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The View from the Bridge Fernando Peire

The enclosed world of The Ivy is part of its mystique. You

barely see outside at all through stained glass windows.

You're in a large triangular shaped room which seems to

stretch in all directions. Cut off from the outside world, even

disoriented, it is as though by magic, everyone feels they are

dining at a private party among friends and strangers alike.

One isn't aware of a kitchen, only the food, and the action.

The background "music" is the buzz.

From the rear of the dining room an enormous and heavy

oak door leads to the stillroom. "The door." The door swings

both ways and has a small, reinforced glass windowpane so

that you can see if anyone is coming the other way. People dart

in and out, giving the door a sharp kick to get it swinging at

the just the right speed. These are the young runners in black

polo shirts, each bearing huge oval trays stacked with piles of

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Fishcakes, Shepherd's Pie and Foie Gras. These boys always

have right of way, everyone stands to the side as they speed

through in a flash. Watching them go back and forth is like

watching a procession of soldier ants - they work incredibly

hard and they have to be very strong to shoulder their loads.

They can all tell the same tale about how early in their training

they once dropped a whole tray, but it is akin to losing their

virginity and, likewise, it only ever happens once.

The lynchpin of the stillroom at night is usually Karim,

an Algerian with an excellent line in Michael Jackson

impersonations, and someone who has been with The Ivy

since day one when he was first employed as a cleaner. He

patiently grinds coffee for the espressos, large espressos and decaf

cappuccinos; chucks plastic buckets of dirty cups, saucers and

teaspoons through the industrial dishwasher and dries every

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glass for the restaurant perfectly by hand - a thousand glasses a

night and he is still pissed off ifhe breaks one. He always finds

time to stamp an ivy leaf carefully on every pat of butter that

leaves his station and notices if the crema has faded on any of

the espressos waiting to be collected or if the froth has sunk on

a cappuccino. This is when he has a go at the waiter who has left

the order standing too long. Karim can be a temperamental

guy and he always finds something to complain about, but

he makes by far the best coffees in the house and you never

have to wait for anything when he is on duty. This is why he

commands huge respect and earns the same amount of tronc (the tips) as a waiter on the floor. On the rare occasions when

celebrity guests come through the stillroom his face reddens

and he smiles at the floor because he is quite shy, but he has

met the likes of Demi Moore, Stephen Fry, Liam Gallagher

and George Michael on their way to the rear exit when they

have wanted to avoid the paparazzi stalking the front door.

From the still room, two flights of stairs lead down to the

cavernous kitchen. The scene that awaits you at the foot of

these stairs is reminiscent of one of those grandiose Charlie

Chaplin films - the one where the impecunious tramp ends up

working as part of the brigade in a huge, 1920s high-ceilinged

hotel kitchen to pay for his dinner. The Ivy kitchen actually

served as the inspiration for Stephen Daldry's extraordinarily

realistic production of Arnold Wesker's play, The Kitchen, at

The Royal Court Theatre in 1995, to be seen again in a new

production at the National Theatre in 2011. When you stand

there and see the operation in full flow you realise why. No

one talks. The air is filled with the sound of bashing, crashing,

scraping and clanking. Metal on metal; china against china

and the constant throbbing of an air-conditioning unit

powerful enough to ventilate the Royal Albert Hall on a night

of the Proms.

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To the left of the stairs is the pot wash or plonge. The mother

tongues of the wash-ups are mostly Portuguese, Spanish,

French or Arabic and the staff may not speak much English,

but they are generally among the most highly educated

people in the building: their break time reading consisting

of legal casebooks, political textbooks and technical manuals

on mechanical engineering. I wouldn't be surprised if one

day The Ivy plonge produced a future president of an African

republic.

The focal point of the kitchen is the man on the pass. He

is not usually the head chef but he is the one who calls the

orders through a microphone during lunch and dinner - the

kitchen is so noisy he would be hoarse if he didn't have the

mic. The pass is the official catering term for the counter in

the kitchen where the food is arranged on the plate and sent

out to the dining room. It is the end of the production line

and food should only leave the pass once it has been checked

and approved by the chef de passe. It makes a huge amount of

difference which of the chefs is on this station since he will

dictate the speed of food service and any mistakes he makes,

L,· ... ,·o; ...... ons h' u Grille .. . Froid Turbot: Poco ~ ,0

Homard: Thermldor. Newburg. Moules Manmere Ivy Soles de Douvre: £3.60 Scampis:

Meuniere £3.80 Provenc;ale Bonne Femme £3.60 Meuniere Grillee £3.60 Nantua Colbert £3.60 Frits Caprice £3.80 Truites: Antibois Florentine £3.80 Amandine Di,plo~ate £3.80 Bretonne Veromque £3.80 Grillee

£3·80 £1·50

d' Antin £3.80 Filets de Plie Frites . Cubat . Blanchailles (Whitebalt) en Goujons ou Fntes £3·00

£3·00 £2·80 £3·00 £2·80 £1·80 £2·00 £1·80 £1·80 £2·30 £1·50

Menu circa 7970

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or allows to slip through, will impact on the flow of the kitchen

when incorrect or substandard dishes are returned. That, of

course, will eventually rebound on the MaItre d' if he can't

move customers on their turn times because of a half hour

delay on their main course.

Extract from The Kitchen, by Arnold Wesker.

NICHOLAS: Good luck to you, you'll need it. You know where your station is?

KEVIN: I don't even know what stations there are.

NICHOLAS: Here I'll show you. Right, for a start there's the menu for the day, chef writes it out each night. Over here, this is where I work on the cold buffet. This is Max the butcher. And there, you see that fat bitch down there? Well she works, or says she works, as the veg cook. And here is my Aunty Anne who's on teas and coffee. Next, Paul and Raymond are the pastry cooks - they have an easy life, make pastries in their own time which they give sweet Annie here to serve. And here - here is the front line. A lot of blood gets lost here. Alfredo on the roast, very efficient. Michael on soups and omelettes, very cheeky. Coco works here on fried fish but he's very absent so perhaps you take his place. Hans here on deep fry. And over there is second chef in the house and my best friend, Monsignor Gaston, who will grill steaks and chops, which puts him next to Peter on boiled fish, Peter very mad very bad. Gaston hates Peter. ..

At which moment PETER enters in a great hurry, he is late as always. He laughs his laugh.

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In front of the pass chef are the two sauce chefs who are

charged with cooking the main courses. Their station is an

enormous wrought iron stove that was made to measure for

The Ivy after the kitchen fire of 1996. It pumps out heat like

the engine room of an ocean liner and if I rang down to the

kitchen during a shift, for a laugh I would often introduce

myself with the words "bridge here", as if I were the captain

of the ship. Between swigs of chilled water straight from the

bottle, the sauce chefs work like fiends. If The Ivy kitchen

were a football team, these boys would be the strikers. Then

there is "the veg," by far the most demanding station in the

kitchen because there are so many little jobs involved. The Ivy

has one of the longest menus for fresh v~getable side orders

in London, and every other table orders at least one portion

of pommes allumettes or medium-cut chips, so these guys are

under constant assault. They say it is th~ section that makes

chefs out of boys.

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There is usually a spare chef in the kitchen, there to help

out wherever the pressure is getting too much. He is the chef tournant and will have worked in all sections of the kitchen

at one time or another. After he has sorted out a problem

on the veg he may move over to pastry where there is often

just one person plating up and sending desserts for fifty to a

hundred people an hour. And when the post-theatre crowd

piles in after ten o'clock, the spotlight will probably move to

garde manger where cold starters and salads are prepared by

two junior chefs or chefs de partie. I have always been impressed

that despite the huge pressure in the kitchens at The Ivy, the

chefs are remarkably even-tempered and almost never use

foul language - a far cry from all the other kitchens I have

experienced.

Fernando Peire is the Director of The Ivy and The Club at The Ivy

1\..\ \ 'f. "

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