Pregnant Pause

I’d like to start by saying that neither Renee or myself are with child, I am merely referring to the fact that although the café will be on hiatus for a couple for months, we will be madly busy in expectation and planning of the wonderful things that are to come.  No that babies aren’t lovely and all that, but I’m very happy and blessed with my two, thank you very much.

Slow roasted pork or paneer skewers with painted hills potatoes and crispy salad were enjoyed by all last Friday.  Jenai was back in the dining room and Matthew had his maiden voyage in the kitchen.  Turns out, he had been hiding his light under a bushel and he is a great cook.  In fact, he will be guest cheffing for us in the autumn, in between climbing sheer rock faces, gigging and all the other amazingly cool things he does for fun which I really admire, but make me feel old!  All went well, with a steady stream of customers.  The clumsiness gremlins only made a brief appearance, but long enough for me to break 2 cafetieres and very nearly fall head first over the sofa.  Nobody was sitting on it at the time, fortunately.

So as the summer, well at least the school holidays, begin, we press the pause button on serving food on Fridays and shift into over-drive on getting everything perfect for the grand opening in October.  Thanks to all of you who have done the pilot journey with us. 

Watch this space…………WE’LL BE BACK.

With a little help from our friends

When the cheese cake hit the fan big time on Friday morning, Matthew, Malcolm and Debbie swooped in, capes flapping in the breeze, to rescue us.

All was well, all was planned; Renee and Malcolm had devoted much of Thursday to producing a delicious feast of dhal, two types of curry (chicken and veg), salad, raita and poppadoms.  Then Friday and I arrived with calamity tucked into our back pockets!  I am known for being extremely organised and uncontrollably clumsy in equal measure, merely one of many ridiculous contradictions that is me, I like to think the two things balance each other out, sort of.  Anyway, it would seem that I left my organised self sleeping on Friday morning and a Mr Bean-esque persona took her place; bumbling, disorientated and disorganised, not exactly the kind of person you want in the kitchen!

I forgot scales, ingredients and failed to notice limes which were cunningly hidden in plain sight, so I had to interrupt the Taylor’s breakfast time, sorry Renee.  Whilst Malcolm calmly and expertly finished and perfected his culinary masterpiece, I flapped and flailed, but somehow eventually produced a subayon which tasted great, but lacked at little in the presentation department.  It was only as half past nine approached that I realised that we were going to be one down; our key player Jenai could not make it today.  We were about to trial our new ordering system – how could this be happening?  My head started to spin, I thought I might pass out and sent a call up to the heavens for sanity and back up. 

That was when the phone rang.   The heavens delivered Debbie to us as guest waitress for the day.  Matthew helped me set up and made a delicious fruit salad before disappearing of to climb something in the rainy Peak District and it all worked swimmingly.  Perhaps the catastrophe was all in my head!  We saw many smiling and enthusiastic new faces alongside our faithful, fantastic familiar ones and sold out of curry before I could even dip a poppadum in the sauce.  Our fabulous friends even stayed and helped with the clearing up.  Thank you Debbie and Malcolm for services above and beyond the call of duty, we owe your family.  I hope we didn’t out you off ever helping us again.

So my quotation might have been a little predictable, but at 9.30am the brilliant outcome of the day could not have been.  I had given in to panic, but nothing played out as I had expected.  Shame on my lack of faith.  Fear not future customers, I have duly chagrined myself, banished Mr Bean and, moreover, Jenai is back for Friday, so please come and join us for a lunch this Friday.  Please.

Spicing things up

It's curry week at Filling the Gap N15 courtesy of our première guest chef, Malcolm.  We will be providing the much needed warmth that the British summer has, once again, failed to.

There will, of course, be a meat and a vegetarian option, both equally delicious and enticing you to scoop them up with a home-made poppadom, yummy.  We will be cooling things down with key lime pie or zingy fresh fruit salad for dessert. Don't worry, we have kept the spiciness elegant and child-friendly.  Malcolm is a dad of three and assures us that his recipe is a family favourite.

Hurry to join us, as there are only two sessions left before our summer "break".  I do not use these quotation marks lightly, which is a pet hate of mine, by the way ("Get well soon" just seems rude!)  Although we won't be opening again until October (gasp, sob!) our time will be spent chasing up the funding applications, getting the kitchen up to scratch and most excitingly planning our opening event for Saturday October 6th.  Funding applications have been sent out and prayers have been sent up, but come hell or high water, we will be open from October. It would just be great to do so with some funding under our belts.
October seems like a long time, but all these stinky, adminy gremlins must be conquered so we can get back to the real business we enjoy; serving food to our community.  With some fun in the sun (hopefully, rain, rain go away) and a couple of sandcastles with the kids thrown in, the autumn will soon come around.  Who knows, it might even we warm enough to eat outside by then!