The push to finish Bar & Grill has already started…

Spice is in full swing and the boys are just finishing cooking on a busy Thursday lunch.  We still don’t have our liquor licence which is a real bore as we can’t get the bar and wine list fired up…but we still need the same amount of staff – not exactly what you want in uncertain times.

Meeting after meeting the focus is on the builders delivering a finished Bar & Grill by the beginning of March.  The kitchen on Level 1 has arrived and the ceiling exhaust is going in on the ground floor; and still the painters haven’t finished that level one kitchen!  It is a push and we seem to be running later than I would like.  All the great ground floor stuff arrives on the 9th February, there is no way the space will be ready.  Andy and Barry it is up to you – I’m still pushing Barry to finish Spice Temple, just a few defects and breakages that are still a problem.

The guys in the Spice kitchen are dealing with a really bad exhaust issue, its too smoky and there area way to many escaping chilli fumes for us to breathe.

Another day at the office and this doesn’t get any easier. I guess if the liquor licence doesn’t come through soon we may have to look at how many kids we can employ.   Again not a result the Goverment would love I’m sure.

Going into week 3 at Spice and all is well…still waiting on a liquor licence so currently it’s BYO, unbelievable value!  The feedback has been fantastic.  Our customers are enjoying the food, making good choices and taking great challenges with the chilli factor.

The wonderful Earl Carter visited us during the week and took some beautiful photos for the Spice Temple website – due to go live any minute.

Enjoy these shots – we look forward to seeing you here soon.

We are finally open, the big night  has arrived with the builders out and the toilets half finished!  There are a few other outstanding issues but in the end Spice Temple is a beautiful, beautiful restaurant.  The builders will be back over the next few days to finish the place but we must open tonight.

It starts out beautifully, as a friend and family soft opening and all the guests are loving it, drinking cocktails and moving through to the dining room.  All looks and feels great for the first hour, then as the service hits a crescendo in the kitchen, we are totally out of sorts, in the shit really, and the systems we have in place are definitely not working.  In the middle of it all the hot lamp blows, one wok cuts out and the ventilation is not fully functioning, so chilli and Sichuan peppercorn fumes are a killer.  In any case, our guests are all friends and we are slowly digging ourselves out of a sticky situation.  The wok section is totally slammed and getting food out is proving trying!  To make matters worse the Micros dockets are printing out in the tiniest font.  I think why do the dockets look like that, they should never be an issue, but they always are.  I must pay more attention to that at Bar and Grill to make sure they look perfect, and are easy to read, it’s hard to run a service if they don’t.  We do sort it out in the end, thank god.  The floor handles it all perfectly and all the training is paying off.  They understand the food and the feedback on food and service is so postivite.  It was hell in the kitchen but you always need that heavy service to blow the cobwebs away. 

We will start tomorrow with a new system and it will work, tonight we learnt heaps!   The food quality was good for a first night and it will just get better and better everyday.

Debrief with all the staff was at about 1am – all were upbeat and positive.  All in all this was a good first night and we all look forward to tomorrow.  A few glasses of wine and I am in bed y 2.30am, I wish I didn’t have to get up at 6am tomorrow!

Baci Moore, Andy Evans & Neil Perry

Lots of work in the kitchen today, lots more training, talks to the floor staff about combinations and what works with what, lots of service detail.  Linden is putting up some cracking cocktails and the light levels and music are perfect, if the fifty workmen weren’t there you would think it was a restaurant!

My tanks finally arrived and have water and even a few crays in them hallelujah.  Chefs are cooking like mad and then I walk outside to the dining room and the red LED lights are on at the bottom of the screen, they look beautiful, I didn’t think I would get them for a week so I’m stoked.

 We are now starting to find a home for everything and systems are being worked out.

On the building side of things the bathrooms are still not finished, front door not quite operation, private dining room is almost there and the two main rooms are looking great.  The bar is looking good and the guys are settling in, so, so close.

We cooked like mad and just doing food for 30 all at once is stressful.  I wonder how we will do it come Monday, still I know we will.  Everything tastes great and the staff are inspired, we have lots to do in the next 48 hours to be ready. That last tasting is really our first real staff dinner all together floor and kitchen, let hope they don’t want to eat that well every day.

Anyway, I have to leave now, must visit Rockpool and  check the boys are alright then get ready for Melbourne tomorrow.  Just as I’m leaving I stick my nose in on the level 1 kitchen for Bar & Grill, they have started tiling the floor and have almost finished the walls, hood fans are up as well and the cool room floors are down.  That is really exciting, anyway I need to focus and open Spice Temple before I start pushing for upstairs.

Damn!  The fish tanks aren’t in and full of sea water, as a matter of fact one isn’t even there. What the hell!

 More testing  and tasting, more staff training more and more the builders move towards the finish.  Barry has to dig up the tiles on the plinth, with any luck he finds the drain - how on earth did they tile over it?

Nathan and Andrew are fixing the lighting, wow it looks amazing, we lit the candles, the projector is working and Linden makes all the cocktails they are delicious and refreshing and perfect for the food.

 I walk up to the street and Martin takes me to see the new sign and menu box it looks awesome.   Martin and Jasen are looking happy, nothing like builders and architects bonding!  The lights go in for the sculpture inside the front door and the staff keep tasting side by side with the builders doing last minute stuff.  The electricians have moved heaven and earth and are coming through with the goods, a red LED light strip along the planks that we didn’t think we would get goes in tomorrow, thanks Paul and Mark.

 David Doyle goes shopping for our I Pod, the $100k sound system sounds great, Anton has just arrived, a quick upload and the Spice Temple sound is perfect.  

It looks amazing, sounds amazing and we have a plate of Spiced chicken wings with heaven facing chillies, perfect with Linden’s Rooster cocktail, one of the 12 zodiac sign  themed cocktails.

 Tomorrow is going to be a great day. We test and taste everything else on the menu, do a mini service, then get some much needed sleep. What an amazing 5 days, it feels like a year, but brings me much happiness.

Bring on tomorrow – 3 more sleeps til the big day…

First day in the kitchen, albeit with the hood fan only running on half power – but we cooked, we got some food out for a tasting with the waiters and we fired up those beautiful induction woks.

This has been a moving day , things are happening.  The music came on, and Anton will be down today to get the real sound of Spice Temple through the speakers.  Andrew from Flaming Beacon spent the whole day playing with the lights.  Today we will see the light settings for day and night.  They will create real drama in the space and everyone will finally see my vision for the restaurant.

OK, we also had some setbacks, the cool room motor, which runs some of the kitchen fridges as well blew, but by 8pm we had it going again.

I left to eat my last meal at Rockpool for a while and at that stage the fish tanks still hadn’t arrived.  But on the whole a great day. Still as many builders as staff on site, thank god I didn’t try to open on Friday.  Three more days and we really have to push, fingers crossed everything comes in, especially the late tables as I really need to train the staff in a finished dining room.  It is killing me, there still isn’t one complete room finished, I keep joking with Barry the Buildcorp manager, please, I keep saying, just finish one room, do the toilets or put those finishing touches on the private dining room.  Still today is going to be massive, by the end of it we will have cooked and conducted tastings on all of the menu’s dishes.

The floor staff will be broken into small groups for Micros, food, wine, cocktail and service standard training, by the end of today everyone will have a good idea of what we are all about.

Please, please let the fish tanks be there when I get back.

Published in the SMH on Friday 9th January, 2009.

Got into the office early today; I had to head up to the new Spice Temple site to try and get the staff in and the builders out.  Who in their right mind would open a restaurant?

I answered some emails and quickly took a look at the Herald website, smh.com.au.  It was going to be my only news for the day.  Besides, Australia had won the Test and I wanted to make sure that only good things were written about my boys.  Then I saw it…a story by Jordan Baker about restaurants (http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/who-in-their-right-mind-would-open-a-restaurant/2009/01/08/1231004192765.html).  I don’t know why I read it, shouldn’t have really, but as I did I really felt I needed to post a comment back.  I felt compelled to.  I had to wave the flag for the team, so to speak.  I really never do it; no, I promise I never write letters to the editor, but this morning, with the weight of a restaurant opening on my shoulders and a huge debt building, I couldn’t stay silent.

In one part of the story, Baker was taking a shot at restaurants that have a no bookings policy and suggesting that in some way it is unfair to the dining public.  I took from it that perheaps the restaurateurs were doing this out of a flight of fancy just to see the patrons squirm and wait for a table.

The simple reality of it is restaurants that don’t take bookings usually serve more people during that particular service, and it is for that very reason those restaurants are more efficient and have lower operating costs.  The reason these restaurants are usually popular is that they are a very good value.  What they do with those operating savings is pass them on to the customers, so everyone is happy.  That is indeed why they are so busy, not just because they don’t take bookings, but because they are generally more affordable.

It is an expensive business to have a table sit empty while you are waiting for a booking to arrive.  Everyone in Sydney seems to want to eat at the same time and this is a problem for the expensive real estate that your restaurant is.  If you can spread the bookings out, great, but the easiest way to acheive this is by taking no bookings at all.  Customers get very good at understading they either come late, early or have a great drink at the bar and enjoy the ambience.  As it turns out, I have noticed that people do, in the main, thrive in this busy, buzzy atmosphere of a heaving restaurant.  We are fundamentally social animals and love being together.  I think, in many cases, places with really great ambience have it because people are waiting.  In fact, I’m sure it is so, as people wouldn’t queue unless there were a number of good reasons, one usually being it is good value and two, it’s a fun place to hang as well.

At a restaurant like Sopra – both at Danks Street in Waterloo and on Macleay Street in Potts Point – they have only 40 to 60 seats, yet they do over 120 customers every service.  Yes, you have to wait but your prize is beautiful produce, cooked well, at affordable prices.

This couldn’t happen if bookings were taken.  The owners would have to pay for the staff and all the other overheads out of a significantly lesser amount of customers; therefore those customers need to pay more, or other parameters of the business have to change.

In the end it is true; you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  Restaurants have to work from a business plan and to a budget.  The costs are rent, staff, food suppliers, beverages and general overheads.  Once GST is taken off the top and all of these other costs are paid, then hopefully there is a little left over for the operator.

A no bookings policy allows the restaurant to reduce some of these costs.  It is also important to note that we have lots of choice in Sydney, so if you want to book, there are many restaurants where you can, and if not, then get there early or late, or line up and enjoy the value.

Spice Temple that is.

Yes, we are in, albeit sharing the space with builders who are frantically trying to get finished and get out of there.  So many things to complete, just little things that seem small but take precious time.  At least the lights for the tables arrived today – they are being wired right this minute.  The guys will work all night if they have to, they really are brave souls, giving their all this week.  Spice Temple may be close to finish but there will be no rest as it’s straight upstairs to Bar & Grill to start all over again.  It will be another two months of hard slog.

Music today please, can’t wait for it to arrive and to hear Anton’s selection barrelling out of the 36 speakers mounted throughout the restaurant.  The door goes in today too, an amazing LCD screen from Germany that will grab the attention of everyone on the street, you need to do something to get a customer to walk down the stairs to a sub-basement in the middle of Sydney!  Damn, if they just finish the toilets it’s another thing off the list…Monday is looming!!!

Never mind, all will be ready, my beautiful staff are in and unpacking plates and glasses.  We inhabit the kitchen today and tomorrow we move into the dining room.  The 100 cases of delectable wine are due to arrive and soon we begin unpacking the bar, soon means tomorrow….hopefully.

One more problem, the kitchen exhaust refuses to work properly.  It really is like a sweat shop in there with all the kids washing and polishing.  There is a solution but it won’t be fixed until late Friday.  Looks like it will be two days of prep in a hot, hellish kitchen – the fumes of chilli and Sichuan peppercorns are going to kill everyone!  Still, we get to number the tables tomorrow and we shall be eating dumplings for lunch! 

God, I think everyone is going to need a wine tasting by the end of the day.

It was a great today to get all the plastic off the stainless steel and see the beautiful kitchen almost finished.

Some electrical works to nail plus get the fridges fired up and we are there.  Please let us be in there cooking tomorrow.

It has been painful with Christmas…the builders are doing their best, but with so many trades unable to work it has been like slow water torture…drip, drip to the finish line.  This week there are tonnes of guys working, pushing through to the finishing line.  Tomorrow we should be training staff and setting the restaurant up.

Training;  food training, cooking in the kitchen, Micros, Respac, all the computers and phones are going in.  Everything needs to find a home, we have so much left to do and I’m really feeling the pressure of having to get it rolling and making it good.

I pushed the staff start date back to today, but we can’t move it further – the first trial dinner is on the 9th, hang on…no…changing that now.  Make that Monday the 12th!