Birthdays, briefings and buildings

It has been so busy and I have had no real time to blog.

Last Saturday Rockpool turned 20 years old and is still going strong.  My dear friends Barry and Karen McDonald dropped in for a bite and then Trish and I had a late supper with Sam and Rene.  It was great to sit there and see the restaurant 20 years on.  I can still remember like it was yesterday walking over the road after service and looking back at the beautiful restaurant Trish and I had created.  Who would have known that 20 years on we would be doing an anniversary tasting menu – celebrating dishes created over that time. It seems like such a short time has passed, I can’t believe it has been 20 years…

What an intense week of building and organising it has been for Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney.  Not to mention that Spice Temple is just going off.   We received a fantastic review from Simon Thomsen (http://tinyurl.com/c9896m) and we have gone from crazy busy to just plain crazy.  Here we are at staff briefing on a busy Saturday night, and the message is the same as it has been since opening – consistency - consistency of service and food, that is the key.

Then at night, during the week, when all the other builders have gone home the tilers have been laying the stone, covering the front desk and the kitchen.  The cleaners have started removing the plastic from the stainless steel.  It is so beautiful, it reminds me of an ocean liner, perhaps you have to be a chef, but I have fallen in love with this beautiful thing.  I love the ceiling extraction fans and can’t want to get the charcoal oven grill and wood fired grills going next week.  The cool rooms are full of aging beef, 350 ribs sitting and improving with flavour and tenderness every day.  The late January ones are going to be amazing when we open on the 16^th of March.

Are we where we should be building wise? Probably not, but we are really close.  Upstairs is looking good – kitchen, toilets, hallways and the office are all finished.  The wine vault is still waiting for its racks, Dave Doyle is sorting the wine out off-site and it will all arrive and be positioned with every rack designated to a wine so the wine waiters can find them easily.  I would love to have that finished now, but it will happen in the next day or so.

Training will be crazy just like it was with Spice Temple.  We will be tying to train all the staff whilst the builders will be climbing all over us.  Please Jasen; get the centre dining room finished!!!” Andy keeps saying it is all going well…well just get it finished mate!

We will use Spice Temple on Monday to induct everyone and then walk down to Rockpool to do three hours of Philosophy training.  Hopefully an entire day of us not taking up space at Bar & Grill will help the builders really kick on and get all the stations placed and wired - we really need to get Micros training started.

Tags: 20th birthday, Neil Perry, Renovation Diary, Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney, Rockpool Sydney

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Bar & Grill Sydney, Rockpool Sydney, Spice Temple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.