by Craig Melvin
Belle Hotel Restaurant was ‘hot right now’, as they said in Time Out and the Standard. Hot enough to warrant a visit from the Michelin man? Charlie wouldn’t hold his breath. But he did a bit, when Franco swung in to tell him that a lone male diner on table three had requested an extra jug of hollandaise.
Charlie cooked and waited. Five years’ hard graft. Half a decade of his life for an asterisk. And now Lulu was leaving him, just at the moment when he needed her most. What did she expect, that the star would come out of thin air? That nights off and trips to the cinema to watch rom-coms would get him, them, what they wanted? Maybe she didn’t want it badly enough? Charlie banged his hand against Belle Hotel’s front door and, as if by magic, an envelope franked ‘Michelin’ plopped onto the mat.
Michelin Guide
Notification of Michelin Star Award
Charlie Sheridan
Chef
Belle Hotel
Brighton
Dear Charlie,
We are delighted to inform you that Belle Hotel Restaurant has been awarded one Michelin star.
Your listing in the Michelin Guide will be complimentary. Our advertising team will be contacting you to talk you through our half- and full-page advertising opportunities that we have available on the South-East pages of the guide.
Congratulations and enjoy your celebration!
Yours,
The Michelin Guide
‘Screw the advert. Let’s get Bob.’
Franco brimmed over with pride at Charlie’s achievement. Ready to throw money at the fact that they’d only bloody well gone and done it! Bob Carlos Clarke had made that lunatic Marco Pierre White famous in the eighties with his menacing monochromes, maybe Bob could be coaxed down to the seaside to do a ‘Brighton Rock ’n’ Roll Star Chef’ shoot?
The press went crazy for Belle Hotel’s news, and, before he knew it, Charlie was on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine.
Charlie Sheridan, fag in mouth, Brighton beach, dirty whites, bloody shark slung over his shoulder. Rock-star stance, kitchen-greased curls, heat-chiselled jaw and simmering gaze. Charlie Sheridan. Not an ounce of fat on him. One hundred and sixty pounds of prime chef snarling down the barrel of the lens. Fuck you. Cook you. Looking like it was his God-given right. Tables laden with opportunity, just out of shot. Journalists, diners’ wives and girlfriends, waitresses, wine reps, and, hell, even the environmental health officer come to swab sample his surfaces.
Girlfriend, nah. There was, but she left me. Just before all this happened. That’ll teach her.
Charlie Sheridan, darling of the London weekend break set, hot fodder for the gossip mags, he who could do no wrong in the kitchen, could cook or seduce anything with a pulse to perfection. Taxis on the tip jar up to the Groucho straight after service, back in time for a bleary-eyed breakfast shift, smiling at the hazy memories of coke and copulation. Cook, fuck, flirt and fist-fights with those who tried to snap him at it. Unless it was Bob. Bob’s monochromes developed the legend. Fixed him in time and place for ever.
Charlie felt he owed himself a celebration. A two-day bender. Franco had agreed that a grand as a bonus for getting the star sounded about right and Charlie was determined to burn through it before he went back to his hob. So he started his bender with cocktails on Belle Hotel for his brigade after service, continued it in the cab up to Soho with two of Belle Hotel’s waitresses, girls that Lulu had recruited and trained personally. But not for the things they did in the back of that taxi. They had learned that stuff all by themselves.
Charlie signed the three of them into the Groucho Club with a flourish, even though he’d never paid a month’s membership fees in his life. By 4am he’d worn them both out, in and out of the toilets to snort, blow or swallow whatever took their fancy. Charlie was champion of the world, unstoppable. He poured the waitresses into a cab, paid it a ton for the trip down to the coast, and went back inside to look for more sparring partners. Damien Hirst and Alex James took Charlie under their wings and before long Charlie was butt naked with the best of them, taking his turn at the billiards table.
He may have passed out for an hour or so around 6am, but awoke with a raging need for bloody Marys and Twiglets, which was handy, as the Groucho had both in plentiful supply.
Charlie felt the fire returning to his loins and was fortunate enough to get talking, then snogging, then shagging with a nice young lady from a good family gone bad.
At nine, Charlie staggered round to Bar Italia and got himself a triple espresso, eased down with a cheeky balloon of brandy, and got chatting to the owner about the Wurlitzer he’d sold to Franco back in the seventies.
Soho’s notoriously liberal workers and residents did baulk slightly at the sight of a man in dirty chef’s whites puking in the gutter at noon. The staff of a production company took bets on what restaurant they should avoid that lunchtime.
Drooling into the drain, Charlie felt his spirits start to rise. He wiped his mouth, chin and nose with his sleeve and thought about where to go for a spot of lunch.
He set off sideways for St James’s, took a one-eyed bearing while hanging off Eros, and was soon falling down the famous Quaglino’s stairway that led to the subterranean dining heaven.
Lulu, who had enjoyed a simple staff lunch of seared tuna and jasmine rice, and a harmless flirt with her head waiter, was busy putting the eighty-seat section of her quadrant of Quag’s in order. She looked up on the sound of the thud and suffered an involuntary shudder. The only involuntary shudder she’d had on account of Charlie Sheridan for a good many years.
‘Look what the cat dragged in.’
‘Hello, Lu, hic, I got a Michelin star.’
‘I know. Well done. You can’t stay here. Hygiene hazard.’
Charlie slumped into the white leather banquette. Lulu cringed, he’d left a muddy streak in his wake. She looked around to see who’d noticed, Quag’s was filling up, corks coming out of bottles, floured rolls and salted butter landing on crisp linen.
‘Can I have a menu?’
‘No. You can not.’
‘Chef John said I can sit anywhere I like. Just seen him outside. So, Lu, let me have a menu, there’s a love.’
Charlie tossed his five remaining fifties on to the table, leant his head back and closed his eyes.
‘Charlie, you can’t sleep here.’
‘Not sleeping, Lu, resting eyes only. Menu.’
Charlie ordered a one hundred and fifty quid pot of Beluga caviar and a bottle of house champagne. He’d have a tenner left over for the train, though that thought even crossing Lulu’s mind made her furious with herself.
She keyed in the order on Quaglino’s electronic Remanco system, something of a step up from Belle Hotel’s pad and pencil and peg method, and went to the loos to give herself a good talking to.
By the time she was back, Charlie was deep in conversation with Chef John. Her waiter had served the caviar perfectly, it rested on the mountain of ice with the lid presented resting on the lip of the plate, text facing the customer, just how she’d trained him. Except the customer, the yob, was scooping the fish eggs out with his fingers, twenty-quid fistfuls at a time, swigging champagne from the bottle and generally making an ass of himself.
‘Ex-boyfriend. Ex.’
Lulu muttered this calming mantra for the rest of lunch service as Charlie held court with a succession of famous faces that had seen his mug on the front of that Sunday’s paper and wanted to buy him a glass of champagne to both congratulate him in person and secure any future reservations they may wish to make at Belle Hotel.
Charlie lapped it up. For what to Lulu seemed like hours.
To add insult to injury, one fawning punter ordered Charlie a Quaglino’s Seafood Platter. Restaurant rules were that the section manager had to personally take the one hundred and twenty quid platter to the table and talk the guest through the tools they’d need to crack it open. Charlie thanked Lulu for her help and then cracked a claw off the lobster, crunc
hed the thing open with his bare hands, slathered down the pure white flesh and didn’t touch another thing. She let a waiter clear the platter away. Rules or no rules, Lulu had Hardman pride to contend with, too. Charlie tipped the guy with his last tenner. Charlie leaned back, hands behind his head and smoked a fag.
Lulu amused herself with a daydream of picking up the unused lobster crackers, easing Charlie’s sweaty ball sack out of the crusty fly of his chef’s trousers and squeezing the wizened handful between the glinting teeth of the crackers. After a while, Lulu tired of that daydream and moved on to beating Charlie about the head with the sharp end of the crab mallet.
Eventually, as the last lunchtime guests were collecting their coats and Quaglino’s was getting a fresh one of its own for evening service, Lulu led Charlie by the arm back up the stairway to heaven and blinking into the weak afternoon light.
‘Well done, Charley Farley. Now fuck off back to Brighton and don’t ever think of turning up at my place of work again drunk. In fact, don’t ever turn up at my place of work sober, for that matter. Fat chance of that happening. If you do, I will never, ever speak to you again. And that would be too soon. Goodbye.’
‘Lu?’
Her heart jumped a beat. An apology? A proposal of marriage? She’d refuse, naturally, but it’d be enormously pleasurable turning him down.
‘Can I have that tenner back for the train?’
With a shove, Lulu propelled Charlie Victoria-wards. Let him solve that problem by himself.
‘Oh, well done on the star, by the way,’ she muttered after him. ‘Try not to fuck it up.’
Too late now to tube it back to Tooting for her break, she’d have to grab forty winks in the staffroom before the evening shift began. Her section was turning tables two and a half times that night. She’d be hoping to meet two hundred people’s high expectations head on. After a lunch shift of looking after Charlie, Lulu was knackered.
Chef John passed her in the corridor on the way to the staffroom.
‘Nice guy, Charlie, you two an item?’
Lulu grimaced and stomped past him, finding a hard plastic seat right at the back of the staffroom to curl up on. Lulu had half an hour before she’d have to fix her hair and make-up and be back on show. This really hurt. She’d done what Franco had suggested, only to find herself out in the cold the moment they got what they had all been working for. Yes, Lulu had wanted London experience. Yes, she needed to get some space from Charlie. But, the Michelin star, right after she’d left. Cruel. They’d all earned that star together. She’d worked her butt off for Franco, putting in the same double shifts as Charlie. Often it’d be Lulu shaking Charlie awake at six, when he’d slept through the second alarm. It wasn’t just their love life that suffered on four hours’ sleep a night, it was everything else. The way they talked to each other. The way he held the plates for her to take, then snatched them away at the last moment. The way she’d slop sauce over his gleaming hot top at the pass, just to give him more to scrub off at midnight. It hadn’t started that way, they’d been loved-up for the first few years. Learning to take Belle Hotel higher than she’d been before, grafting towards the accolade they all felt was within their reach. And then, just when she’d doubted them and left…
Lulu let out a long sigh. Quag’s was wonderful. The hours, a mere eighty-hour week, considerably less than Franco had made them do. A day off a week, guaranteed, too. Not snatched away because Janet’s varicose veins were playing up again. It was tough, starting again at the bottom, working her way up to being one of many restaurant section waiters in London’s restaurants. Just as Lulu was at rock bottom, flaming Charlie hit the lofty top. Lulu felt dog-tired and now sick as one, to boot. Sick with jealousy that he’d taken the reward that was theirs to share. She’d split up with him the moment before he became attractive to other women. It’d take him a decade to work through all the slappers wanting a celeb chef notch on their bedpost. She didn’t want him, no. Lulu ran her hands through her hair, must wash that when she got back to the flat tonight, but she damned well didn’t want anyone else having him, either.
Time to go back out there. She’d wasted her entire break on Charlie. When would she ever learn?
Charlie reversed the charges to Belle Hotel and, a couple of whimpering sentences later, had Franco saying let me take care of it, wait under the station clock and one of my guys will find you. He travelled first class for free back to Belle Hotel, a fitting end to a memorable, or for Charlie, un-memorable, two-day bender.
Lulu spent her evening break pouring her heart out to Quaglino’s fruit and veg man in the canteen. Gregg patted her on the shoulder.
‘Never mind, darling. Plenty more Michelin-starred chefs in the sea. Ere, d’you fancy a night out with me? I know some clubs in Hackney that’ll make yer hair curl. Mine, too, if I ’ad any.’
She worked until close, dashing for the Tube and repeating the fact that it was over with Charlie, over, over, over as she walked down the long flight of steps to the platform.
Lulu fell into sleep the moment she sat down on the last south-bound train on the Northern Line. A fellow passenger shook her awake at Morden, where she swore and set off for the now familiar mini-cab office. If there were any cabs available, which it didn’t look like there were, she’d be lucky to be in bed by two. Up at seven and back at Quag’s by nine, this was the life her mother should have warned her about.
Belle Hotel Restaurant Receipt
13 October 1995
Starters
Sevruga Caviar 30g £30
York Ham £6.20
Mains
Poulet des Landes £40
(for two)
Buttered Carrots £3.75
Pudding
Crêpes Suzette £6.75
Wine
Glass of Chianti £5.50
Coffee
Double Espresso £2.50
Filter Coffee £2.50
TOTAL £97.20
Tip £2.80
Bill to Labour Party master account
Signed by: G. Brown
‘I’m a lifelong Labour supporter. Was a union man on the trains before I opened Belle Hotel, used to drink with John Prescott at the union conferences back in the day. Boy, John could whack them back.’
‘Still can, er, we’re having trouble deciding. Can we have a word with the chef?’
‘For you, Mr Blair, anything.’
‘Call me Tony. Neil Kinnock told me about Belle Hotel. Said you gave him a dry pair of trousers when he fell into the sea. Thought it’d be good to get to know you. Never know when one might need a dry pair of trousers.’
‘We.’
‘Pardon, Gordon, avez vous gone French on us?’
‘No, Tony, we. One implies that it will be you requiring the dry trousers. “We” suggests it could be one or both of us.’
Franco averted his eyes.
‘Shall I fetch chef for you? I’m sure he’ll be able to help.’
‘Thank you, look, we’ve got to sort this out, Tony.’
‘Oui, I mean yes Gordon, thank you, Franco. That would be a great help.’
Charlie needed no cue from Franco, he’d been watching the two politicians tussling with the menu through the kitchen portholes, pissing himself. He tapped Franco on the shoulder as they passed going through the swing doors.
Franco lit a fag, wafting the smoke half-heartedly away from the direction of the pass. Charlie rocked back on his clogs in front of Tony and Gordon, thumbs tucked in his apron strings.
‘Good afternoon, my right honourable gentlemen. Now what appears to be the problem?’
‘Hi, I’m Tony. And you must be, er, Charlie. Cherie and I saw you on TFI Friday – it’s a television programme, Gordon – cooking that truffle omelette for Chris Evans. Looked fabulous.’
‘Thanks, Tony. So…?’
‘Well, Gordon and I want the same thing, but I suggested that I get what I want, and he settles for our second choice, then we swap halfway through. How does
that sound?’
‘Messy, to tell you the truth. How about Poulet des Landes, a truffled chook with dauphinoise potatoes. It’s for two, so you get to share, and I’ll make sure Franco carves you a breast, wing and drumstick each. That way all you’ll have to fight about is the Parson’s Nose.’
‘You’ve got yourself a deal. Do you have any polenta to go with it?’
The two men sat at loggerheads over the roast. Then came time for debating the big issue of the day. Pudding. Tony ordered the crêpes, Gordon wanted humble pie, so sat fuming with a filter coffee for the rest of the lunch.
‘Great actor, that Tony,’ said Franco.
Janet watched them leave, then went back to her game of knucklebones. Having finally persuaded Franco to strip out the seventies-looking bar, so bad it wasn’t even ironic, Janet was now running the pub she’d always dreamed of. Franco had given her half of what he’d chucked at Conran twenty years ago, but Janet had a whale of a time trawling the Shoreham shipyards for props, fittings and fixtures for her Ship Street themed pub. The wood-panelled bar and walls, when she’d stripped off the padded hessian, did half the job for her. She’d liberated the big brass bell from the Athena B when it had run aground a decade earlier and now hung it in pride of place at the end of the bar. Anytime she got a tip, Janet rung it. Ringing Janet’s bell became something of a pastime for the locals from that day on. Janet had got herself a couple of shore-leave tattoos along the way and what with her dark hair, gold filling in her front tooth and hoop earrings, she was quite the pirate these days, with a crew of sea-dog punters that swigged from her jugs like they contained mother’s milk. In fact, Janet felt so salty that she started singing the shanties she’d been humming while she worked. Add an admirer on the accordion and the Belle Pub soon had itself something of a reputation to rival Charlie’s restaurant. A listing corsair to Charlie’s tight ship.