I enjoyed writing my latest book ‘New Chapters On The French Riviera’ probably the most out of all the twenty-three books I’ve written! Creating a main character who was a chef running a restaurant took me back to when Richard and I ran various businesses in what these days is referred to as ‘Hospitality.’ Nothing as fancy as running a restaurant in the south of France though.
Our first venture when we were newly married and lived in South Devon was turning our home into a B+B for a couple of summer seasons. A few years later when we bought a smallholding in Wales, we turned our large sitting room with its panoramic view over the countryside into a small evening restaurant – maximum of ten diners per sitting. We shared the cooking between the two of us this time and Richard discovered he actually enjoyed and was good at, cooking.
Fast forward a several years and we’d been involved in the restaurant business in various ways, mobile catering, managing a busy riverside restaurant and for over eight years we ran a catering outlet on a popular beach in South Devon. All of them fun in their own way but at times also a steep learning curve.
People would sometimes say to us, ‘My dream is to run a pub or a restaurant’ having no idea of the practicalities or the amount of hard work and long hours it involves. And dealing with the general public is not always easy.
Writing New Beginnings On The French Riviera, I made Guy, running his ‘restaurant with rooms’ a proper qualified chef, capable of turning out Michelin starred meals, evening after evening. Although I never aspired to such dizzying heights as winning a star, I did like to cook several ‘haute cuisine’ dishes and I loved doing fancy desserts.
I really enjoyed having Guy cooking several of my personal favourite meals and desserts in the book – it was like a trip down memory lane for me!