much more majestic and a bad backscattering

many thanks to majestic who responded very quickly to the problem that i brought up in the last blog; it looks like we have vegan wine again. on a more serious note we noticed some serious backscattering last week. this is simultaneously not as bad, and worse, than it sounds. a problem became apparent when i accessed, as did leanne, our bookings page. what we found were 100s of rebounded emails that had been sent from our account. of course they had not but the account had been hacked and the undelivered mails were bounced back to us; backscattering. the account has had to be suspended, at least for outgoing mail and the webmaster is on the case. you should be able to book but we'll reply from a different account. many apologies to anyone who was affected. cheers wayne ps ian, you couldn't spare us 5 minutes to press buttons on our phone again. now the answer machine isn't working. usual rates apply

bloody majestic

as you may be aware we use majestic wines for our wines. the reason; they give more information about provenance than any other supplier. so we opted for a vegan wine list, or so we thought. apologies to the couple who ordered the chenin blanc, still advertised as vegan on the website, who discovered that is contains traces of milk products. i've emailed majestic to complain, expect nothing to be done but will change the white wine tomorrow. cheers wayne

thanks to keith and chris

we are always surprised when customers come back to the restaurant after our one week christmas break. we decided to take that break because we had no bookings for the period between new year and christmas in our first year of business and it has stuck; it's also very nice to have a week with no cooking. this year was special because, in the past we have had the odd booking in the book, we had no bookings. we went in on thursday to start the prep for the weekend and still nothing. the menu started to take shape, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock and still nothing. on friday we had three tables and the same on saturday but it looked like being a flat thursday. at 5.30 the phone rang and we had a booking, for just two people, but a reason to make a pie or a risotto cake. it stayed at two and leanne and i were done by 9:15, but we were off and running and a restaurant again. the reality contrasts starkly with what people think. we regularly get emails that ask for tables weeks ahead who ask for a specific time but will take whatever is available; the restaurant is usually available.