Smouldering discontent at the Firehouse?

 
Nuno Mendes (Picture: Nigel Howard)
20 June 2014

While Chiltern Firehouse might be harder to get into than a Berlin techno club — the current waiting list for non-celebrities is six months and counting — one purported insider isn’t entirely thrilled by how the place is run.

Celebrities from Lindsay Lohan to David Cameron have been crowding through the door to sample executive chef Nuno Mendes’s famed cuisine — but according to a posting on Stage Chef, a blog run by kitchen workers, all is not well among the stoves.

“I am not happy,” writes an anonymous chef who claims to have worked there for the past five months. “Neither is anybody else, it seems.” He says the muddled layout of the kitchen sections makes “cohesion and communication bloody difficult”; that some of the night chefs “or night pirates as they are known (or gypsies, cowboys, renegades, dreamers)” can’t be relied on to julienne a plate of shallots and that “service is a mess”. “It’s not,” he mildly concludes, “an efficient kitchen.”

He also claims it’s “always a struggle” to find proper storage for the mountains of food constantly arriving. “After finding containers, it is more of a struggle to find space in the fridges for it all. More so if you give a shit about trying to keep fish below meat and cooked meat above raw meat and all of this away from veg” — a basic kitchen food safety requirement.

The blogger says he left the Marylebone restaurant recently. A spokesperson for Westminster council tells us its food safety staff are yet to inspect the kitchens at the Firehouse but will be doing so soon. Chiltern Firehouse has politely declined to comment.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in