Thanks to Helen we have a cunning plan. A table plan, that is, for the World Kitchen in Leith event at Out of the Blue next week. More to the point we also have a menu which makes us hungry just to think of it – and it’s a menu you won’t find in any other restaurant. But back for a moment to that table plan because we’re learning fast that there is much more to running a restaurant than writing the menu!
Just for fun, flashback to the 2007 FEAST in Out of the Blue
(film by Alan Stockdale)
After several nights of dreaming about tables I realise that I need a GCSE in what Helen calls ‘waiter maths’. The exam question would go something like this…
You have 60 people coming for dinner and four cooks in the kitchen. There are three hours for eating and drinking. How many tables do you need to make sure diners have time to relax, chill out and enjoy their meal before the next sitting? And how can you make sure they don’t all come at once – so that cooks and waiters meet orders without ending up like a scene out of Fawlty Towers?
We have the answer thanks to a chart drawn up by Helen (her student years working and waiting in Edinburgh restaurants were not wasted). And thanks to Isi at Out of the Blue who is going to magic up 12 tables – now we just need a nice flow of bookings at 15 minute intervals.
(Cue John Cleese striding round the room muttering, ‘Table 10 is 5 minutes late, table 11 is 10 minutes early, and table 5 is all over the place. Why don’t they pay attention!”)
But what are we worrying about! All the bookings are from lovely people who will enter into the spirit of thing. And the spirit of World Kitchen is about the food and the company.
In capable hands: Mridu dishes up cauliflower, coriander and cream
And after yesterday’s meeting we can’t wait to prepare and serve a menu you really won’t find anywhere else: Mridu’s Indian Thali offering bowls of delicately spiced vegetables including black chick peas, Alice’s African fish curry served with ugali and spinach with peanut sauce, Fatima’s Middle Eastern minted lamb meatballs with spiced tomato sauce, Meena’s pakora’s with green chutney made from her granny’s secret recipe, Celia’s Irish champ (which goes amazingly well with the meatballs) and Granny Barron’s Irish soda bread (delicious with Scotch broth). Not to mention Wojtek and Daniel’s melt-in-the-mouth Polish cheese cake, sour apple cake and ginger carrot cake.
All washed down with world music selected by Radio Magnetic specially for the night
Just make sure you’ve got your table booked. Ring 0131 556 4646 or email leithopenspace@btconnect.com
This blog also posted on Leith Open Space website, partners in the heat of the World Kitchen in Leith
I like the thought of bringing a touch of the wild west to the near east. Could this be the start of Edinburgh twinned with Glasgow?
And some Elderflower champagne picked along the River Kelvin in Glasgow’s own Kelvingrove Park last month!