Coastalblog

It's rare that a shock in the world of Hospitality crosses over to the mainstream news. But with the news emerging yesterday that Le Gavroche is to close, we had one of those moments of a topic which is a something if an obsession in our industry actually becoming public, a very visible symptom of a disease which has been incubating for a fair old while now. Talk amongst chefs has changed in the last few years, as we've navigated the successive shocks of Brexit and Covid, from who's doing what, who's rolling out, who's going for a star and are they worth it to the simpler questions: who's going under? how are you keeping going? When the news about Le Gav broke, my sous and I exchanged a look and asked the same question, if Michel Roux can't make it work, what hope for the rest of us? That wasn't the only closure I heard of yesterday, but it's unlikely you've heard about the other one. About nineish, just as I was ticking off my fish order, a guy ...

I appear to have moved into the pub. Now, I don't wish to give the impression that this has come as a complete surprise to me, we'be been planning to do so since shortly after I bought it, but still, it's sort of snuck up on me and now I'm waking up and thinking what happened? How come I'm here? The reason for this discombobulation is that this move was initially a temporary measure. Mrs Coastalblog had some relatives coming to stay, and it made sense to put them up in our house while we decamped to the flat. It's still a work in progress, but a mad week of cleaning and carting stuff around made it habitable. I had a suspicion that once we were in we'd be back and forth for a few weeks. As with many of my hunches, I was completely and utterly wrong. As it turned out, once we were here, we were here. Things moved at pace and, now our kitchen appliances have been installed, there's no going back, the old house is unusable. It's left me with slightly mi...