With less than a week to go until the Glasgow Restaurant Awards the finalists in all the categories will be crossing their fingers and hoping victory will be theirs on Monday night.
Having been a kitchen porter for a few years, your blogger is delighted that there is a category for the best kitchen porter. The people up for the Kitchen Porter of the Year award are Ahmed Sharif Al Din at The Sisters; David McNamara at 29 and Peter Hynes who works at The Pipers’ Tryst.
Unsung hero
The KP is the unsung hero of most kitchens. Almost always a bloke, the KP does the dirtiest jobs – the cleaning, emptying the bins, washing the pots, scraping the grease from the extractor hood. It’s not glamorous. Over the last fifteen years or so, many chefs have become telly celebrities. That’s not going to happen for KPs. There will never be a show called MasterKP. However, without a rock solid KP, most kitchens would grind to a halt within the hour.
Great KP
So what makes a great KP? This is what one of the anonymous judging panel thought:
‘When looking at the submissions, length of service and references were essential – KP isn’t just for Christmas. A good KP keeps the engine of a kitchen oiled; he’s the man who knows where the tea spoon stash is at 9pm on a Saturday. A conduit between the front of house and kitchen, the porter is everyone’s friend and has so many calls on his time that he is a true multi-tasker.’
The KP of the Year award can make a huge difference to the winner’s career. In 2010, Ali Karim, the KP at Alla Turca won the award. According to the restaurant’s director, Burak Soyusinmez, Ali is ‘the happiest and the most helpful person that we have worked with in last 10 years. He starts singing when the deliveries arrive in the morning and can’t wait to open them and start talking to the fresh scallops, sword fish, beef, chickens, lambs and even vegetables! He gives them names and sings for them as he helps us to marinade and prepare them!
Life changing
‘On Friday and Saturday night services, he takes the pressure off the chefs when they have 20 to 25 orders in front of them. Our head chef calls Ali his right hand and without Ali all our chefs say “we would be swimming in the sh*t.”’
On the back of winning the KP of the Year award, Ali was promoted and trained to be a chef. He is now the sous chef at Alla Turca where he is known as the Singing Chef. The award changed Ali’s life and whichever KP wins at Monday’s award ceremony at the Citz Theatre, they can look forward to a warm handshake from Ali and possibly a little song as well.