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.