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| Snr Sous Chef Rich and Licensee Liz |
I (think) the concept was about promoting the fabulous Salcombe Crab which is without doubt one of the best there is, but I'm pretty sure no one expected it to be as successful as it was. Salcombe was rammed and I think the figures are at about 9,000 people came into town. There were food stalls, drinks, Oysters and food demonstrations of which we (the Vic) took part - more of that in a minute! Mary Berry opened the event and was as lovely as usual.
It's fair to say that everyone in Salcombe - including the organisers I'm sure - were delighted at the amount of visitors and thankfully the weather was on it's best behaviour until mid afternoon.
Of course few business's (including ours) have any extra staff available until the start of June and so when we were hit - Boy, we were hit!!! In fact we had to close food temporarily (45 minutes) as there wasn't a plate, cup or piece of clean cutlery to be had in the entire pub. Next year, we'll all be much more prepared!! It would be great if this planned yearly event put Salcombe clearly on the South West Foodie map - just like the Dartmouth food festival.
So, onto our food demonstration for the event. The whole thing was overseen by Alex Aitken - Executive Head Chef over the entire Harbour Hotel chain and what a lovely man he was too! Several Chefs were there including one from the Fortescue Inn, South Sands Hotel, and the Wardroom.
The Chef representing the Victoria Inn was Senior Sous Chef Rich who did us proud........ He had prepared well and did it perfectly. We had some recipe flyers printed up and handed them out with his menu - Salcombe Lobster and Crab Ravioli with poached Lobster and a rich Crab Bisque. I was so very, very proud of him, he did a fantastic job and as you can see he got a great round of applause!
Our other big news is that we are having a brand new childrens play area installed in our pub garden!! Work starts on the playground proper 6th June but we are having some preparatory garden works done the week before. But we should be up and running in the garden by the 13th or 14th with an 'official' opening on the 1st July which we shall tie in with fundraising for the Salcombe First Responders - which relies ENTIRELY on charitable donations. We will be selling our normal farmers Beefburgers and Homemade veg Burgers with Chips and Coleslaw for just £5, Magic Mark the Magician will be there too and a Raffle. Robin, one of our Assistant Managers will be going down the slide first (in suitable fancy dress I'm sure) and we have already had £100 pledged to the Charity for him to do this.
Our summer plants are mostly planted in already in the back garden and the new window boxes come in next week. We also have great bunting, all 40ft of it made to order by one of our lovely customers Judith Pinder - that goes up this week as well.
So all in all, the summer preparations are well under way, and we're very very busy!
See you next time my lovely readers,
Liz xxx
