Gary Marshall

Its a shame you won't get royalties on that phrase - I think we'll be seeing a lot of very similar sentances very soon. ← telegraph article, dominated by a basil fawlty picture naturally! are both places really owned by the same people as the article suggests? that is quite a coup. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../20/ntorq20.xml

shame for Anthony's again, though i'm sure they'll be pleased for nathan at st ervan. well done ginger chef winteringham will be disappointed as they were gunning for 3 stars, i haven't been since germain sold up but friends say food is still very good. and no new 3 stars...

we drank, before dinner, house white, le charme sauvignon blanc, a quite quaffable drop, point shown by 3 disappearing very rapidly! think we had champagne to start, georges gardet brut special we then had riesling bollenberg 04, materne hageilin bourgogne chardonnay 2000 etienne sauzet nuits st georges 1er cru les damodes 1997 machard de gramont (sadly now all gone) then its replacement - st aubin 1er cru 99 hubert lamy and finally, andrew quady elysium black muscat

thanks, i do have the best intentions of posting more & photo's i have loads of pictures of half complete meals as we get too busy and i forget to complete the meal, and my sodding telephone line is a bit flaky which affects the broadband. cheers gary

thanks, all very true, especially the social aspect, although we aren't a million miles away from our home patch the lack of friendly faces, especially over christmas has been quite hard. i do laugh now when reading agents details '....country pub, fantastic lifestyle opportunity' we have got the freehold

thanks tony i'd love the time to eat & drink the profits, i've never eaten/drunk so little since we bought it! i'm losing weight (although that could well be the stress!) cheers gary

After the christmas/ new year rush we closed and treated ourselves to a weeks holiday, and came back just in time for a serious session with bapi, rosie, slacker and curly fi i think our chef andy did himself proud with his tasting menu he concocted for us, if only i could remember it, i'd write it up, and of course modesty permitting, i'll leave it to the others to post! after a week closed the bookings as expected looked a bit light, but further explained when punters were coming in saying they'd been trying to ring and it was just ringing out. A quick call to BT ascertained the line had been down, they re-booted it but couldn't say how long it'd been down! Not happy. friday night was luckily busy, but saturday was looking a dead loss, 10 booked in at 9am, about 20 by 6pm (4 of those being sarah's parents feeling sorry for us i think!). My dad called at 6 and i said come down we're dead. Also sarah was away on a hen weekend so i was doing the bar solo. long story short, after 6pm phone goes mad, walk-in's galore and get to the point of turning away punters! We eventually stopped at 51 covers! Menu got turned over completely as no way had the kitchen expected anything like this last minute rush. sunday lunch was a continuation, 57 done everything sold, if this continues then i'll be very happy, as well as completely knackered! sarah picked her weekend off very well! if my home broadband wasn't down, i'd post some menu's they're coming on leaps and bounds and the minute.

Oh go on, go on, go on, Sir. If the pasty Yorkshire man-Marshall can do it And he is working soo hard too. I left him a message about an imminent visit to his Pub next week. Text response" Hi mate, what can I do for you I am in Barbados" Bastard ← i can assure you it's the monday - friday job that pays for the holidays not the pub, that just leaves you with a letter box full of bills to welcome you home!

Are you speaking of Lords when John Campbell was there?? Campbell has been at The Vineyard for the past 4 years or so, and has one star currently. If there is a chef that deserves 2 stars, I certainly think he is ← i'm pretty sure john campbell had a star at lotm, mind you he also had nathan outlaw & tony flinn in his kitchen too, not a bad brigade!

no quite the opposite, although he's a bit more lah-de-dah now

are you going to stop being so modest and tell everyone where you are moving to?

i'm going on wednesday! fingers crossed for the guide, i haven't heard of inspectors being in the area for some time.

no! there were 5 of us, and it was a lot of food! i seized the opportunity to try as much as possible! cheers gary

ok so we had vegetarian hot & sour soup (gesture for my halal meat eating colleague) diced chicken lettuce wrap salt & pepper spare ribs fillet steak rolls salt & pepper baby squid deep fried squid in batter seasame prawn toast then a whole aromatic duck then aromatic crispy prawns spicy hot poached deboned sea bass mt city duet pork spicy hot poached lamb painter daqian spring chicken stir fried fillet steak with chilli plus a special starter of smoked chicken from the specials board with the mains the best dish was definitely the poached lamb the sea bass wasn't as hoped it was the same preparation as the lamb unfortunately . We weren't in the mood for eels today! it was a very pleasant lunch but i still feel i need the guidance of an expert to get the most out of this kitchen, it's nicely spiced but to be honest doesn't wow me as much as i thought it might, saying that i'm sure the killer dishes are on the menu i just don't know where to look!

thanks for that thom, i'll do my best to scoff as much of that as possible. My colleagues are looking slightly scared now though as i regale them with their possible choices!

Right. I'm going to red chilli tomorrow. I have all afternoon, a willing accomplice, and an expense account. Tell me what to order

This really is great news Gary, many congratulations. If the food is as good as it sounds then you are certainly on to a winner in that department. As someone who spends a great deal of time trying to extract information from restaurant websites, yours is a model of well designed restraint. So who's going to make it there first? Bapi? ← thanks andy with the website i've tried to give what i'd like as a punter ie bit of background and ethos of the place, up to date menu, wine list, directions and opening hours. i'd like a few more photos on there too. Bapi & Yin have had the pleasure of Sunday lunch, i think they're coming back so it can't have been too bad

well we've not had the books done yet so it's early days! the 70% margin mantra is fixed in many operators minds, and many aren't wine afficionados so they see it purely as a profit centre and not from an enthusiasts point of view. Most of the wine merchants i spoke were trying to get people away from fixed margin. To my mind i'd rather have a few interesting bottles that will make someones day at the price and sell it for £10-15 cash profit than have it on the shelf at 70% margin. Margin means nothing if you don't sell it! A fine wine rep from one of the big wholesalers came in and reckoned he couldn't supply us the les forts de latour at trade price for the price we were selling it at!

i was going to say if you're in helmsley you should try the star, say 'hi ' to them all from me!

ahhh, i know that pub! we're closing from monday 2nd jan and re-open wednesday 11th Jan.

i'm sure i can sort something out, do you like yorkshire water? we're open saturday & sunday for lunch this week, hopefully we'll be doing more lunches in the new year as we finalise the kitchen team.

cheers we have them on the bar as snacks, also put out home-made crisps too (note to self, buy some more!)

So what happens when a foodie/internet food geek that's spent the last few years telling everyone how to run their businesses takes the plunge and has a go? Should i be booking my slot on Kitchen Nightmares team or nervously awaiting the publication of the michelin red book It's been a thought i've had for a long time now, in fact for as long as i can remember i've wanted a licensed premise of some description, from a bar / club when i was younger to a country pub now i'm getting past late nights, and now it is a reality. A very big oh-my-god-what-have-we-done-reality! The pub is a grade II listed freehouse in Westow which is between York & Malton, quite close to Castle Howard, it was renovated a couple of years ago and has all the typical 'gastropub' accoutremonts but to me at least, retains a lot of character and atmosphere. It was originally a blacksmiths smithy and retains the original fireplace where we now have a big wood burning stove, you've got to have fires in a pub in my book! We've got 3 dining rooms off the central bar and can seat about 45 so its a reasonable size. we got it at a good time too as it was voted Yorkshire dining pub of the year 2006 by the good pub guide and we're in the michelin pubs & sawdays special pubs and inns too which is a good start! The kitchen was designed by a chef with seemingly little budgetary constraint so we've got the lot, flat top, 6 burner stove, hot pass, under counter fridges, walk in fridge, full pot wash, hobart mixer, ice cream machine etc. Every chef who's had a look has generally issued expletives on seeing it, i think that means it's better than expected for a country pub! The kitchen was staffed by agency chefs recently but i've now got a full time team on board who are producing some excellent food. We're lucky in having access to some excellent produce on our doorstep and have some great suppliers, for example our meat is all local, the beef is dry aged for at least 21 days and the pork is all free range. I use the same wine supplier as my local , the st vincents arms and we have what i think is a very good value list, we don't operate on a fixed margin, to get the industry standard 70% gross margin you have to sell the wine at over 3x cost. That makes any half decent wine astronomically expensive, wheras i've tried to build a list from a customers point of view rather than a purely commercial one, so you can drink mature 97' nuits st georges at £28.50 and if you want to splash out i doubt you can drink 96 dujac morey st denis at £59.50 or '99 Les forts de Latour for £55 in many places! Given my documented love of raspberry beer at anthony's we've also got a small range of begian beers hoegaarden, chimay, cherry & Raspberry liefmans. Although obviously the conoisseurs drink Fosters lager we do have cask john smiths, tetley's and landlord, you have to have real ale in country pub, remarkably given i don't drink it, i get a lot of praise for the quality of the bitter, luckily i have friends who are experts in the cellar and have shown me the ropes, i no longer spend saturday mornings reading the papers i'm busy cleaning the lines out! As if that wasn't enough to take on, we've got a six bed room B&B to look after also, so sarah is now a dab hand at cooking 6 full english breakfasts at the same time! we've been there about six weeks now so it's starting to make a little more sense, given i know quite a few people in the trade i thought we'd gone into it with our eyes open, but there really is sooo much to get to terms with. Not suprising given we'd not even pulled a pint in our lives before we bought it, and for a few weeks i was ready to throw the till out of the window every night! Anyway, enough waffling from me, you can have a look at what we've got here.....www.blacksmithsinn.co.uk although the email link is not yet operational. cheers gary

is this owned by the same people who own bonds? i was a bit underwhelmed by bonds and can only remember it being very expensive.

Ok so i'm a pasty Englisman who normally heads to france or italy for holidays but given pressure from mrs marshall we're having a beach holiday after the new year. we're staying at the hilton barbados so any thoughts of places to try within easy striking distance would be welcome. I have no idea of the geography of the island and don't want to travel too far, bridgetown is the nearest town i believe. thanks gary