POLPO – a venetian word to describe a humble restaurant serving simple food
23rd December 2014
To most people, a crumbling concrete pillar in the middle of a room would be a turn-off. Not to Russell Norman. He’s scanning the wreckage of an old All Bar One in London’s Notting Hill for anything he might salvage for his latest venture, which he is installing in its stead: a fourth Polpo restaurant. “There’s not a lot,” he smiles ruefully, lamenting the lack of potential from the site. “I try to re-use as much as possible.” The bar is “pretty decent”, so that can stay, and the row of Butler sinks are “right up my alley”. Plus there’s a “good timber floor”. Then he spots the pillar and relaxes…
These are the words of Russell Norman the founder of the soho restauraunt Polpo.
The Polpo cookbook is a favourite with our customers at Cotes Mill, its a beautiful recipe book and just the beginning of a culinary adventure around London.
I have been working at the London showroom for the last couple of days and my search for a cheap place to stay took me to Soho, this gave me the perfect opportunity to spend an evening in two of Russell Normans ever increasing selection of understated, highly rated London restaurants.
We started at Polpetto, a small, delightfully delapidated little place on Rupert Street in the heart of Soho. An Aperol spritzer, a small carafe of Red wine some fresh foccacia and a lovely son to chat to, what a lovely chilled out place to spend an hour, it felt as if we were a million miles away from London, the decoration inside is beyond lovely. We left here and asked the waitress the way to Spuntinos, another notch in their empire of super cool restaurants.
Dark, heaving with people, this place was amazing, we stood against the wall queueing with a very good bloody mary and a little smile on our faces, how cool is this!!
Next time your in London you have to visit these places if you love something different and great food.
POLPO – www.polpo.co.uk
POLPETTO – www.polpetto.co.uk
SPUNTINO – www.puntino.co.uk
MISHKINS – www.mishkins.co.uk
Russell Norman’s steps to having a successful opening
1. You must do your numbers. If it doesn’t work on a spreadsheet, it is not going to work in real life.
2. Always stick to what you know. There is no point trying to second-guess what people will like.
3. Recruit front-of-house staff who have good communication skills and a good attitude. Experience is less important than you think – it can be trained. Attitude cannot be trained.
4. On the menu, if a dish has more than three main ingredients, it is too complicated. Keep it simple.
5. In a restaurant, service is as important, if not more so, than food. You can rescue an average food experience with excellent service, but no amount of good food will rescue a bad service experience.
6. Just because you are a good cook or a great host, it doesn’t mean you can open a restaurant. So many restaurants fail because they are opened by enthusiastic amateurs who think it’s just a dinner party with a till. It’s not.
7. Restaurants are less about food than they are about people. Customers, staff, the friends you arrive with, the people around you… they all contribute far more to your enjoyment and experience than you realise. (Although it is important that the food isn’t disgusting.)
8. A good restaurant should make you feel better about yourself and the world around you when you leave, than you did when you arrived.
9. A good menu is one that makes it difficult to choose because you like the sound of everything. Bad menus make it difficult to choose for exactly the opposite reason!
