Goodbye to The Cheerful Soul

After two and a half years of being away from home, filming the TV show ' The Restaurant', planning and creating 'The Cheerful Soul' and running 'The Cheerful Soul' for a year, we have now left to return home to Colchester.

 

There are some things we won't miss like the long hours, lack of sleep, not seeing our friends or family and board meetings and there are some things we will miss such as our staff who became our surrogate family, our regular customers who showed us great support and the lovely restaurant interior including Holly's paintings on the walls.

 

WHAT NEXT???
We will be having some time off to re energise, sort out all those things at home that haven't been done for years and then start planning our next adventure.

 

We don't know what that will be yet but we are updating our website so we will let you know when our hand crafted items are available again.

 

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OUR LATEST PROJECT: http://www.madeby-me.co.uk/

• Find some of Russells recipes
• How to's
• Handmade items for sale

Join the FACEBOOK group to stay upto date! You will find a link on the website.

What happened on Sundays? and the rest of the week?

On Sundays after the weekend (Friday & Saturday) service we would wake up feeling like we had been hit by a bus! Everything would hurt and we would be really dehydrated. So we would spend Sundays in the local nature reserve laying in the grass on sunny days, go to the pool in the hotel and eat and drink as much as possible to try and make up for the rest of the week.The reason we were so worn out by Sunday is not just because the weekend service where we would come into the restaurant at midday (we were not allowed in before) and find out what the task was, get in supplies, get the restaurant ready, write menus, prep all the food, make the bookings, get more bookings if we didn't have enough, plan the tables etc.Monday - we go see Raymond and the inspectors for the analysis of our service. All very stressful as none of us had anything to compare our service too - we never knew if we had done well in comparison, obviously we knew if we had a good service but not in comparison. Therefore never knew if we would be put in the challenge. When we get ROTW we are genuinely shocked!On Monday we are also sent off to a different hotel closer to wherever the challenge is - we always had to pack separately as we sometime had to be split up - I didn't like that! We did get to eat and drink on Mondays too.Tuesday - first day of the challenge.Wednesday - Second day of the challenge.We always worked really hard on challenges even and probably more so when it wasn't our challenge as we always wanted our team(s) to win.Thursday - Back to see Raymond and the inspectors for analysis of the challenge, again very stressful. I would cry every Thursday (unless it was my challenge) as I felt so bad for those going in 'the room' I knew how horrible it was as we were in the first challenge! I was sad that someone was leaving. Then in the afternoon / evening we had a little bit from Raymond about the weekend (a suggestion).Friday - Back to the restaurant.This is just a brief rundown of our weeks event - I can assure you it was always hectic, a lot of running and driving around. A lot of tension, and never really know what was going to happen to us from one day to the next.

Michele and Russell - The Restaurant interview

http://www.bbc.co.uk/restaurant/restaurateurs/restaurateurs_8.shtml
Interview with Russell and Michele for the start of The Restaurant 2008.
Our Restaurant is called 'The Cheerful Soul', our restaurant location was Northwood.