Life after Ramsay
Quelcutti's diner hops out of the frying pan and into the fire: 'Hell's Poblets' is a scary place to be when Ramsay's on the street
CHEF Ramsay's 'Costa del Nightmare' will feature Els Poblets restaurant 'Quelcuttis' on Tuesday. After the gagging order has been lifted, restaurant owner Joe Quelcutti speaks exclusively to Samantha Kett about what is was like to work with Gordon Ramsey and how thing have changed - or not.
HE'S every restaurateur's worst nightmare. He has grown men in tears, rubbishes their every recipe and uses language that would make a street urchin wince. Multi-Michelin-starred celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay of Hell's Kitchen fame is not known for being a tactful sort of chap, and now he's launched the show Costa del Nightmares, he's ready to start ripping Spanish eateries apart. If you own one, it's a good time to hide behind the sofa and pretend you're shut.
Straight-talking Londoner Joe Quelcutti, his brother Terry and sister Ruby thought they could hack it. Their burgerand-fry-up joint, Quelcutti's in Els Poblets, needed a new direction and, thanks to the TV show, has morphed into an upmarket but affordable wine and tapas bar with a chic new look (CBNews recommends their mixed salad with walnuts, blue cheese and quail's eggs; not bad for a fiver).
But Ramsay's road to culinary success is a rocky one replete with slanging matches, rude words and frying-pan hurling: would they crumble at the first course? Did they dish it out as well as take it? Who got their just desserts, and who boiled over? Tune in at 22.00 on Channel 4 this Tuesday (October 14) to find out...
How the devil did you get into all that?
My brother, Terry and I had been working at Bar Andreu when we heard the restaurant in the Plaça del Castell was looking for a new owner, and we thought it'd be great to be our own bosses. But we were novices, really. Our parents [Sue and Del] worked with us to start with; dad was a cabbie in London, I was a joiner, and at Bar Andreu we'd only really learnt to be waiters and chefs. Although we did learn our Spanish there, which we're very grateful for. My grandfather's from Andalucía - hence our surname - but he was evacuated to London during the Civil War and never really spoke Spanish to the family, so we've learnt it from scratch.
The first year was great, but then business started to drift off. So when we saw an article saying Gordon Ramsay was on the Costa looking for restaurants for his show, we thought, why not? It can't hurt.
Famous last words...?
Ramsay was a good laugh, although we had our moments. We were all in tears at one point at least. And the show loved this place: we're not in Benidorm or Magaluf or Torremolinos. It's not a big expat community, there are only just over 1,000 people in the village and not that many Brits, so we've had to learn to integrate. Between us, we speak Spanish, German and English. We've taken on a German girl, who's a real asset.
So, our scary chef walked into Quelcutti's and went, "Gordon Bennett..."
He knocks you down so badly, to make you realise what you're doing wrong - then builds you back up again. Terry and I were always shouting at each other and our sister Ruby was always caught in the middle, but we're getting on better now.
And this bad dream of Ramsay hell made you wake up and smell the coffee?
He taught us so much about ourselves. For a start, we had no life. We were working from 08.30 every morning and then shutting at 01.30. And what do you do when you haven't got a social life? You bring your social life to work. So my brother and I were drinking constantly. We'd start with a beer, then someone would buy you another, and then a shot... you can't run a restaurant like that.
Then Gordon came along - and pulled a breathalyser on me every day!
Ouch.
Yeah. But now we don't drink at all, even if someone offers to buy us one. Only a couple of beers on our day off.
We bet there were plenty more humiliating episodes.
The second day was worse: Gordon made us write an emotional letter to our parents, apologising for not being very good kids, and read it out to our mum!
It was difficult, very stressful. To be shouted at by a man, as an adult, was hard. I felt like a child at school. If you're from a big city, you tend to be streetwise, but coming here and being shouted at was an eye-opener. And I'm a fiery character - you'll see that on the show!
Is he a bit of a softie, though, when the cameras stop rolling?
He was the same to his production team as he was to us! He talks badly to you, and he was rude to them, as well. And it was intense; three solid weeks, every day. He wore out the eff-word with me! But he was brilliant.
Surely there's no need for that kind of language, though?
To be fair, he's a businessman, more so than a chef. Although his food is really good, you can't knock it. He's hard-working and hasn't got where he is through not knowing what he's doing, and he says things for a reason: to get his message across. If you just say to someone, 'don't do that', they probably won't listen.
The production team said, look, it's YOUR premises. You CAN kick him out if you want to. But I thought, no, we've got this far... and once we agreed to listen to him, it was great.
We went on excursions to the Enrique Mendoza wine merchant's and to Quique Dacosta's restaurant, and learnt about fine wines. What we were selling before was rubbish, because often what expats want in their wine is quantity rather than quality! But Gordon taught us that for just a few pence more, you can get a good drop of stuff.
What else did he teach you?
Before, we were trying to please everyone and do everything. We did breakfast, combos, almuerzo [elevenses], and became a hamburger joint. We had fruit machines, football betting machines, electronic darts, a pool table, and TV screens showing British and Spanish football and the Champions' League. Gordon said, you can't do that. You'll burn yourself out.
And to be fair, I don't go to a restaurant to watch football; I go to a sports bar. Plus, a lot of diners don't want to be sitting next to someone who's constantly swearing at a TV screen at the top of their voice; and it wasn't really making us money. Whereas in the UK, it's all-day drinking: you get to the pub a couple of hours before a big match and then stay there until closing time - over here, Spanish fans arrive two minutes before the game, have a half-pint and a coffee, then go home as soon as it's over. And yet if two couples come in and sit at the same table to eat, chat and chill out, they can have a very nice, quality meal with dessert and wine for €20 a head, and we've earned €80. Gordon also suggested changing our opening hours from noon to midnight so we could actually have some time off.
Did you clash over the SpanishBritish culture issue? That is, did he try to make you do things you know just wouldn't work over here?
Ramsay's knowledge of Spain and Spanish culture isn't great at all; we did clash there. For example, a load of people came in for a big lunch, and left a very generous 20% tip. Here in Spain, it's traditional to give diners a free shot at the end, and I did so just to say thanks for their custom and their enormous tip. Let's face it, doing so probably cost me a couple of euros, but Gordon went mad. He said, you don't do that! You don't give anything away free!
I told him, 99% of restaurants do: you give a dish of peanuts to someone having a beer, or a couple of olives to someone with their wine, or a plate of crisps.
Have you kept to everything Gordon changed about the place?
We've kept all his recipes, they were brilliant. And the new sign has grown on us. We've taken on a new chef, José Sánchez, who's Valencian and gives a local touch to the cuisine which brings in Spanish customers. We visit the market every day and buy fresh ingredients. All the meat comes in fresh. That way, we're creating a community feel, keeping local businesses alive and keeping the village rolling. The guy who supplies our water stops for lunch when he's delivered, as a thank you for our going to him to buy our water. Yes, we could get our ingredients a bit cheaper from the supermarket, but nobody from there is going to stay behind for a bite to eat when they bring their deliveries, are they?
We still do burgers, but they're homemade, not the frozen rubbish we were serving up last year. Terry makes up a classic burger with herbs, lettuce and tomato. We've lost all the greasy stuff, and Gordon's given us cookbooks with his recipes, which Terry's mastered.
But we've changed our opening hours back. I came in one day early, about 10.00, to do some cleaning, and I must have seen 20 or 30 people walk past. Maybe they wouldn't all have come in, but if we're shut they wouldn't get the chance to anyway. So we've gone back to opening mornings now.
And even when we've technically shut the kitchen, we'll always be able to serve up food. Sometimes people turn up really late and say, we've just got off a plane and haven't even put our cases indoors, but we're starving. We always explain that by law, we have to shut at 01.30, but if they're happy to make sure they've eaten by then or don't mind plastic cups and plates so they can take it away with them, we'll dish them up something. That's the kind of welcome we want to give people. On Sunday, we threw on a free paella for our second anniversary to say thanks to all the customers who've supported us.
And has being 'Gordoned off' actually helped trade?
Here, when winter kicks in, many restaurants shut until spring, but we've got a constant supply of people. Tonight we've had four Swiss diners, four Germans, two Brits, and then in the evening from about 21.30 to midnight we get the Spanish diners. It's a lovely setting in the square, a safe place for kids to play. And what we're now finding is that people come back again and again, often from further afield. In one square kilometre there are nine bars here in Els Poblets, so we had to be different to attract people from outside the village. We've had 50 in this evening, including people who didn't know we were going to be on TV. Are you dreading it? No, it's going to be great, so funny. We're going to set up a giant screen on the terrace when it's on, and we've had loads of bookings already. It'll be the first time we've seen it, too, but none of the rude words have been bleeped out! It's on Channel 4 this Tuesday, October 14 at 22.00 mainland Spain time [21.00 UK time]. Look out for us!