Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2010 | Page 143

food Island Life - October/November 2010 what it needs when. The building stood out and said that’s what I like!” There he goes again, turning something fanciful into common sense. Being attuned to the demands of the lead player, the house, was in fact what dictated the interior decoration. This has no reference to its Georgian roots. There are no elaborate swags and drapes here, no silver candelabra and close-patterned wallpaper. The clean Scandanavian lines of the décor could not be more contemporary. But to Gert and his team the stripped-bare look is exactly what the house required: “It is exposing all the qualities of the building. We haven’t cluttered the windows with curtains , we’ve exposed the floors, haven’t covered them with carpets, we’ve done up the walls so you can see what the they were like. We’ve exposed the fireplaces. Yes, we’ve actually shown the building as it is.” He was at his most nervous when the building was finished, in case he’d got something wrong. “If you can’t do it right it’s not worth doing” is something he says more than once. Yet the moment when he opened for business – when he was to expose his dining concept and his minimalist décor to the public – and he felt no qualms at all. “I was so convinced Hillside was a place where people would like to come and eat and to stay because that is what people have done for the past 210 years. So if I just behaved accordingly I might pick up a bit of trade here.“ He is blessed, he says, with the trade already received. “Everybody who comes Visit our new website - www.visitislandlife.com to Hillside is struck by the ambiance, the presence of history, the feel of being part of something bigger. The setting of the house itself, all the history that comes with it,” he says. Nevertheless, he doesn’t deny that turning on its head the accepted way of eating out must carry its own risk. “The strongest word in business is ‘no.’ When you say yes to a very particular way of doing things, you are also saying ‘no thank you’ to some business. No to people who want to eat at 8 o’clock (though we are flexible for large parties and for those with particular dietary requirements); no to residents who want to have dinner brought to their rooms, because we want our rooms to remain clean and smell nice for future guests.” As he speaks you feel again that, far from audacious, his approach is simply logical. He is certainly in tune with the new and long-overdue zeitgeist that wasting food is wrong – witness the current Love Food Hate Waste media campaign. But more than that, it is a logical conclusion to the idea that guests should feel at home when they come to eat. Dinner party hosts specify a time when dinner will be served and don’t generally offer a choice, after all. So while you can view Hillside’s very smart and accessible website, and register a desire to eat on a certain day, Anna will phone every potential diner to discuss their needs. “It shows respect to all our guests to do it in this way. We can discover the reason for their visit – if it’s a celebration, for example – and ensure everyone understands the way we do 143