In Your Shoes - Barry Thomson

Planning for the week

Much of Monday is spent planning a busy week ahead and, in particular, two special events. On Wednesday evening, Pacamara are hosting a coffee tasting and talk with Steve Leighton, the MD of our coffee roasting partners of four years, Has Bean Coffee. On Friday, we'll be hosting a Christmas Party for Thorntons solicitors. Our chefs have challenged themselves by designing a great menu and realise that rolling it out first time to a full house won't be easy but we know that being organised and well prepared is the key to these events running smoothly.

Running a busy café business seven days a week in addition to one off events like these are always tough going, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Coffee is a science!

In between managing a busy café service on Tuesday, I spend much of the day training one of our new baristas in preparation for two delicious new coffees we'll be adding onto our menu the following day. Getting our coffees to taste their very best is quite scientific as every coffee is different – requiring different ratios of coffee to water and being ground differently to extract them perfectly. Underextract the coffee and it tastes weak or sour, overextract it and it tastes bitter and astringent. Get them right though and they're awesome.  We've a great reputation for serving top drawer coffee but this creates it's own problems as our customers expect us to keep these high standards every single time we make a coffee.  It's great fun, but requires so much attention to detail.

No such thing as a day off

What should have been a day off on Wednesday ends up mostly fine tuning last minute details for our coffee talk and tasting event this evening. Steve and his colleague Sonali are travelling up from Stafford & London respectively and emails and phone calls are pinging North and South of the border all day to ensure everything is in place.

The evening is a huge success, reminding me why we take the time to plan these events meticulously. Steve's talk is fascinating and I tell him afterwards I'd have gladly listened to him for hours and hours. A great public speaker and hugely knowledgable and passionate about coffee.

I promise Steve and Sonali some traditional Dundee hospitality so take them just across the road to the Speedwell Bar (aka Mennies) one of Dundee's best and most traditional pubs.

A great day ends with a huge problem!

A great day ends with a huge problem! As we're finishing our preparation for tomorrow's Christmas dinner for Thorntons, our usually reliable waiter packs in giving us a serious headache for tomorrow's busy Friday. Having no stairs between the basement level kitchen and ground floor restaurant this gives us an enormous headache!  Despite being slightly after office hours, a quick phonecall to Caltech Lifts MD, Andrew Renwick, and he assures me he'll have one of his engineers with us first thing tomorrow to do their best to get us back up and running. With the weekend approaching, it's the worst time for this happen but we quickly get to work on a Plan B just in case......

Caltech to the rescue!

Disaster averted. Caltech's engineer is with us first thing as promised and thankfully has the technical problem fixed within half an hour of opening. A better result than even we'd hoped for and just as well.  Our busiest morning of the week is followed by closing briefly for half an hour to dress tables and prepare the restaurant for our guests from Thorntons.  It's at times like these, you really see the value in partnering with trusted local firms who are on your doorstep and always willing to help fix problems!

The afternoon goes fantastically well. Even with our guests requesting to move several of the tables around on arrival and causing havoc with our carefully prepared table plan, by the time the main courses arrive, we've rewritten the table plan and service could not go smoother. Our guests seem to have a great afternoon and stay on into the early evening to enjoy after dinner drinks.