Highland hospitality, from the floor up

Earlier essays

1. 

   People & Craft · Wednesday 28 October · 5 min read

   Ten drinks. Every one costed.

   The fortieth Dingle Bay Fizz on a Saturday has to taste like the first. It also has to cost the same. Here's the list a bar can run, every drink costed.

2. 

   People & Craft · Tuesday 27 October · 5 min read

   Live-in accommodation in Highland hospitality: the room that comes with the job

   £11.10 a day. That's the most a room with the job can count towards your minimum wage. What else to know before a live-in job in the Highlands.

3. 

   Heritage & Place · Monday 26 October · 3 min read

   The story goes like this: a Cork fireside and the stag bells

   A coal fire in Cork, Barry's tea, RTÉ on low, and my grandfather telling the same story a hundred and one times. Never once a different story.

4. 

   People & Craft · Sunday 25 October · 4 min read

   The weekly stocktake: Monday morning, before the doors

   Monday morning, before the doors. The week is over, and I'm on my own with the stock sheet and every bottle in the building.

5. 

   Cork to the Highlands · Saturday 24 October · 4 min read

   Sitting the SCPLH from Ireland, and the Scottish personal licence

   The Scottish personal licence lasts ten years, costs £50, and the exam is forty questions. I'm booking it from a kitchen table in Cork. Here's what the Act says.

6. 

   People & Craft · Friday 23 October · 5 min read

   Wet GP explained, for a new bartender and for an owner

   A €16 cocktail in Cork is €13.01 to the house before a drop is poured. Here's wet GP in one glass, for the bartender and the owner.

7. 

   People & Craft · Thursday 22 October · 6 min read

   The rota rule I'll never break

   Forty people walked into a bar in Cork on a Tuesday evening. Nobody had booked. Here's the rota rule I took from it.

8. 

   Cork to the Highlands · Wednesday 21 October · 5 min read

   An Irish citizen's first week in Scottish hospitality: the Common Travel Area, in practice

   I can start work in a Highland kitchen the morning I land. No visa, no sponsor, no English test. Here's the first week, in practice, with the sources.

9. 

   People & Craft · Monday 19 October · 4 min read

   Eighteen days in a row, and a drop of olive oil

   A week ago today, my bishop and a friend from my ward gave me a blessing of health. After five years of grafting, I needed it.

10. 

    People & Craft · Thursday 1 October · 11 min read

    Who Will Pour the Dram? Staff, Visas and Highland Beds

    I can start work in Inverness without a visa. A chef from Lisbon or Manila can no longer be newly sponsored. And for anyone who can come, the first question is where they'd live.

11. 

    People & Craft · Thursday 1 October · 3 min read

    Learning my Scotch: a classroom autumn

    On Tuesday I told you I was still learning my Scotch and happy to be taught. On Monday morning, the lessons start.

12. 

    Heritage & Place · Tuesday 29 September · 3 min read

    Why the Highlands: a letter before the move

    Somewhere in those months a question I'd been carrying answered itself. I want the hills to be the view, not the holiday.

13. 

    Heritage & Place · Monday 28 September · 3 min read

    The drinks, the people and the places

    The best drinks I've made began in a tea shop in the English Market in Cork. Part two of looking back before Scotland: the drinks, the people and the places.

14. 

    People & Craft · Thursday 24 September · 2 min read

    WSET Level 2 Wines: the studying starts

    My WSET Level 2 Award in Wines materials arrived today, so the studying starts now. What the course covers, and why the point is helping a guest choose.

15. 

    Heritage & Place · Thursday 24 September · 2 min read

    Where it all started: a Honda, a Christmas pudding and Fota Island

    At fifteen I bought a Honda 125 with money from a few hours' work a week. Then came the first waiter job, a Christmas pudding, and Fota Island at eighteen.