Stay out of the Kitchen.

Gordon Ramsey always seem to me to me the epitome of everything I dislike in a chef.
The atmosphere of terror which he inspires in a kitchen, his shocking bullying of his staff but, most of all it is his numbing seriousness about food.
I havn’t seen much of his kitchen nightmares (truth to tell I have seen none but little snippits and trailers ) but have seen enough to feel my mind glaze over as he again displays his enormous ego and his total humour by-pass.
I am therefore enormously encouraged by a chef who I suspect to be a true genius- Heston Blumenthal- who holds in an article in todays London Times that a kitchen is “a mad -laugh or you will cry- environment which is perhaps why the people who work there often behave like comedians.”

Such was the attitude and demeanour of the staff in Dwyers Restaurant.
Someone was forever arriving with a bowl with a leek in it, or a plate with a chip on it,(think about it) or a chef wanting to bring a young waitress into the cold room to show them how the prawns glowed in the dark (they do)
When we get together we can still reduce each other to tears of laughter with stories of the disasters which nearly happened and the some which did.

My original training was in a most relaxed kitchen in Snaffles in Dublin , after that I spent some time working for a little bully in France, a chef so mean that he would only make his patisserie in the kitchen in the afternoons when I wasn’t there in case I might learn from him.

My next few years on training, in Kent, under Michael Waterfield in The Wife of Bath, were a revelation.
There I discovered that a kitchen run with patience and humour could in fact be more productive than one run by a ring master screaming hysterically.
I determined that Michael’s way was going to be my way.

Sometimes in Dwyers people would mutter begrudgingly to the waiters “You seem to be having a better time than us in the kitchen “- It is likely that we were.
On the other hand our parish priest, who was a bit of a gourmet, came to eat frequently and always commented on his pleasure on hearing occasional laughter from the kitchen; “You can taste the laughter in your food Martin” he once said to me.

Young Mr. Blumenthal obviously thinks the same.