any signs of fluster, my taxi man went to great effort to make sure he got me to my destination. Twice getting out of the car and walking up and down streets looking and asking people if they knew where it was. I think the taxis here take great pride in their job and probably would rather commit seppuku than not get a fare to their destination. I fear that the same set of circumstances in a London cab would yield an entirely different and infinitely more stressful experience. Anyway, we got there.

I have been intrigued by some of the restaurants that I have made reservations here in Japan. In particular, the small ones with maybe only eight covers and one chef that have earned one, two and in a couple of cases three Michelin stars. How is it possible for one guy with a deep-fat fryer and a tub of tempura batter to gain a star. One star restaurants are defined by the Michelin guide as ‘A very good restaurant in its category’. That sounds easy enough, but the one star restaurants that I have visited in the past have mostly demonstrated extensive and sometimes complex menus coupled with extensive wine lists and exceptional service. How could this be achieved by just one man and his wife? 

I was the last of nine guests to arrive and, after removing my shoes, was seated at the counter. Apparently the hotel concierge had done a great job when making my reservations as I was seated in the middle of the counter directly in front of the chef, an elderly man wielding a long, thick set of chop-sticks.

In my research of this restaurant, it had been reported by a few people that no English is spoken. So my first reaction on being seated was to desperately look around for a western face. None were to be found. All the other guests appeared to be locals. Confronted by various small bowls, plates and little tea pots containing various accompaniments, I really had no clue what to do. So I played the old waiting game and started waiting to see what those around me were doing. After a few minutes of just sitting there looking confused (my default expression) I was eventually rescued by my neighbor who, thank the lord, was American Japanese. He was a likably guy there with his wife on holiday from Colorado. After explaining to me that I should put the grated Japanese radish in my bowl and mix it with the soy in the tea pot, then add a spoon of salt to the plate provided so that I had two options for dipping my tempura, his first question to me was how did I find out about this place. Apparently this chef was famous throughout Japan as a tempura master but not many westerners came through the door. We were all eating the same set menu and as each piece of tempura was cooked, our chef would place it in front of each guest on a little stand where we would grab the tasty morsels and dip and scoff. It was a very simple set up. Just a large platter behind the chef containing what ever was the best in the market that morning. Asparagus, Japanese sweet potato, chilli peppers similar to the Spanish padron peppers and aubergine. The seafood started to come, first some tempura shrimp, the bodies cooked first and then the heads.

The tempura was incredibly light with the outside of the shrimps crisp and the interior barely cooked. Apparently the secret to tempura success is to not break the batter with your chop-sticks before dipping it in the hot oil. Therefore you will not let any oil seep into the fish and it should fry on the outside and steam from the inside. One after the other, the best of Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, cooked by the best tempura chef in Japan, appeared on the stands in front of us. Cuttlefish, squid, sea eel, baby octopus and oysters. There were a lot more fish that came but, due to the effects of the sake that was eagerly being toped up all the time by the chef’s lovely wife, they slip my mind. The equivalent of the meat course was a large juicy cep mushroom cooked and sliced in half. That was followed by more of the vegetables and finally the rice course which was similar to congee, a broth of fish and rice. Dessert was a bit disappointing as it only consisted of three large sweet beans. Nice, sort of, but it was no sticky toffee pudding. As the chef held court clearly regaling his guests with hilarious anecdotes in Japanese, green tea was served. I was ready to leave by then. Full to bursting and getting more and more paranoid as, with increasing frequency, each hilarious punch line was delivered with a nod towards me, the geijin. Upon my departure I was given the menu which had been hand drawn by the chef and contained beautiful calligraphy and pictures of the fish we had been served.

At 18,500 Japanese Yen, it wasn’t cheap, but I fear there will be heavier bills to come. Regarding the Michelin star, it certainly ticks the boxes. It was certainly a very good restaurant in its category. Just dismayingly simple. Is that really all it takes, one man, one fryer and the freshest of ingredients? It seems too easy. But I don’t want to detract form the restaurant as simple or not, it is certainly deserved.

TTFN

achefabroad x

Let me tell you about my friend, the bastard. When I refer to him as the bastard, please understand that I use the word with affection and love, as he is a good friend and an all-round stand-up guy. A real gent, a tip-top, bona fide, awesome dude. If I had a child (I won’t), if I had a daughter of age (again Mum, never gonna happen), I would welcome my friend into my home and share a glass of sherry with him before allowing him to take her out for dinner (actually no I wouldn’t, any man who so much as glances at the daughter that I am never going to have had better be able to make like Usain Bolt). But he is a bastard. The bastard. Like one refers to Lebowski as ‘The Dude’, me and my other pals refer to him affectionately as ‘The Bastard’. Sometimes ‘The lucky Bastard’ if we are feeling particularly unkind. Maybe for the benefit of anyone who is reading this blog before the watershed and is horrified that I have turned the air blue with my fruity language, we should use a codename to refer to my friend the bastard. Let me think…what’s a suitable and inoffensive codename to refer to my friend the bastard instead of ‘The bastard’. Lets call him ‘Bob’….’The Bob’…’The Bastard Bob’.

Yachting pays well. It pays really well. Really really well. (note to self: link this blog to my match.com profile) And if you manage to build up a good CV, work on a few yachts gradually gaining more and more experience, it pays really really really well. A package for a chef on board a big shiny plastic-fantastic 50 meter motor yacht, if you include all the perks, vehicle when based somewhere, all food, accommodation, all travel expenses, mobile phone paid for, paid leave of maybe 40 days per year with a free return flight home from anywhere in the world and a hefty tax free (sort of) monthly salary would probably be in the same ballpark as that of an executive chef in a London 5* hotel. And in a lot of cases would far exceed that. Then you get the really lucky guys, like my friend The Bob, who work on yachts owned by not just ridiculously wealthy individuals but incredibly ridiculously wealthy individuals. Your Abramovich’s, Paul Allen’s and Sultan Qaboos’s of this world. They will be getting other perks on top of their enormous salaries. The Bob is the chef on board a large yacht owned by a middle eastern gentleman, and when not cooking for the owner, he is regularly flown all over the world to restaurants that the boss likes, to eat there so as to be able to recreate some of the dishes back on the yacht to impress the owners guests. So he has had free travel and the bill picked up by the yacht in such places as El Bulli in Spain, Noma in Copenhagen, the French laundry in California and a host of other world beating restaurants all over the globe. That’s why we call him The Bob. The Bob is also on rotation on full pay so he actually only works half the year doing two months on followed by two months off but still gets a full salary every month. The Bob also has a healthy development budget so when the yacht is on down time, he can fly off to Japan and do an intensive sushi course hosted by the worlds greatest sushi chefs or maybe he’ll pop off to the Napa Valley to learn about Californian wines and spend a few days in Thomas keller’s kitchen. The Bob!

I, on the other hand, have to pay for all that fun stuff myself at the moment, and will soon be spending an absolute fortune eating my way around Tokyo, Thailand, hopefully Spain and a little bit of south America before rejoining my yacht in Panama. I can sense that maybe you have a sudden urge to reach through your computer screen, grab me around the neck and start throttling me while screaming at me “Oh dear! Poor you! Having to spend two months traveling and eating in some of the worlds best restaurants! Diddums!” so I hasten to add that I am in no way complaining about my life at the moment and understand how lucky I am to be able to take that time off and do those things. And also how lucky I am to have even stumbled across this world in which I now live. The world of yachting.

It always surprises me that there are not more professional chefs chasing yacht jobs. But I guess that people don’t really hear about this little niche in the hospitality industry. I only found out about it by chance through a friend I was working with in a French ski resort. I was working in Val D’isere as a chef in one of the hotels there and he advised me that at the end of the season I should forget about going home and just get the train straight down to Antibes on the cote d’azur. I had no idea what to expect. He told me not to worry, just to head down there, get a bed in one of the hostels, sign up to the crewing agencies, drink in the Blue Lady and I’d have a job within a couple of days. That is exactly what I did and he was right, within a couple of days I was getting interviews. After one unsuccessful trial in which I had attempted to cook a ridiculously complicated menu in a teeny tiny galley that also doubled as the crew mess and where the crew were practically sitting on my lap as I attempted to recreate the 37 course El Bulli tasting menu, I decided to change my tactics and simplify. I came up with a menu that I was comfortable cooking and that I new I could find all the ingredients in the local market. I had moved into an apartment with a young lady (what can I say, I work fast) and so we held a dinner party to test the menu. All good. Easy to cook, looked good on the plate and tasted great. So when my next trial came along on a little Sunseeker yacht with 3 crew, I delivered the goods and got the job.

This was back in 2003 and was to be my first summer Mediterranean season onboard a motor yacht. It was a great season. We were 3 crew and my role was not only cooking for the crew and 6 guests but also to do the deck work with the captain and Stewardess. The galley was tiny and completely open to the main saloon. Just one marble worktop and an oven behind me and one large domestic fridge against the wall. Think, Joey and Chandler’s kitchen in Friends but shinier and with a 4 million euro piece of plastic attached to it.

It was hard to adapt to the limited space from having previously been cooking in large hotels and restaurants. Luckily for me we were in ports most of the time rather than at anchor somewhere remote so I could easily walk off the boat and shop every morning. So I did not have to worry about having to cram 3 days worth of food into the fridge to keep us alive and not running out of caviar and unicorn steaks before I could next get to a shop. The owners were Russian but having cooked for a lot of Russians since, I now know that these guys were very easy going by comparison. I learned a huge amount from that season and was very grateful to the captain as I knew it was at times very frustrating for him having to teach me the way to do things on a yacht. Even after that season, I did not consider yachting as a career option really. The money had not been anything spectacular, no more than I could earn at home and sharing the tiniest cabin with the stewardess, captain, washing machine, ironing board and the engine room door did not fill me with joy at the thought of doing another season. I went back to the UK, did some work in London, building my CV and also did a few more seasons in the ski resorts of France, Austria and Canada.

My return to yachting, and the time when I eventually decided to pursue it as a career came some years later and again by chance. I was working again in Val D’isere, this time for a luxury ski company called Scott Dunn cooking for 12 guests in a beautiful chalet.

Mine is the one in the middle.

I was really enjoying it as this company were operating at the top of the market and catering for some wealthy and demanding guests. As the chef, I had a lot of freedom with the menus I cooked and was also less constrained by budgets (a little bit like on a yacht). One week, the guests that were staying in my chalet happened to be yacht captains with their families and friends. Long story short, well, short story shorter, I cooked, they ate, they liked. A few weeks later I got a call from one of the guests offering me the chance to come and trial for a position. “On your yacht?” I asked. “No, not on our yacht but for the owner of our yacht in one of his properties”. “Okeydokey, where do you want me and when?”. I was told to come down to Antibes and I would be driven to the owner’s villa (one of them) near by and I would be asked to cook for him for a couple of days. Then we would take it from there. Sounded good, I just needed to get the time off from the ski chalet to go down there. They were reluctant to say the least and gave me quite a hard time about wanting to take four days off during the season. At this point I was ready to turn the trial down and stay in the Alps as it was looking like if I decided to go and do the trial then I would have no job to come back to. I had a conversation over the phone with the lady who was setting me up for the trial and explained to her my predicament. She said that she completely understood and that I should not worry too much about it but that she thought that I had a good chance of getting the job as she was unaware of anyone else trialing for it. And with the captain’s recommendation from his stay in my chalet, it was almost a done deal. I was still thinking hard about it when I asked her who it was I would be cooking for. “Oh, sorry yeah, I forgot to say, it’s His Royal Highness The Crown Prince Of somewhere hot and sandy”.“I’ll see you Monday” I said. I told the chalet company that I had to give it a shot, its not every day you get asked to cook for and potentially work for a royal family, so it would be great if after the trial I could come back to work but if you don’t want me back then so be it. They obliged and very kindly sent me off to Antibes with their best wishes.

Upon my arrival, I was met as planned by the captain’s wife, who then drove me up the owner’s villa. The villa was located atop a hill looking out over the sea. Now when I think of a villa, I think of a modest sized house with maybe a pool. Tiled floors, white washed walls, that sort of thing. But I new this guy must have a few quid so I figured its probably going to have maybe a few more bedrooms, maybe some accommodation for the staff in the basement, maybe a bigger pool. Welcome to yachting! This place was enormous.

A huge compound surrounded by miles of perfectly trimmed hedge and topiary. Multiple buildings of stunning beauty that were each the size of small hotels. Several swimming pools and tennis courts from what I could see, as I wasn’t allowed to wander around too much for security reasons. There were security cameras everywhere and I was told that there were heavily armed Ninjas (she may have said guards but a like to think that they were Ninjas as if I was that rich I would have Ninjas protecting me) wandering around and that if the owner’s father was in residence, they basically brought a small army with them (an army of Ninjas).

I was shown to the staff quarters. The staff quarters were like what I was expecting the whole place to be like. A beautiful villa with it’s own driveway, it had an enormous lavishly furnished lounge area and kitchens. The room in which I was staying which would become my residence if I got the job was bigger and more lavishly furnished than any 5* hotel room I have ever stayed in or any suite that I have seen. I have to get this job, I thought to myself.

I had already sent ahead a menu plan that I proposed to cook for the owner, and the owner had chosen which dishes he wanted to try. I figured I would really have to pull out all of the stops to impress this guy. I was told that I would not be required to prepare breakfast as they had it delivered from a nearby 3 Michelin star restaurant every morning…. no pressure then. I started early the next morning at 5am in order to get to grips with a kitchen that I had not yet seen. I have worked in kitchens of varying sizes from small restaurant kitchens catering for 40 or 50 covers to vast kitchens catering for thousands. This kitchen in which I was supposed to be cooking lunch and dinner for two people would not have looked out of place in the basement of the Mandarin Oriental. It was big, really big and was packed with shiny new state of the art industrial equipment. A chef’s Aladdin’s cave. I could have employed ten more cooks and catered for a 200 cover high end restaurant out of this kitchen. It felt weird just me rattling around in that kitchen just knocking together lunch for two. They had even provided me with a commis chef to do any prep I needed. It was nuts. A ridiculous package on offer to cook for two people, husband and wife, the occasional lunch and dinner as they would be at home at the palace a lot of the time and also onboard the yacht where they of course had other chefs. And I was to get a commis chef to help me do that. I think I mentioned recently the whole crazy factor in this profession.

I didn’t get the job. And for good reasons. At the time I had not yet got around to learning to drive and as this villa/small city was on top of a very big hill, a driving license was a necessity. Also I had fallen into that trap of trying to impress by cooking complex dishes that would not have looked out of place in a Michelin restaurant. This guy just wanted very simple, fresh and healthy food. Of course. He said my cooking had been excellent but that when he wanted high-end Michelin food, he went to a high-end Michelin restaurant. At home, he just wanted homely food. That did annoy me a bit as I had asked a few times what I should cook and just been told to cook what I normally cook. Had I been told that all the guy wanted was a piece of fresh fish, a beurre blanc and some in-season asparagus, then I would have knocked it out of the park. Ho hum.

Before I was driven back to the train station after my unsuccessful trial I was handed a white envelope by the staff manager. I opened it, €2000 for a day and a half’s work. I was obviously very grateful as that equated to about 2 months work in the ski resort but also gutted at what could have been. Again, I left the South of France thinking that maybe yachting was not really for me.

Now I really can’t thank these people enough as even after I had failed to impress their boss, they called me up again a couple of weeks later and offered me some work on board the yacht. I would be cooking for crew but may have to cook some guest food also. So after the ski season had come to a close, I again got the train down to Antibes and checked into the crew hostel. I ended up doing a couple of weeks work onboard the yacht and did actually cook for the owner once. “Wow! Tell us what he asked you to cook. What does a billionaire Arab prince have for his tea? Slow cooked Narnian Centaur bum, marinated in angel’s tears? Unicorn burgers?” Not quite. A cheese sandwich. Yes, all those years cooking in such prestigious kitchens as the House of Lords and the Mandarin Oriental had finally paid off and I was able to prepare a cheese sandwich for an Arab Prince. He even ate it!

At the end of my time onboard the yacht, the captain took me to one side and said that there might be a more permanent position coming up but that I would have to learn to drive and also get an STCW safety qualification in order to comply with regulations. So I had to make a decision. If I wanted to seriously consider going into yachting as a career then I would have to invest a large chunk of cash. The STCW course alone was over £1000 and who new how much it would cost to get me from never having driven a car to getting my license when lessons were over £20 per hour. I decided to go for it and so I went home to the UK and 2 months later I was an STCW qualified car driver and ready to take the yachting world by storm. It certainly hasn’t been a straightforward path but several years later, here I am, sitting in a bar on the dock in Tahiti not 100 yards from the 40m yacht I have been working on for nearly a year now, writing this blog.

I am a lucky boy. But not yet a bastard. I am still working my way up in the industry but hopefully one day I will be able to tell you about the 100m yacht I am working on, and you will say…what a bastard! (Affectionately of course).

TTFN

achefabroad x

Disclaimer: Owners of yachts are all incredibly awesome and generally fantastic people. Some of the nicest people that I have ever met, nay, THE nicest people I have ever met. What has been written below is clearly the delusional witterings of a pea brained village idiot. (see below)

Owners of yachts are mental. Fact. Actually, I would like to amend that statement ‘your honor’, and go as far as saying that all owners of yachts are mental. Anyone who decides that it is a good idea to throw gabillions of dollars/pounds/euros/groats into the cash black hole that is a luxury yacht has got to be a few croissants short of a continental breakfast right?

Before I get myself black listed from every yacht on the planet, I would like to add that just because they are a little bit ‘Charlie Sheen’, a little bit ‘Christmas crackers’, does not necessarily mean that they are not nice people. Some of them are extremely nice people. Especially all the ones that I have ever worked for. They were all lovely people. Ahem.

I’m just not quite sure what to make of it. Do you have to be crazy to get super rich or when you become super rich, does that make you crazy. Or do you start off a little bit crazy, say, a Susan Boyle on the crazy scale and then as you slowly start to make your millions then you become a Britney Spears on the crazy scale, until finally when you are a gazillion billionaire you go full Charlie Sheen, drinking tiger blood naked on the aft deck and howling at the moon while I serve you your pre dinner canapés?

My experiences of crazy bosses have been quite tame I think, compared to some stories I have heard which I might go into more detail later. Most recently, I was fired from a yacht, as was a stewardess and the captain. All during one ten day trip with the owners onboard. The crazy owners.

I don’t mind telling you that I was fired because as I have said before in previous blogs (read them, I hear they’re ok), being fired from a yacht is really not as bad as it sounds. It’s not like in real life where you really have had to do something pretty bad to get the sack or just be super shit at your job. In yachting you get fired because the boss requested a stewardess with blue eyes and a D-cup not brown eyes and a C-cup. Or the boss doesn’t like the way you can’t cook him his very well done steak just how he likes it, nice and pink. Or you’re too tall or too thin or too English etc.

Anyway, some of you know that I left the yacht that I was working on based in French Polynesia a few months ago to return to the Mediterranean and work onboard another yacht. I have since returned back to the boat in Tahiti and am very glad to be back. The yacht that I joined in France was slightly smaller and captained by a friend of mine who I had previously worked for on another yacht a couple of years ago. I turned up to the boat pretty much straight off the plane from Tahiti ready to start work as this was the owners first time using the boat since a refit and crew change. All crew were new and the only people who had met the boss so far were the captain and engineer. Everyone was frantically trying to get the yacht ready for the boss’s imminent arrival when he would be taking the yacht for 10 days with his wife, 6 guests and 2 Chihuahuas.

That, right there, was my first little ‘crazy’ alarm that went off. The dogs. I’m not saying that people who own small, yappy, “kick ‘em and they fly” type dogs are crazy, but if you are flying them thousands of miles, having lickle doggy life jackets custom made, spending thousands on having special bars fitted on all the gaps in the yacht at deck level so as to prevent the tiny beasties from attempting to jump overboard and make a swim for it…then for me…crazy alarm.

The second alarm started ringing when after only 2 days of being onboard, I was having to pay for provisioning with my own money. The boats credit card that I was given to buy stuff with had a €600 per day limit, which trust me is not a lot. Especially when you are setting up a boat from scratch. Not only buying food, but equipment and also other departments are using it too. So on a couple of occasions, I found myself at the checkout in Carrefour having just scanned through 5 full trolleys with the card being declined. What are you going to do? Put it all back? Well I just paid for it myself and hoped to get reimbursed by the yacht sharpish. So I had been onboard for a couple of days and already I wasn’t feeling great about this yacht.

Our new boss (by the way, on yachts, the owners are generally referred to as the boss, so if you see a crew all wearing epaulettes and looking a bit serious then one might say “they must have the boss on.”) arrived to board his new yacht with guests, wife and dogs in tow. I observed through the galley window that he was spending quite a while not boarding the yacht but instead walking up and down the dock, inspecting it and pointing at it. Fair enough, I thought, If I had a brand new multi million pound yacht, I would probably point at it to. But this did not look like entirely happy pointing. Whereas if it were my new luxury yacht, I would be pointing and skipping and possibly weeping with joy, he was pointing and frowning. “What’s going on?” I asked the Mate when he came through the galley. “He doesn’t like the colour” he replied. “Well, didn’t he pick the colour?” I asked. “Isn’t that how it works? You go to the luxury super mega yacht shop and say, I’ll have a blue one please, and a pink one for my 4^th wife”. Crazy alarm No.3.

My new galley on this yacht had an automatic sliding door through to the guest areas which worked by pressing a button at floor level with your big toe (just like they do on StarTrek) and the door silently slides open and then closes by itself. There were two sensors to stop the doors from closing should there be any obstructions. Unfortunately the lowest of these sensors was above doggy height, so to avoid an accident that might have resulted in turning 2 Chihuahuas into 4 Chihuahuas I had to lock the door open at all times. This turned my fun galley where all crew were welcome to come and gossip about the new owners, listen to the radio, scratch their arses and generally relax, into a silent, boring, miserable guest contaminated Nazi work camp (I may have exaggerated a bit). I don’t mind an open galley and have worked in them before and always welcome guests in with a smile. The last charter I did on my current yacht had me commis cheffing for one of the guests as they took over the galley for the afternoon and prepared dinner for their friends. Great fun, and a lot less stressful for me. But this new owner made me nervous, and also the dogs made me nervous. I was expecting little annoying yappy dogs. Not judgmental, mind reading, soul seeing, creepy little, bubble eyed, lazy eyed beasties. They would both walk into the galley silently, stop 2 feet from me standing at my chopping board, and just stare at me unblinkingly with their enormous, out-of-proportion, about-to-burst eyes. Looking directly into my soul. I would look down at them, they would tilt their heads slightly and aim a look back up at me that said “what are you looking at you worthless human, get back to work?”

And when it wasn’t the dogs creeping me out, it would be the new boss making me nervous. He would walk into the galley, completely ignore me (this is a very small galley), and start poking around in the cupboards or stick a finger in a sauce or just look at me, mutter something in his native tongue and walk out again.

Before we left the dock on the second day of the trip, the owner told the captain to fire the second stewardess, a really lovely young girl who was new to the industry, just starting out and doing great. Friendly, polite, respectful, outgoing and hard working….sacked after 1 week in yachting. What a great impression she must have got. Thankfully, I know she took it in her stride and secured a position on another yacht and as far as I know is still onboard and doing great. Its just the whole sacking people on a whim that I can never get used to. She had done nothing to offend the boss, it just turned out that he decided (a bit late) that he wanted to reduce the number of crew on the yacht and free up a cabin for more of his guests. Fair enough but he had known the crewing levels for some weeks. Crazy alarm.

The knock on effect of that sacking, apart from freaking everyone out, on a small boat like that is that it changes a lot of people’s job descriptions. The Chief stew is now the sole stew, the decky is now working interior as well doing the laundry and serving guests and the mate is now basically doing most of the deck work. Way to piss your new crew off.

We then did a couple of days cruising and arrived in St.Tropez to stay a couple of days. The crew were all doing their jobs professionally but were understandably nervous. I remember preparing lunch for the guests when the bosses wife wandered into the galley and asked if I would mind if they went out to lunch instead of eating onboard. I said of course I did not mind, while trying to look slightly disappointed when in fact having the guests off the boat would really help me out and give me time to get ahead of the game.  After the guests had left the yacht to go out for lunch, it was just the crew and the pesky dogs left onboard. Then suddenly, the boat manager is walking onto the yacht. Most yachts are managed by a yacht management company that might be based anywhere really but usually in South of France or Fort Lauderdale. This guy had flown in from Fort Lauderdale. He then proceeded, in the nicest way possible, to sack the captain, wait for the captain to pack up his belongings and then drive him home before himself getting on a plane back to Fort Lauderdale. All in a days work eh.

Gob smacked doesn’t really accurately describe how the crew then felt. 4 days into a 2 week boss trip and we had lost a stewardess and now the captain. Who would be next in the firing line? The guests arrived back to the yacht and understandably things were a little uneasy. The wife chatted to us and apologized for not speaking to us about the sacking but that that had been the easiest way to deal with it. It turned out that the new replacement captain had also flown over from the States with the yacht manager and it was to be a straight swap. Old captain off, new captain on. The trip was to continue as if nothing had happened.

After a bit of get to know you time with the new captain, we found out that he had been working for the owners on a smaller yacht based in Florida that they also owned. He also volunteered to us that he was a former Playgirl man of the year 1986, rodeo rider and Hollywood stuntman, and that we were welcome to Google him. We did Google him and the photos of him naked, staring erotically into the middle distance while riding an exercise bicycle ‘a la’ 1980s still haunt me.

So crazy alarm number I’ve lost count was that my friend, who had kindly offered me a job on his yacht and had been working hard refitting the yacht for the new owner for months, and had recruited all the crew, had been sacked with no notice and instantly replaced with a circa 1980’s rodeo riding stunt porn star. CRAZY ALARM!!!

The rest of the trip actually went very smoothly and after some initial fears, all the crew were won over by the new captain who turned out to be an actual great guy. And from what I hear, the remaining crew are still happily working for him.

After all that had happened, I was fairly worried about my position on board. I managed to grab the boat manager before he left back for the States and asked him if I was safe. “Am I next? Do they like the food? Should I pack now?” I was assured that they loved the food and were very happy with me and that I was in absolutely no danger.

As we bid the owner and guests a fond farewell at the end of the trip, the moment after they left, the yacht manager drove up to the yacht, got out of his car and fired me and then fired the chief stewardess. Nothing personal, he said, the owner had in fact wanted to use his chef in the US on this yacht all along. Just a miscommunication and some issues with visas but now the US version of me was ready to go. He also came as a couple with his wife being the chief stewardess so that’s why our original and very awesome chief stew got fired along with me. I did kinda think that that was coming. When I was chatting to the original captain about the job and why he needed me at such short notice, there was the mention of an American chef and visa issues. It just pisses me off that both me and the chief stew were lied to and strung along until the end of the trip just so the owner had someone to cook for. Had he been upfront with me and offered me a day rate, I would have stayed and finished the trip for sure. I felt used, like a circa 1980s exercise bicycle.

I should say that the owners of that yacht were not all bad, they were quite nice and polite to me most of the time and just maybe a little eccentric.  This blog is not about bad mouthing anyone, just some hopefully interesting tales from my travels.

Anyway, it was all a bit crazy the whole very brief experience but does not even come close to any of the craziness that some of the other guests/owners that I have worked for or have had friends work for get up to. But more of that another day. It all worked out well, as I am back on a yacht that I love, with a crew that are great, in one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on earth. What’s not to like. It was a break that I definitely needed but I am very glad to be back. Exciting times are ahead as my yacht heads for the Galapagos, Panama and Christmas in the Caribbean and I head for Japan, Thailand and Cuba before re joining the yacht in Panama. Lots to write about hopefully.

Thanks for reading

TTFN

achefabroad x

One of the great things that I love about working in the yachting industry is that occasionally it really puts things in perspective. It really makes you appreciate how big and beautiful the world on which we so precariously live, actually is. In an age where the planet is shrinking so rapidly as we are all brought closer together in ever increasing efficiency by the advances of modern air travel, it is nice sometimes to be onboard a yacht pootling along at a very leisurely 10 knots. It gives one time to appreciate ones surroundings, as we take 3 days to get to somewhere that it has taken the boss to get to in 1 hour on his private jet. More specifically it gives me 3 days to figure out what the hell I’m going to cook for the guy and what I will do when he inevitably comes back to the boat one day with a brace of 90 kilo Polynesian saber-toothed albino swamp pigs and cries “Neeel, viz zees you are cooking for me zee tasting menu, tvelve courses, vee veel eat in half an hour ya! Chop chop!”

Just kidding, its a different pig! The one at the top was eventually sponsored by the boat and now lives in an apartment near High Street Kensington where it will lead a long and fruitful life before being eventually turned into ‘Wagu Pork’ [copyright:patent no.26753098] nom, nom, nom. (Disclaimer: The last statement may be a lie).

But as with anything, it sometimes has its downsides. For example, standing in the middle of a small room in the middle of the Atlantic as the room pitches, rolls and bucks like the business end of a rodeo bull (that could be either end I guess depending on your perspective), and you are surrounded by razor sharp knives, pots of boiling water, hot oil, heavy pieces of equipment, marinating Polynesian saber-toothed albino swamp pig heads and ill tempered seasick stewardesses (or stewards, we are very PC on achefabroad.com) is sometimes not as much fun as it sounds.

There comes a point when it simply becomes too dangerous to cook. On a relatively small yacht, it may not take the perfect storm to bring about such circumstances. Some yachts won’t have stabilizers, which will make things very uncomfortable in any remotely choppy sea condition. As a rule of thumb, the bigger the boat, the more stable it will be in open water. When I worked onboard a cruise ship with 3000 people onboard, we could plough through pretty much any seas and you would be able to have a game of snooker if you wanted to (no there were no snooker tables onboard, I’m just sayin, it was a smooth ride).

I have done an Atlantic crossing which took around 10 days and was incredibly lucky that we hit a window of calm weather and she was like a mill pond the whole way across. Great for me as I could cook away for the crew and everyone was in good spirits. Crew could be out on deck and exercising in the gym. Morale was high. Everyone felt good and could eat properly and generally enjoy the experience. When it is rough it can be very different. People get ill, you get very tired from continually having to brace yourself as you walk around, its very hard to cook, not that anyone will eat anything anyway. When you are not on watch then you are being bounced around your cabin trying desperately to sleep in order to relieve the boredom.

It does get very boring on a long crossing. The crew will be doing maybe 4 hours on watch sitting on the bridge as either a watch leader driving the boat or a lookout followed by 8 hours off. So one day watch followed by 4 hours in the middle of the night sitting in pitch black trying not to fall asleep while you keep an eye out for any ships/land/giant squid etc.

So to relieve the monotony we try to do some fun stuff on the way across. Maybe some skinny dipping 2000 miles from the nearest point of land, maybe loosing off some of the boats firearms,

a spot of fishing perhaps

some safety drills are always fun,

or a sweep stake to guess the exact time and day of our arrival. Or maybe tie crew members to the mast with cling film and pour rotting slops from the galley over them while dressed as Neptune.

Upon our arrival in …..”hey hey hey, hang on a minute, what the hell was that last one, clingfilm, slops etc”

Ah yes. This ancient tradition of ritual humiliation is generally practiced on most yachts that do crossings. The idea is to target any crew who are crossing the Atlantic for the first time. Well I think it is actually meant to be if you are crossing the Equator for the first time but generally a captain will use any excuse to do this to new crew members. The Atlantic, the Pacific, the pool at the Intercontinental, the street…..if you are crossing it for the first time, beware. The victims are given orders to dress up in fancy dress and then make their way to the pointy bit at the front of the boat….the bow, yes that’s it, the bow. Hey, I’m the chef, its called the front of the boat or the back of the boat. The captain is dressed as Neptune, lord of the seas etc.

The victims are restrained and tied to something.

And this is the part when I think I kinda shot myself in the foot. As the chef, I was approached at the start of the crossing and asked to keep all the food waste from the galley. So all shrimp shells, fish bits, left over cottage pie, left over Roquefort salad with truffle dressing and brussel sprout reduction, left over Polynesian saber-toothed albino swamp pig bum holes etc were handed over to the mate every day and kept in a big container somewhere nice and warm, like the engine room, to fester for a few days until we reached the half way point. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I think I would have selected the items of food waste that I handed over a bit more carefully. “What do we have today then?” “Well yes sir, here you go, all I had left over today was these bottles of champagne and this wad of dollars from the APA and these young local ladies with questionable morals”….thereby turning the tables completely and fulfilling a fantasy in the process. Ah, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Once tied to the boat, a speech is made by Neptune and then we are all made to kiss the mouth of a dead flying fish that was found on deck that morning (does anyone else think that this sounds strange?). The bucket of rotting, fetid slops is then brought out and, yes, you guessed it, tipped over are heads.

Nice. If I had only thought about it abit more, I could have been tied to the mast and showered with Dollar bills, champagne and women with questionable morals. A whole different prospect. And then its back to work. Ah, fond memories.

The yacht I am on at the moment is crossing the Pacific from Tahiti to Panama next month. A trip that will take fully a month going into seas considerably rougher generally than the Atlantic at this time of year. That will be my first Pacific crossing. Actually it won’t. As soon as I heard the news, I managed to persuade the captain that it would be a far better idea to get a relief chef in to cook during the crossing and instead, let me go and eat my way around Tokyo and then spend a month in Thailand followed by a few days in Cuba before getting to Panama just in time to be standing waiting on the dock when the boat arrives. Bullet dodged.

TTFN

achefabroad

I miss a busy restaurant service. The rush, the thrill of it, the buzz and excitement of a kitchen in the middle of serving a room full of hungry punters. I miss the feeling before a busy service. The feeling of nervous anticipation, worry, anxiety and fear at what the night will bring. I miss that last hurried cigarette before service, squatting out back by the bins with a pilfered beer, some pro plus washed down with a redbull or maybe something a bit stronger to get you through the night. I miss that grim look of determination on my colleague’s face  as we turn to go back into the kitchen knowing full well that in less than an hours time we’ll be toiling under a mountain of orders. Most of all, I miss the feeling of camaraderie, the feeling of being part of a team, a ragtag band of socially retarded, borderline alchoholic, criminally minded cooks. Some of my happiest memories are from working in shit restaurants turning out hundreds of meals every night with a team of 10 or so cooks. This is 20 years ago now and even though, back then, I was a thoroughly miserable, angry and generally obnoxious young teenager, the nights I spent getting bullied and harassed by more senior cooks are some of my fondest memories.

“Christ on a bicycle, what on Earth is he babbling on about today….WHAT’S YOUR POINT?” I hear you mutter. Well, dear reader, the reason I bring this up today is because I have recently come to a sad realization. Having taken a short break from Tahitian life over the last few weeks and travelled to France and then back home to London, I have been lucky enough to have had time to eat out a lot. Eating out is by far my favorite pass time (ok it’s not, but this is a family show). I never cook outside of work really and can probably still count on both hands the number of times that I have cooked a meal for myself or another that hasn’t involved getting paid for it (I just managed to restrain myself from putting in a following sentence about me cooking for people only if something that rhymes with ‘getting paid for it’. But I didn’t. Look at me, I’m growing.) I love to eat out. On my own or with others, I don’t care. I prefer with others but will happily crack open a good book while demolishing a 10 course tasting menu.  I’ll have a tasting menu for lunch and then another for dinner if the opportunity arises (which it did when I was back home, 4 michelin stars in a day) and if anyone ever brings out a 9 course tasting breakfast then I’ll be there as well.  Before you all think I am some monstrous Michelin obsessed snob, I do go to other restaurants. If I think or have heard or read somewhere that a place might put something tasty ‘En Ma Belleh’, then I will be there to check it out. The best restaurant tipoff I ever had?…..Nandos. Thanks Sis.

But while indulging myself over the last few weeks, I have walked past a lot of alleyways and side streets. And looking down these alleyways and side streets, has brought back a lot of memories, of which I spoke earlier. Seeing all those chefs, cooks, dishwashers, waiters, waitresses and busboys standing hunched over a fag at the back of their respective places of work has brought with it a sudden realization. I am no longer one of ‘them’. It saddens me to say it, but it is the truth. You see, I sold out a while ago. I chose this life of the ‘private chef’. There was a point, a cross roads, where I could have chosen to stay and work in restaurants and hotels and maybe work up to Michelin glory myself one day, and stayed part of the clan. Or….yachts. Cooking for 10 guests (on a busy day), table d’hote not a la carte (this basically means that they don’t choose from a menu, but just eat what they are given). No budgets or GP’s to worry about. No labour margins to worry about. Sun, travel and quite a tidy pay cheque at the end of the month. Guess what I chose.

Occasionally I’ll visit a restaurant and have such a great time that I want to show my appreciation in another way other than just the service charge (Oi! This is a family show remember!). I want the boys and girls who slaved away over my wonderful meal to know that I really appreciate what they are doing. So I will maybe ask the head waiter how many staff, front and back, are working that night and then buy them all a beer or whatever their poison is. This always goes down well and as soon as word gets out that I cook as well then it usually prompts a quick tour of the kitchen and suddenly me and the head chef are bezzie mates. But then comes the question that I now dread.

“Where do you work?”. Ah…well…yes…erm…funny story….

These guys are fighting the good fight, working ridiculous hours in intolerable conditions because they love food and want to share that love of food with others.  They are now my heroes. I would have so loved to be heading up a trail blazing kitchen in London. But it just never really happened. As soon as I realized that people would actually pay me to cook abroad and travel, I was out of there. See you later UK. So to turn around to a chef who is striving for perfection and trying to get his second star in London and tell him that well actually I cook for 6-10 guests is…well frankly, embarrassing.

But hey, the moneys great, so I’ll get over it.

The photos are all from restaurants I have visited over the last 5 weeks.

Stinking Bishop and Lincolnshire Poacher with a glass of Riesling Auslese at Arbutus in Soho.

http://www.arbutusrestaurant.co.uk

Marinated Scottish scallops with wild sea bream, pickled cucumber, mint yoghurt and avocado oil was the second course of 10 I had for lunch at Pied a Terre near Goodge Street, London. This was by far the nicest meal i had in terms of food. The company was great too as i was sat by myself.

http://www.pied-a-terre.co.uk/tasting-menu

Probably my favourite thing to eat is good ham. This was a little place we found while wandering around Soho. Just a very simple wooden bar with a guy behind it hand slicing some awesome Jamon Iberico de Bellota. Some freshly fried Padron peppers with sea salt and a lovely glass of Palo Cortado dry sherry.

http://www.saltyard.co.uk

Petit fours at Pied a Terre and also below some nice Brie de Meaux and crisp breads.

Dessert at Helene Darroze @ The Connaught was the highlight of what was over all a disappointing meal. I am beginning to learn that high profile restaurants that are built in hotels are often very distracted and not necessarily as focused on the food as maybe they should be. Having worked in one myself that was a part of the kitchen in the Mandarin Oriental London I know that it is indeed hard to focus on your small restaurant while working in an enormous kitchen that is also doing banqueting, room service, staff canteen and a couple of other large scale restaurants. However, as i said, this creme brûlée was very nom nom nom.

http://www.the-connaught.co.uk/london_restaurant.aspx

Another disappointment was Nobu Berkeley Street which turned out to be a very poor version of its famous Mayfair flagship. Just a very rowdy dining room filed with suits wolfing down a quick bento box on their lunch break. The highlight for me was this seared toro with yuzo miso and jalepeno salsa.

http://www.noburestaurants.com/berkeley-st

While we are on the subject of raw fish, we found another little gem in Soho called Ceviche. A small Peruvian dining room where they don’t take reservations but if the dining rom is full, you can sit at the bar behind which, the cooks are busy preparing your food. Luckily for us, the dining room was full as i always prefer to watch the action and also be close to the barman. We shared lots of small dishes (again, the best way to eat in my opinion) such as Seabass ceviche, Tiradito of salmon with tiger’s milk, satsumas and mirin, Mussels with Chalaca salsa, Pulpo al olive and all washed down with some cocktails made from the local poison Pisco. Below is the octopus and also the Alianza lima which was a mixed ceviche of prawns, squid, sea bass and octopus in rocoto chilli tiger’s milk and choclo corn.

And yes, after a while of wandering who the unlucky chap was who had to go and milk the tigers we finally plucked up the courage to ask what this ingredient might actually be. It is infact the name they give for the juice that is created from a ceviche. So a mixture of lime juice, fish and chilli all blended together and often served on the side as well.

http://www.cevicheuk.com

Next up in London was a visit to Heston Blumenthal’s latest outpost which is called Diner by Heston Blumenthal and is inside the Mandarin Oriental. The concept is that he has taken olde English dishes from the last few hundred years and brought them up to date. So on the menu there are dishes like Meat Fruit (c.1500), Broth of Lamb (c.1730) or Nettle Porridge (c.1660) and then there will be a description of the dish and its origins.

I tried the Salamugundy (c.1720) which was chicken oysters (the two tiny but delicious lobes of meat located either side of the back that are usually thrown away), salsify, marrow bone and horse radish cream. My dinning companion Helen (also a chef) had the Rice and Flesh (c.1390) which is pictured below and was described as Saffron, calf tail and red wine. It was a risotto basically but very nice and at £16.00 for a starter you would expect it to be nice.

The two desserts we ordered were Brown Bread Ice Cream (c.1830) with salted butter caramel, pear and malted yeast syrup.

and Tarte of Strawberries (c.1591) with camomile, orange blossom cream & strawberry sorbet.

http://www.dinnerbyheston.com

Last but by no means least, i went on a bit of a pilgrimage with another chef mate of mine to Restaurant Le Louis XV Alain Ducasse in Monaco. For those of you who don’t know, Alain Ducasse is one of Frances great chefs. All our Ramseys and Rouxs started off in his kitchens in Paris back in the day. So to have the chance to grab a trough at his gaff was indeed an exciting prospect. We managed to get a table on the balcony for lunch overlooking casino square. It were dead posh.

I think the highlight for me was the bread, butter and cheese. Me and Tina love a good cheese trolley and in Monaco we were not disappointed.

http://www.alain-ducasse.com/en/restaurant/le-louis-xv-alain-ducasse

Ok, that’s all from me for now. I am sorry to have kept you all waiting for so long but as you can see, I’ve been a busy boy. Hopefully i shall be back soon with more tales from the high seas. I should hopefully be heading away from Tahiti soon towards Galapagos and Panama  so much to write about me thinks.

TTFN

achefabroad x