on isn’t it?
Absolutely. We’ve found that by improving the quality slowly here we've managed to increase our turnover but if you look at our £65 menu people think, ‘Wow, that's a lot of money,’ you knock of the 20% VAT, I cost at 76% because my target’s 74, so 76,I basically do is I divide by 4.2. That gives me my cost price, on what I can spend on a three course meal, plus canapés, plus bread, plus butter and it’s about £12 per person. If I buy a piece of bass locally and it’s coming in at £7 or £8 a portion you've really got every other area to be working for you.
Absolutely. We’ve found that by improving the quality slowly here we've managed to increase our turnover but if you look at our £65 menu people think, ‘Wow, that's a lot of money,’ you knock of the 20% VAT, I cost at 76% because my target’s 74, so 76,I basically do is I divide by 4.2. That gives me my cost price, on what I can spend on a three course meal, plus canapés, plus bread, plus butter and it’s about £12 per person. If I buy a piece of bass locally and it’s coming in at £7 or £8 a portion you've really got every other area to be working for you.
Absolutely. We’ve found that by improving the quality slowly here we've managed to increase our turnover but if you look at our £65 menu people think, ‘Wow, that's a lot of money,’ you knock of the 20% VAT, I cost at 76% because my target’s 74, so 76,I basically do is I divide by 4.2. That gives me my cost price, on what I can spend on a three course meal, plus canapés, plus bread, plus butter and it’s about £12 per person. If I buy a piece of bass locally and it’s coming in at £7 or £8 a portion you've really got every other area to be working for you.
Absolutely. We’ve found that by improving the quality slowly here we've managed to increase our turnover but if you look at our £65 menu people think, ‘Wow, that's a lot of money,’ you knock of the 20% VAT, I cost at 76% because my target’s 74, so 76,I basically do is I divide by 4.2. That gives me my cost price, on what I can spend on a three course meal, plus canapés, plus bread, plus butter and it’s about £12 per person. If I buy a piece of bass locally and it’s coming in at £7 or £8 a portion you've really got every other area to be working for you.
Absolutely. We’ve found that by improving the quality slowly here we've managed to increase our turnover but if you look at our £65 menu people think, ‘Wow, that's a lot of money,’ you knock of the 20% VAT, I cost at 76% because my target’s 74, so 76,I basically do is I divide by 4.2. That gives me my cost price, on what I can spend on a three course meal, plus canapés, plus bread, plus butter and it’s about £12 per person. If I buy a piece of bass locally and it’s coming in at £7 or £8 a portion you've really got every other area to be working for you.
How flexible are you in your menus? To take certain fish that's been landed by the day boats or something that's just come into season? Do you have that flexibility on your menu to accommodate this?
Yes our menus are printed in house. We tend to have a fixed garnish because it makes it easier for the kitchen. Up until this year when we put another chef in we haven't got a massive amount of slack in our system. So we have a fixed garnish and then we have a fish that changes but with the Brasserie and specials we can almost take any fish, even if it’s not perceived as being a fish that's worthy of a £65 menu, it can be put onto the Brasserie menu, it can be put onto our lunch menu. Last night we had a corporate dinner in and we had some lovely hake and we put that on the menu, because their three courses at £35 for dinner in the Terrace, hake sits perfectly on there. So we can take advantage of if the quality is right.
Last question for you then what’s your favourite season and why?
You get asked this a lot. I don't really know , I think like a lot of chefs say I think the next season. I think you get fed up and this is why this year’s 
been difficult because we've had a start and then a stop with the weather and we work quite closely with local growers and local producers and they’re having a nightmare. We pay a premium for some of the things we buy locally, particularly veg, they’re just having to throw crops away because it’s bolting, because it’s sunny, it’s raining, it’s cold and the same thing in Scotland. Our scallop supplier, end of last week, saying to me, “I haven't got scallops it’s two degrees here.”
If you don’t have scallops what do you do seek an alternative? Do you have a plan B, south coast for scallops?
Yeah personally I prefer north coast and Scottish, I just like them more and we've a fantastic supplier our own divers they’re not available so then I ring up…we've got a really good local fish man who actually got them from Shetland anyway in the shell, divers, but they’re a phenomenal difference in price I paid £2.57 per scallop, normally they’re nowhere near that. It’s an emergency, because of our residents. If I can’t get something I can't get it but I can’t not offer a couple of items on the menu during a couple of nights stay while they’re here, it’s just a poor show I think.
Are people becoming more accustomed to the fact that you’re dealing with a live product and you’re dealing with nature and therefore if it physically isn’t available it isn’t available? That's not to say you don’t put an alternative on.
For me if I…say on a Thursday I will call our own divers and they’ll say, “No, no I can’t dive,” we've got two or three other fishermen that we use and if they say no then it’s no and we’ll likely say we’ll seek an alternative but I'll go as far as I can within reason but I think when people walk into a restaurant they really don’t want to be disappointed if they have their heart set of perhaps crab or scallops, so we work very hard to ensure we maintain them on the menu for our guests.
Of course, well listen thank you for your time. Thank you for seeing me so quickly.
Pleasure.
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t the Montagu Arms.
because it’s a lighter dish, it’s not sold so well, so we’ll rejig the wording and see if the that helps. If then that doesn’t help we’ll know it’s a dish that even though we love it guests aren’t getting that instance appeal from it. I want a menu that I sell, as far as possible, a balance of all the dishes. I don’t want to sell scallops and beef all night long, I want to sell a mix of ingredients. I don’t want things hanging around the fridge and going past their best. It’s a shop window isn’t it the menu, it’s a tool that we use and it may appear static to the guest or even to the front of house staff but we're constantly reviewing it and looking at it to see how much it can work for us.
