The End of Summer at The Hand and Flowers

This is my 7th week now and you can feel the change around the town, mainly busy on the weekends now but still getting plenty of customers in the restaurant, a new set lunch menu is up and is now on for 4 days a week, Monday to Thursday with A ’La Carte being on in the evenings. This is attracting a lot more people and keeping all of us busy in work. I’m currently jumping between 2 sections, larder and garnish and helping out where I can with the sauce or main course section. Have a good feel for the place now and know the best way to plan the day. I also started doing breakfast now and again enjoying that, happy to be getting as much as possible out of the place, just means I have to be in work for 7 so even less sleep!

The new set menu for larder is sweetcorn soup with charred sweetcorn and chili salsa with chive oil and croutons then other option is pig head with pancetta, pork crackling, artichoke puree, pickled plum, oat crumble and beef jus. Both dishes are incredible and a bit of work as some items on the dishes require a couple of days to get ready. The pig head comes in whole; we slow cook it for the night before picking it, seasoning it and pressing it which again takes a night to press fully, it then has to be portioned perfectly and put through a panne station. The pork skins also take some prep time, we have to cut them to size, vac pac them, cook overnight, take some fat off and then slice it and cook it before service, so if you are short on them you could mess up the whole service.

The garnish section side has changed from boulangère to pomme puree, this actually saves a huge amount of time as prepping 50kg of onions for lyonnaise every second day was sometimes a struggle, not to mention the fondant potatoes that were cut by hand for the top of the dish, however I felt like making it was a lot of fun and was an elegant little side dish to have. A new pork garnish was added with a celery and lovage emulsion which is always satisfying when you get it perfect.

I got to go down to The Butchers Tap and Grill, another restaurant in the company for 3 days just to cover staff, I really enjoyed being down there as it was a change of service and vastly different food. The name describes what food they serve here, huge pieces of meat prepared in front of the customer by the restaurant butcher.

This place had a lot more of a relaxed feeling, more like a chilled-out pub that has sports on and gets very lively on a busy day. It was great to see the difference in cooking techniques, with a large grill and open kitchen, probably a higher turnover of customers due to the main being the highlight of the meals, but then again, some steaks took an hour to be cooked due to the size of them.