Everything must come to an end

Whenever people reminisce about Krimo’s, they say: “Ah, we loved your old place at Seaton. It was so quaint and intimate.”

Of course, No.8 The Front still holds a dear place in my heart. It was my first venture into owning my own restaurant. Nine tables, thirty-two seats. Cooking for names rather than numbers – I insisted on the customers’ names written at the top of the check so that I knew who I was preparing the food for. And later, after the cooking was done, coming out of the kitchen wearing a clean apron, I usually remembered what each diner had eaten. Gauging people’s immediate response, talking about their food likes and dislikes.

Yes, moving to the Marina in 2000, I agree that Krimo’s lost its intimacy. Sometimes, change is inevitable. We had outgrown the restaurant in Seaton and, with Portofino’s success on the Marina, I felt that the eating-out scene was definitely moving to that part of town. 

Eighteen years on, and despite many upheavals such as the introduction of parking charges, businesses going bust and others opening up, the Marina remains very popular especially on a sunny day. Mind you, Seaton still pulls day-trippers from all over the region, and hopefully, with some careful planning, it could soon rival many other seaside resorts.

After the changes I made to Krimo’s, I worked hands on from February 2012 until the day it closed in October 2014. A few staff went, others came. The pressure of selling the business as a going concern was excruciating. Rightly or wrongly, I thought that the landlord had designs on making a sneaky grab for the going concern, getting me to pay the staff their redundancies and then re-employing in the vacant restaurant within days of the end of the lease. This created a lot of unease and friction among the entire restaurant staff and me, although I doubt whether many customers noticed anything. It was awful, walking around with a smile on one’s face while in the background, things seemed like they were crumbling. 

A South African investor, perhaps keen to salvage some of his depreciating S.A. Rand made me a ridiculous offer for the business, wanted to employ all the staff with me as manager. I laughed and dismissed him and his offer, although he came back a few times to check the place out, even dining with his partners to test the chefs. As no other offers came forth, due to the credit crunch, the selling agent suggested that we drop the price again. Of course, this didn’t affect his fee. 

Just as things felt genuinely hopeless and I began despairing, a regular customer of ours came along at the last minute and offered to buy the business for his daughter and his son-in-law, Tony, a chef known to me and who had worked with my friend Didier in the past. 

We concluded the sale by the end of October, and most of Krimo’s chefs remained at the restaurant which was christened Portals Place. 

Finally, walking away from Krimo’s was as much a wrench as a relief. A wrench as it had been the restaurant that bore my name and started the ball rolling for us. The relief was that I no longer had to come into the place and suffer the memory of missing out on buying the freehold.