by Lupo Secco
Like many second-generation Italians, I was raised in a restaurant, drip-dyed with the Stakhanovite immigrant work ethic that so infuriates the xenophobes. My uncle — a flamboyant dresser in a three-piece suit and a Fedora, with a pipe clamped in his teeth, a touch of Salvador Dali about him — left Italy to train in Paris as a chef.
He later ran a place in Bristol known as the BBC’s Canteen. He had a lobster tank and would, as a publicity stunt, take two of them down the street on dog leads for a walk. And I wonder where I get my showmanship from.
My father was a wine waiter — I think sommelier is probably pushing it — and worked in a dinner dance venue, serving trad Italian food to suburbanites. As was the fashion in the Seventies, the restaurant was closed to the public on Sundays, but not to the staff.
We would regularly have a full buffet for all the extended Italian families, pouring glasses of Chianti from those wicker-covered bottles you rarely see anymore. The chef had done time, and you wouldn’t fuck with anyone in that kitchen.
Kitchens in those days were volatile places, violent and furious, fuelled by adrenalin, alcohol and amphetamines. I once saw a waiter pin a kitchen porter over a naked flame with a knife to his eyeball.
The waiter in question was bald on top, with long hair down the back and a Zapata moustache, like a cross between Castro and Max Wall. He was known as Giancarlo Sciemo. It wasn’t his actual surname; it’s the Italian word for idiot. I think that about covers it.
And the first book I remember my father giving me was Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell. He told me that Orwell nailed it; and he was right.
Restaurants are in my blood.
I do shifts in the kitchen at The Robin, both prep and cook. The Robin’s kitchen is the antithesis of the ones of my youth. It’s very small and it’s still very fast paced when there’s a full service, but it’s calm by comparison. That is not to say it doesn’t have its moments of drama.
On my first Sunday Service, an unexpected table of nine came in on the last sitting and a second bake of giant Yorkshires was required. And when I say giant, I mean giant. When they emerge from the oven, they are so round, upright and circular, you almost expect to see Austin Powers sitting in them.
We already had about eight checks on, so the Queen was forced to get another batter mix on when all around was bedlam. She knocked a pot of instant coffee off the top shelf and it exploded into the batter, covering her from belt to chin, leaving her wearing a coffee pancake. I think it might be the only time I’ve heard her use an expletive in anger.
On the weekdays I’ve done, it’s two young guys and me: a chef, and a porter on potwash and pies. Both are wiry, one tall, one small, with so little fat on them that I fear that if I sneezed, I’d send both of them face first into the fat fryer.
But this was my first Sunday service and it was an education. There are three sittings on a Sunday — a holy trinity, if you will. The Sunday roasts and pies at the Robin are local legend, so it’s packed throughout, and I suddenly found myself slotted into a machine, seamlessly.
While the Queen and I cooked, front of house is run by Lil Sis and The Angel with a rotating cast of beautiful young waitresses, full to the brim with the zest and zip of Zebedees. At one point, me, the Queen and the Angel were plating eight roasts, none of us speaking, moving in and out, with burning-hot trays in our hands. Meats, vegetables, gravy, quenelling mashed potato with a single spoon. Nothing got dropped, no one got burned. It was like breakdancing ballet.
Five hours flew past in the way time does when you almost don’t want it to. There isn’t time to think — the luxury and the burden of thought disappear like smoke on the breeze. I think too much anyway, so there’s a peace in its absence, a silence I crave.
And it all came back to me. Just like the Chianti bottles, with a Proustian punch that nearly knocked me off my feet. This is where I was born. Words may be what flood my mind, but restaurants really are in my blood.
Down and Out in Paris and Cragg. I couldn’t escape it if I tried.
