Beach Bar "Hermanos Cano" Most Relaxing.

Sunday 24th June

Graham:
Hi,
Today the bar restaurant is closed and we are free as a couple to go whatever we like. We have opened the business on a Sunday in the past and enjoyed very good trade; both in the restaurant and for take away. A lot of people are arriving or leaving the Coast on Sundays, so they come to Graham’s Pizzeria for wholesome, freshly cooked food. That way they can leave their kitchen squeaky clean, ready for the next people due to occupy the apt. or villa.
We really used tom love opening on Sundays, we’d have a great atmosphere for Sunday lunch, which was usually a sell-out, then we’d close for a siesta and reopen at 7:00 pm for the evening trade. At times the restaurant would be working flat-out, as the regulars wanted feeding and then on top of that, there would be all the tourists in transit, starving hungry and impatient to eat.
At the end of a Sunday I would have that lovely sensation that all restaurateurs enjoy after a busy night, the unrivaled sensation of stuffing a big pile of cash into my pockets.

We’ve found that much as we love income, a restaurant must close one day a week, to give everybody a break. This is a chance to go off and do something different and then come back refreshed and ready to tackle another week.

As Graham’s restaurant is situated in a commercial center, we like to be open Mon-Fri, to provide an unbroken service for our regular clients. Saturday we have a street market, virtually right outside the bar, so it makes sense to be open for that and then on Saturday nights we are always busy with the restaurant on the terraces and in addition we have all the teenagers with their pocket- money, who come for take away pizzas and burgers.

Olivia:
Hi,
Well it’s Sunday, the time’s just gone 9:00 am and Graham’s just woken me up with a nice cup of black coffee (My favorite way to wake-up). He’s inched open the curtains for me to check that it’s going to be a nice sunny beach day and yes! It is. Right so it’s up, throw a few things into the washing machine, put on a designer bikini from my sister’s shop in Fuengirola. A tricky choice,
that I could have taken hours over, as I have about 50 bikinis to choose from. Yes! You have guessed it in one; the beach is my thing!
I decide quite quickly on an Ana Silver design. A Day-Glo green skimpy bikini, very, very sexy with a complimentary sarong. The top is almost secondary to the bottom with it’s scandalous diving cut, as soon as I’m installed on the beach with my sun-bed, the top will be discarded and only used when I need to go to the bathroom. For a woman One thing that’s great about living on the Costa del Sol, is that with a classy designer bikini you can go to the beach and your dressed like a star and add to that a good worked on sun tan and you feel like a star.

I’ve finished my glass of fresh sangria brought to me by the waiter from the “Hermanos Cano” restaurant, which is right behind us and I’m off for a dip in the Med. now so see you all in a minute---------

Bonfires On the Beach.

Saturday 23rd June “El Noche de San Juan.”

Graham:
Hi,
Right! We now have the arrangements sorted for tonight’s celebrations. Olivia is going to close the bar/restaurant a bit earlier than usual and head for the beach, with Yara who works par time in our bar/restaurant, her 11-year-old daughter, Luna and Yara’s younger sister, Becki; whilst I head for my best friends Chas and Noa’s house, which is in one of the older, but very pleasant urbanizations, called Mar y Monte. It’s Chas’s birthday today, so I simply must be there. Chas is doing a BBQ in his charming back garden. It has a lovely shaded terrace and a small lawn/orchard, resplendent with sub-tropical plants. He also has splendid Lemon, Apricot and plum trees.

Chas loves to BBQ. His specialties include; spare ribs in homey and garlic sauce and then he does some cracking Thaiesque dishes combining the use of the BBQ with the wok.
We have an unspoken rule, that when he cooks, I turn up with some fine wine. This would normally be one of the wide varieties of Spanish wines, which we stock in our bar, such as a wine from the Rioja, Penedes or La Mancha region. Tonight, however I am going to surprise Chas with beautiful 15-year-old French Sauternes. I can taste it now and with Chas doing the cooking, we are all in for a good night. Unfortunately Noa cannot touch alcohol, as it brings on instant migraine, but she is used to the situation by now and still really enjoys herself on these occasions.

Olivia:
Hi,
Getting away early from a bar/restaurant, without offending clients is an art that takes years of experience, but the basics involved are; letting people know shortly after they have settled in at their table, that tonight is “Noche De San Juan” and everybody will be there, then at around 10 pm start gradually turning the music down, until by 10:30 it’s turned-off. Around 10:15 you must invite them for one last drink on the house. Also around 10:30 start turning lights off, one by one, until they are all off and that’s basically how you do it! Oh! And don’t forget, you must wear a broad smile all the time.

I would have really loved to have been able to wear a fancy dress, perhaps made specially for the occasion by Eimy my friend (Well we really regard her as our daughter.) She makes beautiful clothes from her home in San Pedro. I would have chosen to go as a witch. Yara is great with make-up, so she could have done everybody’s make-up, before leaving the bar and then as soon as we’d had a chance to close up, we’d have made a beeline for Isdabe beach, with Yara as designated driver. Her daughter Luna who is so pretty; you want to eat her is so excited about hitting the beach long after she should normally be in bed.

I am a little sad that Graham won’t be joining us, but I know he’ll enjoy himself at Chas and Noa's place and I’m pleased that they’ll have a nice evening, as they decide it would not be a good idea to take Sergio in the wheelchair, to the beach, as he catches cold very easily.

Right! I’ve got to get back to work now, as we have a table of 12 golfers just sat down for lunch.

“Noche De San Juan” Beach Party v Chas's birthday party.

Friday 22^nd June

Olivia:

Hi,

Well I'm in the bar, but I’m all excited as tomorrow is “Noche De San Juan” and there’ll be celebrations around open fires, on the beach, from midnight onwards.

I want to try to close our bar/restaurant a bit earlier than usual and shoot off down to the beach opposite, which is called Isdabe.

The plan will be to take a picnic and some candles, plenty of booze from our bar and have our own little intimate beach party alongside the big public do. Graham gets a lot of back pain late at night, so he’ll need to take his folding sun lounger.

I am hoping that our best friends here Chas and Noa will join us with their triplets Elena, Sergio and Jose. The triplets are 16 now and Sergio is in a wheel chair, so Chas and Noa may decide that it’ll be too difficult to get Sergio’s wheelchair onto the beach, although they do have a 4*4 and there is a ramp going down to the beach, so let’s hope they come.

Graham:

Hi,

It’s Chas’s birthday this Saturday and I know that he wants to do have a few aperitifs in a quiet local bar together and the a BBQ on the terrace at his house, so I may end up attending that do and leaving Olivia to celebrate on the beach at Isdabe, with another group of our friends from the bar. I am sure it’ll all work out well and everybody will have a few drinks, some nice food, let their hair down and have a great time. There’s a fantastic social life here on the Costa del Sol and the Spanish folk around; Marbella, San Pedro, Benavista and Estepona, are very open and easy to make friends with.

The great thing is that as it’s so warm in the evenings, you don’t have to spend loads of money in expensive restaurants. You have other choices; you can eat on your own terrace with your favorite music playing, you can go down to the beach with a picnic or BBQ or you can go to one of the many idyllic beauty spots in the country side which is just 10 min by car. You can always find a qyiet an inexpensive little bar tucked away wherever you go, if you need to quench your thirst.

Victor:

Hi,

6^th form finishes today and I shall be spending it doing some community service.

One of the things I’ll need to have on my CV when I apply to unis. next year, is a record of having done some useful community service and it’s something I’d very much like to do in any case. My College have asked us 6^th formers to do a series of CS units and upon completion of all the units we will be issued with an appropriate certificate.

Today my CS unit entails setting up a bar and serving drinks and refreshments to the juniors who are having an end of term fate to raise money for children in Darfur. Serving these little 4-5 year olds is really exhausting work, as they don’t always understand money or worse still try to get refreshments when they don’t have any money to pay for them. They haven't quite grasped, that you can't start a bar tab until you are at least 18. It would be very easy to be soft hearted and give into their imploring faces, but our mission is to raise money through bar sales for those who are existing at starvation level, so we have to remain strong, as we are trying to raise money for a very good cause.

I don’t always feel comfortable doing this type of work, but I do feel that it is helping me build up my self-confidence, which is something that will help me a lot later on in life.

I really feel that schools should all build in more community service and work experience, into their syllabuses.

Coffee on a Terrace Soaking-Up the Sun Before Work.

Monday 18^th June

Olivia:

Hi,

Although I had a day off from our bar restaurant yesterday I had a hell of a job getting off to sleep last night. I must have broken my golden rule and had a cup of coffee to late in the afternoon yesterday, my own fault then. Eventually I moved to the sofa and ended up getting about 4 hours sleep. I woke up feeling more tired than when I went to bed and I’ve just had a cup of coffee in bar Aquarius and my heads still muddled, but I am beginning to feel more like I’m back on planet Earth.

I like to take a coffee in somebody else's bar before I get to my own bar, either with Graham or completely on my tod, sat on a peaceful sunny terrace, with a smart waitress doing everything for me. It feels like luxury.

When I arrive at the bar at the bar the terrace has normally been cleaned and all the tables and chairs neatly laid out. Also the outside bar stools have been put in place and all the point of sales signs, menus and A- boards are put out in readiness.

This job is done by any one of my staff or helpers, so Monday and Friday that would be Rosa the cleaner, Tuesday till Thurs Eli (my waitress and plancha chef) and then on Saturday there’s a street market in Centro Comercial Diana and as we all like to go there and get shopping for the week, my 18 year old son Victor is on terrace duty and generally gets the bar restaurant ready for opening.

When I finally do get to the bar at around 12:30, I open the windows with Eli’s help. In our restaurant we have everything purposely designed, enabling us to get food orders out really quickly. There are 2 big Georgian style windows from the open-plan kitchen, which are opened by pulling them upwards with a rope and pulley, when they are open the large white tiled window sills become the bar tops. We have one outside bar on the west terrace and another on the north terrace.

Right now I’m here and the enormous windows are up, Eli will continue cleaning, filling up sauce bottles, restocking bottle fridges and serving coffee etc. whilst I start the food prep, the biggest job of which is making the pizza dough and chopping veg. and pepperoni etc for the toppings, not to mention getting the cheeses out of the freezer. At the same time I get out the Kefta kebabs and burgers, so that they are thawed and ready to cook, to serve at the bar or to take-away.

I’ll have to love you and leave you now as there’s not a minute to waste before the orders start coming in at around 1:30pm and the bar will be packed-out.

Breaking in a new cleaning lady.

Hi, welcome to Graham’s Pizzeria blog. Glad you could make it!

This blog, which will be written by Graham and his partner, Olivia, is all about life in and around Graham’s bar restaurant, which is in Centro Comercial Diana, km 169, on the main Coast road from Marbella to Estepona. It’s just past San Pedro, opposite the Marriott complex. We have been running the bar for 20 years and now that one of us has had to retire due to back problems (Graham) , we have decided to put up the lease for sale. There are very few good bar restaurants for sale around the area of West-Marbella and our bar for sale in Spain is a really good opportunity.

Please allow us to introduce ourselves very briefly:

Hi, I’m Olivia. I am Chilean, but came to the Costa del Sol 26 years ago. Initially I made haute couture swim wear for my sister’s designer swim wear shop, which is in Fuengirola. I met Graham 20 years ago we fell in love with each other and we have been running bars and restaurants together, ever since. I am an equal partner in the bar restaurant and also a working manager.

Hi, I’m Graham I am British, my father was Irish, my mother was English and I was born in England. I have lived in Spain since 1986. I am a car designer by profession, have also taught and have owned and worked bars and restaurants since I came to the Costa del Sol. For many years Olivia and I ran businesses together apart from the last few years when I have gone off from time to time to do short term automotive design contracts. I had a back operation about 6 years ago and now I am temporarily retired. When I was working in the bar resaurant, my main function was as barman and PR person for the bar. It was my job to build up and maintain a regular bar trade.

Friday 15th June

Olivia:
Hi,
This morning I don’t need to do any shopping for the restaurant, so Graham and I can spend a relatively peaceful morning together. I’ve got Nancy the cleaning lady in doing the apartment until 1:30pm, so I want to keep Graham out from under her feet as much as possible. Also Graham is a very tolerant person who rarely gets annoyed, but I don’t think he would mind me saying, that he feels very uncomfortable when the cleaner is in the house and much prefers that she comes when he is not there. Pretty much like most men I’ve ever met in that respect I suppose. They don’t like the house dirty and they hate anybody cleaning it. I think they think it just gets clean by magic.

All I have to do this morning is take some important employment papers to the bank to get them processed and then it’s breakfast with Graham, fill up with diesel and buy some Pedigree dog food from Supersol in Guadalmena for our lovable little Yorkie (Sami). I don’t like shopping there, as it is the slowest supermarket on the planet checkout wise. This morning I don't need to do any shopping for the bar restaurant.

Well I drove the Mitsubishi today and parked it on yellow lines 50m from the bank. Graham stayed around the car walking Sami and as I was in the bank for 20 min he sat in the car and did a bit of Sudoku to pass the time. He couldn’t leave the car, as the “grua” would have taken it away “muy pronto”.

OK that job done we headed for the cafeteria bar next to the gas station on the main road. Where we soaked up the sun on the terrace and enjoyed a half an hour of chat together whilst sipping café con leche served in a glass, the Spanish way. I bought a newspaper for the bar and some fresh croissants from the garage, which we sneakily dunked in our coffee. Yum! Yum! It’s a bit naughty, but they know us well there and don’t mind us doing it once in a while.

Wow! Is it 12:30 already. I must dash, time to get back tom the bar restaurant to help Eli finish off prepare food for the lunch time session.