Flix takes off...

Flix Movie Café opens tonight after a couple of training evenings where I was dragged back into the kitchen to supervise, train, tweak and taste pizzas, burgers, chips etc...

Adam's new place looks absolutely great.

The sound and picture are really good.

Once you are sat watching the movie you feel as if you are in really cinema, but even better than that said a few of the guinea pigs who were invited to test the team.

The Hartlepool Mail gave Adam a great sending off.

Fingers crossed it all goes well from now on...

Krimo's Next Generation...

Our son, Adam has been in the restaurant business with us for as long as he can remember. Once at the tender age of four, back in 1985, he entertained the diners with "When Santa got stuck up the chimney..." on his plastic guitar, on the first and only time we opened the restaurant on Christmas Day.

He has managed first Krimo's and then Casa del Mar for the last nine years and now he has sprouted wings and feels he needs to do something on his own with his parents' blessing and a bit of pocket money.

He is opening...wait for it... A Movie Café...

A What??

A Movie Café. After much research, he came up with the name of Flix Movie Café. A place where one can watch DVDs, dine and drink with family and friends in relaxed surroundings, right here in the heart of Hartlepool.

As with many projects of this kind, the completion date has been a moving target but he now feels confident enough to plan on opening the doors to the public by the end of next week.

For the last two months, I have forced myself to take a backseat and watch him manage the project, helping out only when asked.
I couldn't resist for long so I donned my thinking and graduation cap to come up with the logo and website.

Karen also helped out, picking many of the colours as, unlike me, she can tell the difference between violet and lilac.

So, this is the start of the next generation! Good luck, son!

Krimo's Twenty Four...

May the Fourth be with you!

Another year ticks by...

Who would've thought twenty four years after Karen and I opened our little restaurant on Seaton Carew seafront on May 4th 1985 that Krimo's would still be going strong?
And according to a survey I conducted a couple of weeks ago it still is the place for special celebrations in Hartlepool?

I tell people we did it with £250 of our own money but it was less than that. It was actually £240! One week's wages and one week's holiday pay.
But all the credit goes to Bert Bryden, our bank manager who started the ball rolling. He gave us a personal loan to put down as a 10% deposit for our 90% building society mortgage to purchase the freehold property.

Bert knew Steve Adams, the building society manager and I had already cooked for him in a small restaurant in Peterlee. Between them they provided us with a 100% mortgage. They must either have had a lot of faith in us or lots of money to dish out. Was that the start of this current credit crunch?

In the three weeks before the Grand Opening, family and friends helped us scrub clean "Davy Jones’ Locker" as the restaurant had been known prior to closing down two years earlier. They painted, decorated, plastered, shopped, sewed, stitched...

Three weeks after opening, as the Saturdays began to be booked up well in advance, we felt so confident about the future that we organised a get-together with everyone that helped out, including Bert and Steve, to thank them for giving us the chance to take our life in our hands.



And, today, we are grateful to all the customers who have kept us going over the years, and allowed us to expand with a further two restaurants.
There is a saying in the motivational business guru's handbook which tells you to "fall in love with your customers". I guess our saga was love at first sight!
The rest is history...

Adam was 3½ when we opened. Nowadays, he runs Casa del Mar. The photo below was taken outside the original Krimo's in July 86 with his Parisian cousin, Mélissa...

Lively Salsa at Casa...

Last night, to recover from the flood at Krimo's I went to Casa del Mar to check out Adam's first live Salsa evening. Not that the Sunday Night Salsa is ever not lively but this one involved a local band that played great Latino stuff such as La Bamba, Oye como va...



















I took a few photos and helped wash glass as the bar was very busy. Cocktails, Sangria and wines flowed non-stop.

Service with a smile...















Early Learning Salsa...