Chris Maclean: shadenfreude in the kitchen

The new restaurant venture is proving interesting. The chef is assembling a team to work with him but reconciling talent with team spirit, shared vision and enthusiasm is proving difficult. He's engaged a couple of young guys who are potentially capable of doing great things but we haven't seen them work under pressure and the chef is lacking the confidence to delegate all the tasks. What then happens is the chef is working under stress, the young lads are given no encouragement and the gaps start appearing.

His food offering is, without question, very good and very exciting but so preoccupied with that he has virtually ignored the front-of-house problems.

Tonight we have a booking for 18 people and also a table of two. Perfect. But we are open for lunch right now and there is no menu or prices, no waiters setting up, no advertising or marketing and no customers. Small wonder that I had to turn the lights on in the restaurant and lay the tables. But tonight will be fine.

There are also odd moments of pathos. There is a wonderful German word, shadenfreude, which means "the mischievous delight in someone else's misfortune".

Last night the chef instructed one of the lads to take two boards out of the back of the car and paint them with blackboard paint. He took out and painted the chef's two best chopping boards. Nicely too. Unfortunately the sign boards remain bare wood.

And then the kitchen flooded.

It will be all right.

I keep telling myself it will be all right.

It will be all right…