More Ketchup Than Salsa - Confessions of a Tenerife Barman (5 page)

Despite an early start, we were still chopping meat and preparing the bar at 5.45 p.m., 15 minutes before our advertised opening time.

‘You carry on in here, I’ll stick some music on and put the chairs outside,’ said Joy. I would have been happy drying the same pan for the rest of the night if it meant putting off baring ourselves to the public for the first time.

At 6.05, the sound system announced that REM were losing their religion. I was losing my nerve even quicker. By 6.25 we hadn’t had a single customer and I was beginning to think that this wasn’t so bad after all. Then they arrived. Not one, not even one family, but one huge crowd descended on us. Rather naively I had envisaged a comfortable gap between one customer’s simple request and the next. At our present level of capability, half an hour would have seemed fair. But that great legislator, Murphy, had other plans. Daylight disappeared as about twenty people surged through the wooden doors, clamouring for our attention. I wanted to get back to my pan, but it was too late.

We both stood behind the bar, gulping audibly, as we faced the inspection committee.

‘So, you’re the new ones, are you,’ boomed a thick Yorkshire accent. ‘I hope you’re not bloody well going to put the price of ale up!’

‘Don’t worry about that. We’re not going to change much to start with.’ I assumed that Mario and his partners were popular landlords and it was best not to veer too quickly from their style.

‘You can change what you like s’long as you don’t put the prices up,’ countered Yorkshire. ‘I’ll have a pint of El Dorado and half a shandy for Eileen.’

Eileen was two feet behind, and two feet down, smiling shyly up from his elbow. Yorkshire could see I was a little shocked at her stature; ‘She might be small but she’s got a helluva voice. You want to get her singing here one night. I won’t charge you much,’ he winked.

‘Yeh, I just might do that,’ I lied, as Eileen tottered off, two hands steadying her glass of shandy. ‘Who’s next?’ I asked the crowd as my confidence began to grow.

‘Pina colada and a Tequila Sunset.’ The confidence ran for shelter.

‘OK. What’s in those exactly?’ I asked the young couple in matching Coventry City football shirts.

‘I don’t know. You’re the barman, pal. New to the job, are you? You won’t last long here if you can’t make a cocktail. Ask the bird over there,’ he said, pointing at Joy.

I didn’t want to make any enemies just yet, so without fuss I asked Joy if she knew the ingredients. Joy had her head in the beer fridge looking for orange juice.

‘There’s a cocktail book down there on the bottom shelf. Check in there.’

I picked up the book and dozens of baby cockroaches scattered in all directions as the roof was lifted off their commune. With a knotted stomach, not wanting to draw attention to the fact, I turned round to face the couple and was just about to rest the book on the bar when I spotted two hairs sticking out from between the pages. Then the hairs started twitching. Before my brain could register why this book would contain dancing hairs, it suddenly became alive with scuttling roaches searching for an escape from their flying island. I tossed it on the floor and out of the corner of my eye saw a riot of roaches emerge from the pages.

‘How about I fix you both the new house special? It’s twice as strong and because it’s our first night you can have two for the price of one.’

The Coventry team was eager so I filled two tall glasses with generous shots of whatever came to hand, namely peach schnapps, triple sec, cherry brandy and Galliano, topped up with a blast from each of the fizzy soft drinks – Sprite, Fanta Lemon, Fanta Orange, Coke, tonic water – and a squirt of spray cream to top it all off.

‘There you go, two Naughty Normans, 500 pesetas for both.’ They looked awful. The next time Coventry came to the bar, he ordered two pints of lager.

Then came the first food order.

‘Joe, two cheeseburgers, chips and salad and one pork chops, chips and salad. Table five.’

I counted up to table five to see if they looked like the type who’d complain if poisoned. They did. It was a silent grey-haired couple sat with a heavily mascara’d girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen. Both adults were sitting so unnaturally still, they seemed to be demonstrating to the girl how to sit up correctly at the table.

Glad to be out of the spotlight, I threw two chops and two burgers onto the hot plate and with a woof of propane ignition and the whiff of singed hand-hair, the first meal that anybody had paid me to prepare was on its way. While the meat hissed, salad garnishes were decoratively arranged and the frozen chips were placed into the basket, ready to be lowered to their crispy death. Easy, I thought. Then the power went out. The diners let out a communal groan.

All the trip switches behind the bar were still up so I ventured outside. The Altamira power was still working and inland I could see a cluster of lights blinking against the dark backdrop of the Adeje mountain range.

Fortunately Mario was on his way into Smugglers to see how we were doing. ‘Follow me,’ he laughed.

We walked in darkness along the outer footpath that circled the complex. At the far side, near our back garden, was a dull grey electricity box. Either its doors had been removed or the utility company hadn’t deemed it necessary to conceal the master trip switches for the whole complex. Mario flicked the main one back up and immediately El Beril came to life again.

‘Flicking island,’ he muttered. A wry smile suggested he found it amusing now this was no longer his problem.

‘Does that happen often?’ I asked.

‘Depends. Sometimes not for a week, other times it pops all night.’

He’d conveniently forgotten to mention this defect when he sold us the business.

Back in the kitchen I had to wait for the chip fryers to heat up again.

Joy popped her head round the wall.

‘Two half chicken and chips, one no salad, and two chicken in wines, chips no salad.’

The dreaded chicken in wines! When Mario had showed us how to make this creamy dish, his instructions were rather vague. A bit of this, a pinch of that, some of these, not too many of those. I suspect that it was his own recipe and he was reluctant to give away the exact ingredients, even to Joy and I who were now supposed to recreate it.

It’s just a matter of timing,
I told myself, trying to quell the nerves. I worked out which meal would take the longest to cook and began the preparation. This happened to be the chicken in wines. I tenderised the chicken fillets, coated them in flour and flopped them into a frying pan with a knob of butter. While they were gently cooking, using a large pair of dressmaking scissors, I cut a pre-roasted chicken in half and put the two parts in the microwave.

Turning round to face the hot plate, I flipped over the meat, and turned the chicken fillets in the pan.

‘Steak medium to well, Canarians and salad, gammon and egg, chips and salad,’ came a voice from over my shoulder.

I had stuck a large sheet of ‘write and wipe’ onto the huge fridge doors and added this order to the previous two. Now, which would take longer between those two, I wondered? I spun round as the aroma of burning chicken filled the air.

The fillets had fastened themselves to the base of the frying pan and were releasing plumes of smoke into the extractor hood above. Damn. Peeling them off, I decided there was no chance of a resurrection and flung them binwards. One landed in the dustbin, the other hit the tiled wall and made a slow descent leaving a trail of burnt butter.

I started again with the tenderising, a little more forceful with the hammer this time. I dipped them in flour and tossed them into a new pan with more butter. The electricity went off again. There was another group groan.

‘Mario!’ I shouted. I knew he was at the bar loving every minute of his freedom from such dilemmas.

‘I’m going,’ I could hear him chuckling.

Within minutes the power was back on and the customers cheered. Once more I had to wait for the fryers to heat up. I thought about phoning David and Faith but decided against it. We had to get used to dealing with this kind of problem. It was already beginning to sink in that this island was no smooth-running machine.

‘Two steaks, rare, chips and salad.’

I hadn’t even started the first steak yet! In the meantime I had slammed our hotel reception-type bell to let Joy know there was an order ready. Try as she might Joy couldn’t arrange the large oval dinner plates so three could be carried at the same time. She rested one on her left wrist and held another in the same hand but couldn’t find the right balance.

‘Come back for the other one,’ I said, watching her struggle. It had seemed so simple when Mario managed to carry five at a time. Mind you, he did have hands like a couple of JCB buckets and, thankfully, Joy didn’t.

Out with the hammer again, I bashed all three steaks and chucked them amongst the pork chops and burgers. I turned the chicken in the pan and turned the microwave on for the half chickens. The chips were plunged into the fryer, spluttering and spitting burning oil onto my hands and forearms. I laid more plates onto the table and grabbed handfuls of tomato, cucumber and onion slices and chopped lettuce, dumping a pile onto each plate as the aroma of burnt chicken filled the air again.

I snatched the pan from the heat and decided that this time they would have to be resuscitated, so I added some white wine, crushed garlic and sliced mushrooms and replaced the pan over the blue flame.

The first order was nearly ready so, slicing two burger buns in half and drawing only a little blood from my left palm, the buns were added to the hot plate. The microwave dinged and I felt to see if the chickens were hot. They were – painfully. The wine for the chicken dish was bubbling away and I added the cream and black pepper. Slices of cheese were slapped onto the now shrivelling burgers. The buns started smoking. I picked them off the hot plate, burning fingertips in the process and hurled them binwards. One missed completely and rolled out of the kitchen into the main customer area. I noticed several moments later that someone had discreetly kicked it back in.

‘Half a chicken, chicken burger, mixed grill, two chicken in wines, all with chips and salad, oh, and a tuna salad. How you doing in here?’

I raised two smoked eyebrows and a blooded palm and formed charred fingertips into a reversed victory sign.

‘Is that pork chop supposed to be on fire?’ Joy asked casually as the aroma of burnt pig filled the air.

I turned the microwave on and before the half chicken had time to complete its first twirl, darkness descended once again.

This time Mario asked me to follow him again. He reached behind the box for a short plank of wood and wedged it underneath the switch. ‘Now try and flicking pop,’ he warned the box. ‘Sometimes you just got to force the issue. But remember to hide the stick when you finished, otherwise the bastards cut you off for good.’

Unsurprisingly the power remained on for the rest of the night and by 11 p.m. I had sent out all 32 orders. Some people had to wait half an hour, some two hours. Fortunately Joy had a knack of making light of my inadequacy and the customers displayed that true British spirit of pulling together in a crisis. They knew it was our first night and they knew that we hadn’t a clue what we were doing. One customer, having sat patiently starving for an hour and a half while I fried, burnt, fried, burnt and fried again a simple plate of egg and chips, even brought his own plate back into the kitchen and proceeded to wash up.

‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ he said sympathetically as another basketful of blackened chips was dumped into the bin.

By 1.30 a.m., the dishes were washed, work surfaces wiped down and the gas rings and deep fat fryer were checked over and over again to make sure that they wouldn’t contribute to an early bath for our catering career. I estimated the quantity of meat we would need to defrost for the next day and scanned the shelves to compile a shopping list.

The terrace had emptied except for two teenage lads attempting to impress the daughter from table five with their pool prowess. Her parents had left her with strict instructions to follow them across the car park to the hotel before midnight. With shoulders pressed back and pubescent chest thrust forward, she was obviously in no need of any posture advice and was lapping up the attention of the two pool sharks.

Inside, Joy had her elbows on the bar, her head cupped in her hands as a couple kept her ‘entertained’. I switched off the kitchen light and went to join her for a much-needed nightcap.

After pouring, drinking and pouring another pint of Dorada, Joy, whose eyes had long since glazed over, introduced me to the couple.

‘Joe, this is Betty and Eric. They have a guesthouse in Blackpool,’ she said with feigned interest.

I shook hands with them. Betty’s eyes were also glazed, but not through boredom. Her blonde beehive hairpiece had flopped to one side revealing grey strands. Eric rolled his head and attempted to say something but closed his mouth again and continued with the lolling. Betty tried to get me up to speed with the conversation.

‘I was just saying to Joan,’ she nodded her beehive at Joy, ‘how we know what it’s like when you’ve done a long day and you just want a drink by yourselves but you can’t get rid of the last people in the bar and they keep on talking to you like you’ve nothing better to do and no home to go to and you can’t get a word in so you’re stuck there listening and nodding and asleep on your feet just wishing they’d go away.’

I looked at Joy and then back at the last two people in the bar, nodding as Betty continued.

‘We get it all the time, and we’d never do it to anyone else. We know how you feel, isn’t that right, Eric? Eric!’ She jolted him with a sharp elbow to the ribs. Eric tried to respond, then tried to look at his wife but failed on both accounts and contented himself with some more general lolling.

‘We’ll just have one more for the road. Cointreau and tonic and whisky and water.’ Betty waved a lipstick-smeared brandy glass at me. Every finger was decorated with gold and a spectrum of glimmering stones.