It’s not just business... It’s personal
Loving and working together is ideal recipe
FEBRUARY IS a romantic month if ever there was one, and we felt that some of our home grown Edinburgh businesses could do with some of our love and attention.
Restaurateurs Victor and Carina Contini are a very good example of people who appear to make it work both at home and in business. What does it take?
When they were first married the first of three bunches of flowers arrived every month, allowing Carina to feel really quite special.
Then she discovered it was a bit less romantic as Victor had set up a standing order with a local florist, rather than having to think about sourcing them himself. While jointly relating this tale from the early days of their marriage, the pair laughed, both at and with each other.
Since then their marriage has been a flower free zone, so The Edinburgh Reporter dropped by their Cannonball Restaurant with a bouquet from Narcissus on Broughton Street to encourage Victor to be just a wee bit more romantic. But it is a relationship which works on all levels.
Find out inside the secrets of how the Continis and a few other Edinburgh couples run busy food businesses while living in harmony.
It is a tough job running any kind of hospitality business no matter whether it’s the late nights in a restaurant or early mornings spent at fish markets. Does it make it any easier if you are in business with your life partner? I discovered that there are some really good examples of couples in Edinburgh who can make a success out of both. Even if there are the odd fiery moments, the support for each other and single mindedness of purpose shone through in all of these interviews - and there was a lot of laughter during the photo shoots.
VICTOR AND CARINA
Contini, The Scottish Café and Cannonball
RUNNING BUSY restaurants for the last 19 years, with an outside dining arm and, during Covid, adapting to home deliveries of meals and vegetable boxes, as well as looking after three children, takes its toll on anyone, but their different personalities bring a balance to all the relationships that this busy couple are juggling.
Their families had probably been friends for more than 500 years, and although it might seem a little bit of cliché it was almost inevitable that they would get together - notwithstanding Carina’s father putting his foot down that she had to be 21 before she started dating Victor. Their two grandfathers were great friends in Italian villages only a mile apart, before coming to Scotland in the early twentieth century, and Carina’s sister and Victor’s brother are also married to each other.
At 23 Carina married Victor, having always had a bit of a soft spot for him and in spite of their seven years age difference. She said: “I just thought he was the loveliest person. He would always treat me like a wee sister whenever we met - which was not often, until he asked me out.”
Youngest of eight she may have had little need for another sibling, but recognises that Victor is very similar to her own father who was 50 when she was born. Carina explained: “My dad was a lovely, lovely man. What I love about Victor is how similar he is to my Dad. They are both very convivial and engaging, retreating to their own spaces when necessary, but open and loving people.”
Victor is the calmer of the two ideally suited to front of house, and the staff during training learn to do what they call The Victor Welcome. His big smile and welcome to diners is legendary and well known among customers. Carina admits that part of their success is that they have compatible skillsets. She said: “I watch him in the Scottish Café, and his face is so gentle when he talks to customers. I’m good at the other side of things, you know, keeping everything in order. But I get anxious about talking to people front of house when my head is so full of all the things I have to do.
“I concentrate a lot on the product and the provenance and all of that. Victor does too, but when you’re trying to sell an experience the food and the service both have to be good for the whole experience to be great.”
I feel very lucky that Victor is my partner in life and in business, and you know we don’t take each other for granted
Even if one or both of us have a really bad day, we still hold hands on the way home
A PROFESSIONAL OPINION
I spoke to Gin Lalli, a solution focused psychotherapist, specialising in stress and anxiety management. Her therapy is modern and science based, and moving forward rather than analysing the past.
Gin said: “What I believe you have found here are people who have really worked out their personal boundaries and what is doable for them. So every couple will be slightly different with some of them loving to talk about work at home. I often say that there is no such thing as work/life balance - it is all just called life and we get so much purpose from our work. These couples will have worked hard and tried some things and realised what was working and what wasn’t it will not have happened straight away. What creates resilience long term is going through some hardships to get to that point.”
MICHELE AND GABRIELLA Tipico
MICHELE RUSSO AND his partner Gabriella Sanguedolce are a couple who are obviously sweet on each other, and who share their own happiness in Edinburgh with the Sicilian Torrone which they sell from their pop up stall. Both are engaging individuals, but as a couple their hard working, yet playful and happy, attitude is obvious for anyone to see. When they met in the central Sicilian town of Caltanissetta, Michele ran a clothes business and Gabriella was a customer. Torrone is nougat and almond brittle produced in the same way for generations using the best of raw materials, crafted into molten sugar and cooled on marble slabs. Michele learned his trade in Italy from a young age in his family business.
What is it that makes this work? Michele said: “Of course I am clearly in love with Gabriella and this makes it work. Sometimes we fight each other! We have been together for about 12 years and although a couple we are not married yet - but we will be soon. We met in Sicily and then I decided to come to Scotland. Because I was terribly in love with her, I said I would go back to Italy if she did not want to come and join me here. She didn’t want to miss the experience of living abroad, so she came to join me and now we are happy here in Edinburgh.”
EDWARD AND ALAN Ed’s Supper Club
EDWARD JANUSZ of Ed’s Supper Club is a chef who works alone in the kitchen, but his parter Alan
McCurdy deals with the tech and admin issues behind the scenes, with a bit of front of house thrown in for good measure. Edward explained that having a work relationship with Alan does of course also impact on the couple’s home life.
He said: “It is not easy because there are no boundaries between work and home, so it’s difficult, from a kind of mental point of view because you don’t have this separation. But in our situation everything works perfectly, because we, fully 100% support each other in every decision we make. We understand each other, and engage in each other’s life. We don’t behave or think selfishly and I think we treat each other with respect and communicate quite well.
“We have a lot of conversations over dinner sometimes not easy conversations. But usually Alan is better at drawing the line, and sometimes takes me out for a drive to distract me from business chat.”
Edward admitted that occasionally it gets a bit fiery between them - but it must work as they are now in countdown mode to their Edinburgh wedding in April, so believe me they are more than a bit loved up.
Edward produces beautiful food for Ed’s Supper Club (and yes there will be more dates from 5 February onwards), will be cooking in the kitchen on Mondays and Tuesdays at Bijou Bistro on Restalrig Road, and still has time to make his delicious chocolates under the brand name PM Edinburgh.
Meanwhile Alan is out of the house each day as he teaches computing science at Leith Academy, and is also in charge of the websites and social media for all the various businesses. But the key element in their relationship is that they complement each other and know exactly what the other is doing.
CAMPBELL AND GISELLE Eddie’s Seafood Market
CAMPBELL AND GISELLE Mickel met one
Hogmanay in Victoria Street more than 15 years ago. The stars were clearly aligned, as one of the places that Campbell had spent a good deal of time was on a beach in the Philippines - and Giselle though born in London is part of a Filipino family of entrepreneurs.
Giselle said: “He was a proper beach boy on a paradise island with talcum powder sand, but was so astonished and he had never met a Filipino in Edinburgh before!”
She moved to Edinburgh where she continued to work in banking, and the pair were married shortly afterwards. These two have had their fair share of ups and downs with Campbell’s unexpected cardiac arrest in 2017 a definite bump in the road (although he was back at work just ten days later) and their move into Eddie’s Seafood Market has been a real high point.
The couple recently made a decision to streamline their lives and concentrate on the original Marchmont shop. The Merienda restaurant in Stockbridge, which won a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2020 will remain closed. All focus will now be on getting up at 3am to head for the fish market bringing the best produce back to Marchmont where Campbell has begun smoking his own salmon.
This last while has been quite intense for both of them and it has been all hands on deck. The former banker in a power suit has now turned her hand to serving in the shop, and has also learned how to cut fish.
She said her new way of life really makes her happy: “I just surprised myself as to how much I’m enjoying it. And I love serving people. It really brings me joy because you’re giving people happiness.”
So how does it work? As a couple who are together pretty much 24/7 it appears to come down to love.
Giselle said: “As corny as that may sound you just choose love. Even if we’ve had a bad day then we are still holding hands in the car on the way home. And if Campbell is home first he is already making dinner.”