Happy new year good folk!

I do hope y’all managed a break, a bit of a swim and several glasses of champagne.

The Hartsyard team managed to fill their time off with a variety of activities including spear fishing, regular fishing (slightly less energetic and somewhat safer one imagines), movie watching (us girls escaped Tuesday’s heat with an evening viewing of Les Mis. Now answer me honestly people, is there anyone out there who wouldn’t leave their fella if Hugh Jackman came a knocking???) beach visits, some lazy exercising, yachting (that was Cassie, our GM, she’s the sophisticate in the group) book reading and crashing their grandmother’s mobility scooter into their mother’s car. Alcohol does the darndest things to people doesn’t it?

We regrouped again this Monday, kicking off the week with Gregory’s 35th. You’d think this would be the one occasion of the year that a chef wouldn’t have to cook, but it was also the only date we could find to do a photo shoot with Sydney Magazine, so cook he did. A fabulous souther American bbq that you’ll be able to read about in the March issue I believe.

Tuesday was another photo shoot, this time for industry mag Food Service, but I can’t tell you anything about that because our apartment, directly above a restaurant smoking and roasting kilos of meats, was not the ideal location for a two-year old during one of the hottest days on record, so Q and I got out of dodge and went to my parents who are fancy and have air-conditioning.

Wednesday night was a party for some dear friends, friends I grew up with who also played significant roles in getting the doors to Hartsyard open. They reckon we did them a favour in hosting, but without them, there wouldn’t have been anywhere to host in.

Today my dad took us through an on-site which you can read more about here, but in essence he guided us all through the business so we could look at our strengths and weaknesses and strategise for 2013. Gregory, Cassie and I were slightly nervous to start – felt a bit like we were standing in front of the staff with our pants down – but  it was the best thing we could have done. We’ve got some excellent people working with us I tell you, and with excellent ideas. 2013 already looks less daunting!

So come 530 tomorrow, we’ll be ready to throw open our doors and welcome in our first guests of the new year. There will be a stack of new dishes to try – 3 seed, 3 feed and 3 desserts (don’t worry, the fried chicken and the sundae haven’t gone anywhere), a new wine list (haven’t sampled all of Cassie’s selection yet, but I promise to work hard to complete that very important duty) and new uniforms. Actually that last bit is a lie. But they’re coming sometime before Easter I promise.

As usual reservations can be made online, or we’d love to have you in the bar area which remains unreserved seating.

Looking forward to serving you sometime in 2013,

Naomi and the Hartsyard team

It’s our last week of service for 2012!!!

6 months after we opened, we’re taking a break and the little Hartsyard machine is going to have a rest for a couple of weeks.

Which is a good thing because everything around here is on the fritz.

Including me.

Especially me.

The computer system keeps blowing up, forcing us to print dockets from the kitchen, hand write bar orders and stamp every bill before the guest sees it.

The glasswasher in the bar is moodier than our two-year-old daughter, so the bartenders spend the evening coaxing, cajoling and finally over-riding the stupid thing before it floods the bar and then the restaurant.

There are times I wish I could override our daughter…

Tonight, as I was wrangling our small human while trying to print off more gift certificates, the ink in both printers ran out, so I had to reformat, print off and hand stamp them, all while a poor customer was waiting patiently for me to get my act together so she could get her gift and get on her way.

The cool room is on its last legs, which is fine as we’re getting it replaced in the new year, but if it doesn’t last the next couple of days, 2012 will finish with a real fizz. And a lot of lukewarm milk.

The upside to that scenario being that the coffee machine got fixed so at least we could make you coffee.

Cassie is running down the wine and beer (I don’t doubt that what’s left, the staff will obligingly drink whilst cleaning after service on Saturday night), Gregory is running his inventory list to the wire and I am very much looking forward to a two week sabbatical from washing the napkins and the aprons.

Ohhhh, just seeing that in print makes my heart sing.

Back in his homeland, Gregory opened 14 restaurants for various people in Connecticut and New York, so he had a fair idea of what we were in for. But honestly, these first six months have been wilder, crazier, sleepier, exciting-er, tenser, weirder and funner than even he could ever have imagined.

To our staff – Andrew, Sung, Phill, Hendra, Buti, Martin, Goh, Cassie, Mads, Mick, Dan, Sunaina, Amy, Mark and Rhys, thank you. For your belief in us, for your commitment, for your skill and your enthusiasm.

To our family and friends who help us in so many ways, thank you. For the emergency bar shifts, the q-sitting, the business advice, the home-cooked meals, the support texts, the admin assistance, the laundry folding and the love, you can’t know how much easier you’ve made things for us.

And to you, our guests. Thanks for wandering in out of curiosity, and to many of you, thank you for coming back time and time again! Thanks for embracing Gregory’s menu, and relaxing in our little urban homestead. Not blowing smoke up your bottoms folks, but we all comment frequently on just how lovely our guests are. It is our true pleasure to serve you.

So, to our staff, please enjoy your time off. Relax, rejuvenate and rejoice in having no knives to polish or radishes to prep.

To our guests, I hope you’re all catching a break too.

And to you all, we wish you a wonderful christmas holiday. May it be filled with cold seafood, long walks on the beach, friends, family and much fun and laughter.

May 2013 bring you peace, health and happiness and we look forward to serving you again in the new year.

Happy holidays, Gregory, Naomi and the Hartsyard Team!

OUR LAST SERVICE FOR 2012 WILL BE SATURDAY 22ND OF DECEMBER.

WE WILL REOPEN FOR DINNER ON FRIDAY 11TH OF JANUARY 2013.

Several weeks ago we had the honour of hosting two American celebrities for a while. To help them keep it real, we decided to put them to work whilst they were here.

Regulars to Hartsyard may have noticed that we never had a door handle on the back door.

Well now we do. Fancy I know.

Once our male celebrity had completed that task, we set him to work sawing a table in half and attaching the separate pieces to walls in the back area so the boys could have more storage.

Then, just to perpetuate gender stereotypes, we lumped the female celebrity with the laundry. Restaurant napkins…kitchen aprons…our daughter’s play clothes, constantly covered in playdough dye, Gregory’s nest of disgustingness…seriously, I don’t know what he does, but he generates more laundry than any person I’ve ever met. In New York that was fine, he’d just drop it off at the laundromat, but things ain’t as cheap here as they are there and his new slave is me.

Fenced in on both sides. There is no escape from the laundry monster.

Next up? Adding a touch of privacy to our slightly ghetto upstairs apartment.

Q and I are up at a sparrow’s fart, when most normal humans are still abed…unless you are a construction worker. And it just so happens that there is a construction site in our back lane, so those poor fellows get quite a morning welcome from Q (who’s generally having a bit of a pants-off-dance-off after a long night in a nappy) and me in my not-quite-fit-for-public-consumption pyjamas.

For the first little while I made an effort with a bathrobe and whatnot, but my enthusiasm for pre-dawn grooming decreased as the new buildings rose, so our American celebrities installed some lattice and purchased a delicious jasmine plant that has thus far survived my overzealous fertilising.

Gregory grew up one of 7, so to supplement the incredible amount of food required to keep their family alive, Gregory’s parents had a monstrous vegetable garden. A vegetable garden that the kids had to help weed each Saturday morning before they were allowed to watch cartoons. Gregory’s mum thinks it rather ironic that her son loves to garden now, as the memory of his weeding complaints have apparently not dulled over the years. Nothing like getting your hands dirty to keep you humble, so our celebrity visitors were treated to a spot of hole digging and radish planting.

Next up all five of us – two adults to wrangle Q, two adults to focus on the task at hand – stopped by an auction house looking for some lockers so the guys out back can store their stuff out of sight of the guest. It is beyond me how men who spend 12 hours in the same place every day can possibly need to bring as much junk with them to work every day, but if you can’t beat em’ join ‘em. So now their miscellaneous life possessions are stored in these lockers that our lovely GM Cassie craftily spray painted for us one afternoon.

I know, I know. You’re not looking at her art skills, you’re checking out her legs. The gal owns a great set of pins. If you’re lucky enough to come in on my nights off, you’ll see her out and about on the floor and might even catch a glimpse of their magnificence in the flesh.

This is the thing about being a GM in a small restaurant. Your job description runs the gamut from staff training and wine ordering, to general art and craft.

You can see my valuable contribution in the bottom right of this shot. A flute of our delicious sparkling Cremant and some almonds.

Walls were painted, gutters cleaned, napkins mended, hooks were hung, wood was sawn, clothes were sorted, buttons attached, holes were mended. It was a working bee (or working buzz as my american husband once called it) on our life.

By the end of their two and a half week visit, our celebrities were no doubt completely and utterly exhausted and looking forward to their flight back to NYC, just so they could sit still for 14hours without having to lift a finger.

So, just who were these American celebrities? And how did they come to be sleeping on the fold-out bed in our living room?

Why they’re Gregory’s parents of course, and we were absolutely thrilled (all exploitation aside) to have them visit. Q got her fill of her American grandparents up close, instead of just on skype, (which she tends to have focus issues with) Gregory and I got unending support and love for the entire time they were here, and – finally – Gregory’s parents were able to see, taste and experience the result of their son’s 18 years in the business.

I imagine it must be a heart-exploding thing, to see your children live the life they were meant to lead. To look at them and know they’re happy, fulfilled, challenged and confident in the choices they’ve made. It’s probably then – and only then – that you can pat yourself on the back and say, ‘job well done.’

So, job well done Mema and Poppy. Thanks so much for coming to visit us. I know you were bummed you missed the buildout and opening, but if you ask any of our friends and family they’ll tell you all you missed was some serious slave labour and a lot of unscrubbed flanges.

We love you, and can’t wait to have you back again next year.

I promise we’ll have sorted out the napkin issues by then…