ALL YOU NEED IS 'Mr LOVE...
PURPLE HAZE ….ALL YOU NEED IS THE RIGHT COSTUM
Mr Love Coffee House & Restaurant was front and centre at the time of the February 1969 demonstrations when President Nixon arrived in London. There was great unrest in the student faction around Vietnam and with the President staying in Claridges Hotel on Brook Street, a stone’s throw from Grosvenor Square, with his wife and daughter Tricia, he posed an easy target for them to unleash their fury.
Why was he in London?
It was an official start to an 8-day European tour to open out discussion and Entente Cordale at the start of his administration. The formality of the visit was enlivened by the anger of the British youth and demonstrations in Grosvenor Square opposite the American Embassy were fraught with protestors even tearing up paving stones to throw as missiles at the police who were trying their best to manage the escalating onslaught. The chanting demonstrators even barged down Brook Street entering from Bond Street and past Mr Love on their way to the hotel.
Following on from the unexpected student outburst, Brook Street was all quiet on the Western Front ….. the street had been scanned and was patrolled by burly, cropped haired US CIA men dressed in their functional loose gaberdine trenchcoats to conceal their bulky ‘hardware’. They stood out a mile but were pleasant enough and some even dropped in for a cup of ‘Joe’ and sat and listened to the music as Doug was playing a lot of R & B and Blues imports. Little did they know that an even more famous person than their President was residing in the top floor flat, the very musician they loved to listen to, Jimi Hendrix.
However, this was not good for business as streets around the hotel were often closed off as the president’s car came and went – even Jimi’s chauffeured car was refused entry after his gig at the Royal Albert Hall and he had to walk back to 23 Brook Street with his entourage in tow. Unimaginable nowadays but back then there was no internet and no social media; you would have to read about it the next day in the newspapers.
This cold February was bitter for business with staff twiddling their fingers waiting for customers to find a way through the area. There was a lot of lounging about, playing cards and idle chit chat going on. Dana, a young Canadian student drifter was one of our washer up team. He had joined our team when, one evening, he knocked on the kitchen door at the back of the restaurant down the side alley, asking for work. Scruffy, skinny as a rake and obviously without any proof of a place to live, he couldn’t get a proper job. So he did the best he could to earn a meagre living and have enough to buy weed to smoke. Having nowhere to live he also sofa surfed or when his shift finished late at around 3am he’d couch down on the stairs leading to the offices and flat above the restaurant. The dark narrow staircase was at least a dry, quiet space, but this often resulted in his arrival at work the next morning with a big smile on his face saying --- you’ll never guess who stepped on my head last night coming down from Jimi’s apartment…. Eric Burden (lead singer The Animals), or George (Harrison – The Beatles), or Keith Moon (drummer The Who)…. The list read like a who’s who of the pop world. He also did odd jobs in Jimi’s flat, painting walls purple, or helping with decorations. The cash came in handy and he got to know Jimi and hung out with him occasionally; always nice to get high together. One time he didn’t get paid in cash and instead was given one of Jimi’s stage outfits, a strikingly exotic multi-coloured satin jumpsuit with huge sequined bell sleeves.
It was at this time in February when we were so slow in the restaurant and all bored that Dana put on the outfit and pranced around the restaurant mimicking Jimi with his guitar moves and leaping onto the ledge around the fish pond where the background stone wall was lit up with coloured lights; he looked outrageous and bizarre. He moaned that this so called payment for work was not what he wanted as he was short of money. So one of us, probably my brother Tony, quipped …. I’ll give you a fiver if you go into Claridges dressed like that and have a walk around and then come back….the waitresses cheered and said …. Do it…. They made him up with eyeliner, cheek tint and moody purple lipstick, teased his greasy hair into a wild ‘afro’ style and off he went….He looked like a psychedelic Charlie Chaplin in his tight satin jumpsuit that was actually a little too short so the bell bottoms were flapping above his ankles and his very scuffed pointed toe Cuban heeled boots looked completely out of line with the outfit as he gamely walked up the road towards the hotel. We stood there looking at him…. Surely one of the security team would jump out from their guarding posts and grab him….onward he went until he reached the entrance …..then he went inside with other people who had just arrived.
We waited outside the restaurant in the cold for ten, fifteen, and by twenty minutes we retreated back inside Mr Love completely perplexed that he hadn’t been thrown out on his ear. We peaked outside every hour, until at 2a.m Dana could be seen lurching out of the hotel, very wobbly and completely drunk with a large cigar in his mouth. He patted the doorman’s shoulder as he left and continued down the road unhindered. As he approached the restaurant he held out his hand and said ….. where’s my fiver man….
The joke was on us…. Little did we know that Tricia Nixon was having a fancy dress party that evening as part of her birthday celebrations and Dana fitted in perfectly, his Canadian accent helped too, as he was able to join in the fun, and bypass all the security.
He had the time of his life, eating, drinking and dancing the night away… He said he was the best dressed guest that evening by a mile!
MR LOVE
HEAT RISING
A kitchen is invariably housed in the bowels of a restaurant, as was Mr Love’s. The small, hot, windowless space with low ceiling, relied on the back door being open to get fresh air from the alleyway. This also resulted in the odd tramp rattling the bins and poking their head around the entrance asking for a little something along with a glass of wine. Tony was not always tolerant but sometimes if the tramp was particularly entertaining with a story or two to tell he would ‘throw’ some scraps rather like a benevolent Emperor. However, the tension in the kitchen especially on a busy weekend was so thick you could cut the atmosphere with a knife and literally this is what often happened. You can understand why French kitchens are run on military lines, how they term their staff and equipment, a Brigade of chefs, a Batterie of equipment. In a kitchen like Mr Love, without rigid rules and with so many different nationalities, none of whom could speak English with any fluency, and Tony and the rest of us struggling to speak snippets of phrases of as many languages as we could muster, there was obviously going to be trouble. And many moments of madness occurred, some with near fatal and others with hilarious consequences.
As Tony would remind Doug and I, he paid peanuts, and he definitely got a load of monkeys , although some of the team were good and others were there because they were so entertaining we would overlook all their weaknesses. But the weekends were always fraught with danger. Tempers were always short, emotions high, and things started to bubble up
The Greek Chef – He was good but easily distracted. At the start of a Saturday night shift Tony was advised by the Manager that chef looked a bit strange as he had heard a bit of bad news from his family back home. As the evening progressed he got more and more upset and in his agitated state, slid on the greasy kitchen floor and trying to steady himself accidently put his whole arm into the chip fryer which was at full 190c heat. Tony was called down to the kitchen to see the chef rolling around screaming in agony, the skin on his arm raw and bursting. There was no time to lose and Tony told the assistant chef to help him take The Greek out to his car and they would go to St George’s Hospital (now the 5 star Lanesborough Hotel), which was about 5 minutes away at Hyde Park Corner, to the A & E. The casualty doctor insisted that someone stay to help deal with all the paperwork details, and Tony left the assistant chef there and went back to the restaurant. However, what Tony didn’t realize was that the only other person left in the kitchen was the Turkish washer-up who did not speak English and with more and more customers arriving, there was nothing for it but for Tony to don an apron and take the reins. Somehow Tony managed to prepare dishes, telling the waitresses to push the easier ones on the menu. Thankfully Tony had worked with a friend Antonio, a chef at the Belgium Embassy, who offered to give him some training prior to the opening of the restaurant, and although it was a scary couple of hours it taught him a lot and opened his eyes as to what was actually going on in the kitchen and also how to try and put some order back.
Mad Johnny – Tony being the entrepreneur that he was at the age of 21, acquired another restaurant soon after opening Mr Love. It didn’t matter that he had no experience, but given the opportunity, he rode with it. Mad Johnny was the chef at Nero The Max Ox in Maddox Street, the new addition to what Tony hoped would be his empire. However, the given name of the restaurant was well suited to Johnny because he was literally - insane. He was a good chef, and in fact had been Peter Sellers private chef until given the boot by the capricious and also rather unhinged actor/comedian. Because of the many and various languages being spoken in the kitchen, nothing was understood and nothing was acknowledged. One evening, again a busy service, Tony was called down urgently to the kitchen. There was Mad Johnny laying into Mustafa, the short, fat washer up. Suddenly, without warning he moved off and picked up a large kitchen knife and threw it at the little fat washer up, missing him by inches before landing on the floor. Shaken to his boots, the KP decided the best thing to do was to go back to the sink and carry on washing up. Tony tried to calm Johnny down, but his erratic behaviour knew no bounds now and he suddenly started throwing things around the kitchen …. a big black frying pan hurtled through the air hitting the washer up, who, again, ignored what was happening and just carried on doing the dishes; a purple lump starting to grow on his temple which must have been painful. Tony dragged Johnny out to the back yard and told him to have a cigarette and calm down. After about 10 minutes Johnny returned and carried on cooking – there was a big backlog of orders and they had to get the plates up to the restaurant. But Johnny feeling a little remorseful went up to the washer up with the intention of shaking his hand and saying no hard feelings, but as the washer up couldn’t speak or understand a word of English he just carried on washing the pots and pans with a dazed and confused look on his face and an ever-growing lump on his head.
The Hot Plate - The Mr Love sizzling plate was an oval stainless steel shape placed on a wooden platter. Tony always wanted things to look different from other restaurants. But these metal plates could get very hot as they came up from the kitchen. The big game in the kitchen whenever someone new was employed as a waitress was to put half of the plate over the fire for a minute to get burning hot and the other half would be cool. The chef would plate up the food and pick up the cool side of the plate and hand it to the waitress who would in turn take the hot side. The curdling screams coming up from the kitchen quite often caused huge concern to the customers who thought someone was being attacked.
Reggie – the Turkish chef was good, and in fact Tony had poached him from a very trendy restaurant called The Sands in Bond Street. However, because he thought he was a cut above any other person working in the kitchen he could operate a little scam. He’d over order on meat and when it came in he would put chickens and sides of beef in a bin liner and take it out to the back door beside the bins to hide them. When his shift ended he would leave the restaurant, and then quietly go round to the back of the restaurant and retrieve his booty. But it didn’t take long for Tony to realize the meat bills did not add up to what was actually being sold. He kept a close eye on things and found out what Reggie was doing, and when Reggie’s haul of meat was left outside as usual, Tony quietly retrieved it and replaced it with a bag of kitchen waste. The next day Reggie came to work looking rather shamefaced, and Tony said he could stay but would lose all his holiday pay.
Manu – there are lots of stories about Manu, and he was a friend of Houshang who was Tony’s partner in the restaurant – Houshang had the restaurant expertise that Tony thought would be invaluable to the business while Tony had all the entrepreneurial skills (even though he was only 21.) Manu was a stockily built swarthy looking character, always unshaven, very hairy (everywhere) and looked rather menacing. In 1967 the humour was almost slapstick on the t.v. (think Benny Hill, Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, Eric & Ernie) and very visual, which appealed to Manu. He would often sit by the pond at the entrance to the restaurant – there was a waterfall effect coming from a wall of rocks and customers could sit around the mosaic-topped counter of the pond which was also filled with fish. At night the pond and the waterfall were aglow with coloured lights. Very effective. Anyway, Manu chatted up girls, trying to get lucky, and generally hung out being friendly, and customers seemed to like him although some were a bit wary too. He would then go down to the kitchen to chat to the chef and muck around with the tesm.
Then there was his trick.
He’d carve a carrot into the shape of a fish and conceal it in the palm of his hand. He’d go back up to the restaurant and sit down by the pond and talk to the customers about the water rippling over the stones on the wall into the pond, and how pretty the fish looked swimming about, and then pointing with his other hand he’d say 'isn’t that a lovely fish' and if the person said yes, he’d plunge his hand concealing the carrot into the water and bring it up with the ‘carrot fish’ wiggling in his hand and promptly pop it into his mouth and eat it. The customers would be horrified and repulsed at the same time, and girls would scream. Sometimes they would run up to Tony or Doug or one of the waitresses in a state of panic pointing to Manu and saying ‘that man has just eaten one of your fish’, to which they would reply ‘yes, he does that sometimes when he’s hungry’.
Copy By Patricia (Trisha) Michelson.
