May the 4th be with you…

The day started early and became frantic as the opening time got closer. I retreated to the safety of my kitchen to start preparing sauces, vegetables, trimming and portioning meats, checking the Kings cutlery and Willow pattern crockery kindly left by the previous owners.
Karen, aided by family and friends, was still painting at 7pm, one hour before our first customers arrived. The restaurant had 32 seats. We took 32 bookings and no more. We did not want to have any mishaps on our first night.
Our daughter, Alison, a building society clerk, was given a waiting role even though she had never worked over this side of the counter. We counted on her customer skills to charm the guests. Her husband-to-be, Dave was assigned to the glass washing along with what we hoped would be a very able barmaid.
Customers began arriving around 8pm and, within fifteen minutes, all the tables were occupied. I showed an utterly terrified Karen how to take the first food order. She had never worked in a restaurant before that evening. I handed her the pad to take the next one and headed back to the kitchen to start cooking the first dishes. I did not lift my head again until very late. The evening was a blur. I vaguely remember answering Karen’s numerous queries about the food, the bar and various other hiccups she had encountered throughout the night. I had forgotten to tell her to ask customers how they liked their steaks. I think that I cooked most of them medium unless someone had expressly asked for their meat rare or medium-rare. Our first night would have been a disaster had it not been for a young, experienced waitress, Angela who helped Karen and the rest of the team cope in the restaurant.
On the whole, the customers who were there on our opening were very happy. Over the years, many people claimed that they attended our first night. If I had kept count, we would have allegedly fed several dozens of customers that evening. I know that the thirty-two covers I served really felt like I had catered for a hundred.
Once the disaster area that was kitchen was finally cleaned down, the floors swept and mopped, and the restaurant tables reset after all the customers had left, I drove the staff home from one end of Hartlepool to the other, in my old Fiat 232. When I arrived back, the flat was very quiet as everyone had hit the sack while I was out. In turn, I fell asleep before I managed to finish a well-deserved glass of wine.
Sunday morning came very quickly. When I got up, Karen had already loaded the washer with the soiled table cloths, napkins and my chef’s whites and made breakfast for all the family. Over a pot of tea, we dissected the previous evening. She kept going over all the mistakes she had made. I reassured her that they weren’t that drastic and that, looking back, she would laugh at them, one day.
The till reading said £347 which was more than the old restaurant I had just left, used to take in an entire week. If business carried on that way, we were assured a good future.
When I look back, we had managed to open and run a successful restaurant with very little outlay of our own apart from “£250 and bucketfuls of enthusiasm”, a phrase which became synonymous with Krimo’s.