Stoops x 'The Bear': A Drama

Have you seen The Bear, a fraught Disney+ show about a Chicago restaurant? If you haven’t, the gist is: ‘if things can go wrong they will, and preferably in quick succession, with accelerating intensity’.

We had one of those nights this week in The Blue Stoops. A new till system had been installed a few days before and Wednesday was our first properly crazy night. Full bar, dining room and terrace. Including one table who were gracing us with a return visit having complained vigorously about their last visit during that rocky period immediately after the opening last year.

So, no pressure.

Best laid plans, it turned out the programming of the new till system was not yet right and when extreme pressure was applied, yes, the printers in the kitchen suddenly started spewing out yards of gobbledegook right around 8pm, peak service. So the chefs had no idea what they were meant to be cooking.

Then we had a power-outage on the main kitchen circuit.

Oh, and another.

And then another.

The team upstairs handled all of this dextrously in terms of managing customers' expectations – but there was just no way we were going to get the food out on time. Once one table is delayed, it’s like Gatwick at 8pm on a Saturday night. The whole process of preparing and serving food gets put back, and there is just no way of fixing that. It is pretty scary for staff, and very frustrating for the customer.

So, apologies if you were there and we didn’t offer our usual service (rather wonderfully, some of the people we have spoken to claim to have noticed nothing!).

And thank you to Emily in the kitchen and Sergio/Arianna on the floor (+ their teams) for getting through it. As a relative newbie to this game, my skin does not (yet) bear the protective scar tissue built up over years of weathering the vagaries of the restaurant game, but I’m getting there!

Today is a new day, and the circuit board and till are being repaired. We will of course fight on, because we love the Stoops and (mostly) love this life we have chosen.

Thus, we share this not to make excuses or seek pity, rather to entertain, albeit somewhat ghoulishly. Because we all have a touch of schadenfreude tucked away deep in the sub-conscious, don’t we?