Lost in translation

Hi everyone, here’s another tale from my time as a young chef.

One of the first places I worked after I qualified was a country house hotel in Yorkshire. I am sure John Cleese must have visited this place at some time because it would have been a great inspiration for Fawlty Towers.

I started work there, as a one of the two commis chefs, there was a head chef and a kitchen hand. We also had a number of extras that joined us when we were busy.

The head chef, if you could call him that, was in his mid 20’s and was really crap, he was totally dominated by the hotel manager who made all the decisions about what went on the menu. The menu was pretty typical for the 70’s too many courses with the usual suspects of prawn cocktail, deep fried scampi, gilled steaks, and a dessert trolley.

My job included stoking up the solid fuel stove first thing in the morning, making up starters, salads, sandwiches, vegetables and deserts. I am not quite sure what the other commis did! I worked 80 hours per week and got one and a half days off. After I had been there a month I was asked if I wanted to be the second chef, which meant a bit more money and working on the chef’s day off. Other that that, I did exactly the same things as before!

When the head chef wasn’t there the manager came into the kitchen to do his job.

The manager was worst than the chef; he didn’t really care about what we served as long as he was making a profit. He did all the buying and used to get the cheapest he could, as a result the quality was always really poor. We used to joke that he went to the market and pulled faces at the stallholders until they threw things at him and that’s what he brought back!

The manager preferred to be behind the bar and always had a glass of wine or whiskey in his hand so was normally pissed. His wife seemed to ignore him most of the time; she had a couple of horses in the stables and, when not riding, spent a lot of time there with the groomsman! I lived in a room above the manager’s house that was so small I could just about touch each wall when I sat on the bed, which had been shortened to fit in the room! Even though I am not tall I couldn’t stretch out straight without banging my head on the wall. There were about 5 other rooms where I lived, all bigger than mine, which besides the other chefs, housed 3 attractive middle aged women who didn’t seem to do anything much but swan about the bar now and again and spend a lot of time in their rooms. A rather prim and proper middle-aged woman, Mrs M, who lived in the main hotel, ran the dining room. The waiters, who were Portuguese, used to take turns to “look after her”. She flirted relentlessly with them in a way that only prim and proper English women can. As chefs we were safe from Mrs M’s amorous approaches as we were considered too rough, rather smelly and beneath her (not literally of course). There were 4 waiters and yes, one was called Manuel. He didn’t have the looks of the other waiters so was safe from Mrs M’s attentions. Manuel was really short and very serious, he rolled the sleaves of his waiter’s jacket up because they were too long but the jacket still came down to his knees. He was picked on all the time, especially by the chefs.

One day Manuel said to me “Chris can you cook me some hot kippers for my tea” I said sure and that afternoon presented him with a pair of grilled kippers with a knob of butter melting over them. He just looked at them and in a strong Portuguese accent said “what this?” “Hot kippers” I said. “No” he said “I want hot kippers” “they’re hot kippers” I said but he said “no this kipper, I want hot kippers” I said “it is hot” and pushed his nose in them, saying “see there kippers too”. At this point he threw his arms up in the air and stormed out. About 10 minutes later he came back with one of the other waiters and said “you tell him this not hot kippers” The other waiter slapped Manuel on the back of the head and said “you idiot you mean octopus!”