Thanks to Helen we have a plan. A table plan, that is, for the World Kitchen in Leith event at Out of the Blue next week (see last post). More to the point we also have a menu which makes us hungry just to think of it – with food you won’t usually find in a restaurant. But back for a moment to that plan because we’re learning fast that there is much more to running a restaurant than writing the menu!
In capable hands: Mridu dishes up cauliflowers and cream
After several nights of dreaming about tables I realised 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 little chart drawn up by Helen (her student years were subsidised by working and waiting in Edinburgh restaurants). And thanks to Isi at Out of the Blue who going to magic up 12 tables – now we just need to manage the 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. World Kitchen is all about the food and the company.
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 [Alice is first on the right], 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 absolutely delicious 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
Just for fun lets flahsback to the 2007 FEAST in Out of the Blue (film by Alan Stockdale)