Krimo's Summer Madness...

When Krimo's was at Seaton Carew, I often took advantage of the rare warm Summer evenings to catch the last rays of sunshine. Just before the service, around 7pm, I sometimes sat a for a short while by the paddling pool across the road from the restaurant, facing the North sea and fantasizing it was the Mediterranean.

One warm Saturday night after a busy service, around 11.30, the whole kitchen team, all 5 of us headed for the beach. My second-chef aimed his Land Rover's headlights at the water and we all dived in, still wearing our chef's whites.

Even on the hottest August day, the North Sea is never clement and had it not been for our shared bravado, we would jumped right back out of the freezing water.

The current was so strong that the next time we looked back at the lit-up shore, we had drifted as far as the Staincliffe hotel, 500 yards away.

The highlight of that adventure came when a hungry seagull swooped on one of the commis-chefs and pecked him in the head maybe mistaking him for a juicy catch... He has never lived it down since.

I'll always remember that evening with fondness as it was the one and only time we were mad enough to take a midnight dip at Seaton.

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...