Whatever sweat-inducing temperature you’ve spotted on your weather app this week, the odds are your local restaurant, pub or bakery has been experiencing temperatures up to 10 degrees higher. How is hospitality coping? The frank answer: it isn’t. The city’s infrastructure isn’t made to support high temperatures, and a powerful fan and ice-cold drinks can only get you so far. Chefs are notoriously motivated and resilient – but right now, they’re feeling the heat.
Social media is awash with announcements of temperature-related closures, as other venues reduce their hours or revise their menus, citing kitchen thermometers reading between 35 to 40 degrees Celsius. East London’s Dough Hands has shut both its locations the past couple of days. “Once the kitchen reaches 40 degrees, it’s a moral obligation not to force people to work,” owner Hannah Drye tells Broadsheet. “Plus, it affects the dough; pizzas aren’t coming out as good. We can’t really adapt our menu; it’s pizza or nothing.”
She’s not the only one facing dough-lemmas. Toad Bakery in Camberwell pre-empted closures earlier in the week, notifying customers of limited stocks in advance, just as Leigh’s cafe in De Beauvoir Town made the tough decision to close for three days. Leigh’s owner Mel Clarke says the cafe’s period design “is what gives the space whimsy but also makes it harder to operate in”. Like many, including Dough Hands, they’re in discussions to install air conditioning but until then “team welfare remains a priority”. Clarke’s decisions to open or close balance trade losses, the safety of her team and quality for customers. “I don’t want to be serving items that might not be up to standard,” she says.
Over at Soho’s Impala, the team is changing its cooking schedules. “Our aish baladi bread is cooked in batches at the start of the day [at the moment], over two hours ahead of when we’d normally begin,” open fire chef Orla Craig tells Broadsheet. “If it’s left downstairs, where temperatures are currently 35 degrees, it’ll overproof and it’s ruined.” The team is used to high temperatures from the open-flames kitchen but has the added benefit of air con in the dining room. But for those flame-cooking in alternative environs, high temperatures are more dangerous. Dalston’s outdoor grill Acme Fire Cult has paused lunch service; with social media updates explaining it’s to “stop chefs from passing out” (it’s also selling takeaway Margarita slushies to help punters battle the heat).
Meanwhile, with World Cup viewers packing it out and no air con, the team at Stoke Newington pub The Golden Tooth is using a sense of humour to cope. “I just keep telling everyone it’s not hot; in the end you start to believe it!” jokes co-founder Charlie Carr. At Notting Hill gastropub The Blue Stoops, head chef Jacob Farley is “trying to force people to step outside” of the basement kitchen where possible, as well as “reducing doubles and back-to-backs” in his team’s rotas. Farley is also swapping out the menu’s heartier fare for cold soups and salads, much like Dara Klein’s Tiella, which has switched off pasta boilers and stoves and is instead serving cold snacks, starters and polpette. But not all diners at The Blue Stoops have got the heatwave memo: “Some people are still ordering chicken pies,” notes Farley.
For Aidan Richardson-Dawkins, who’s head chef at Half Cut Market, it’s business as usual for his small team. The menu doesn’t need changing, but their regular attire does. “The shorts are getting whipped out,” he says. As are the tunes. “We try and push through it with some music – something house-y or R’n’B; it keeps energy high,” he says. “All served alongside litres of coconut water.”
Many chefs have set hydration schedules for the hours surrounding and during a shift, some have preferred electrolyte brands, drink creatine, or enjoy the instant relief of a visit to the walk-in fridge. You might spot desk fans on steel counters, or newly installed industrial-scale fans labouring in kitchen corners, but the most recurring hack shared by many chefs is a pretty analogue one. Jackson Boxer, chef-restaurateur of Dove, Brunswick House and newly opened Vesper, relies on “a dish cloth soaked in iced water, wrapped round the back of the neck. It never fails.”
