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
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