![]() ![]() With some money that Richard and Victoria had invested from well-paid jobs in the USA years earlier (working for Sir Bernard Ashley, owner of Llangoed Hall, Powys, at his Keswick Estate hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia), they ploughed a further £150,000 into refurbishing the restaurant, converting it from a fine-dining restaurant to a modern, everyday eaterie with bare tabletops, an informal style of food and service, yet high levels of customer care. Smiths was quite complicated, there were too many superfluous ingredients - we realised we were over-gilding the lily." It made me realise that we had to do something different, we had to opt for a simpler approach. People were talking more about food, supermarket shelves were changing the way people thought about food, and then there was the arrival of the celebrity chef. "We weren't making anything, so we took a step back from the business and gave it a complete overview," Richard says. So in 2000, after five years of giving it their all, they decided to refocus the business. ![]() Richard and Victoria were working flat-out creating a great product (as the awards illustrated), but they just weren't making any real money. It was a crazy time."īut while the awards were a nice profile-raiser, the restaurant itself was only just making ends meet. "We'd dreamt of having our own restaurant since we were 16 (when we met at High Peak College in Buxton) and because we'd wanted it for so long, we couldn't contain ourselves when it came to putting ideas on the plate. "When we first opened it was all about kudos, getting your names in the guides and all that bullshit," Richard says. The awards - three AA rosettes, a bib gourmand and five out of 10 in the Good Food Guide - came fast and furious. When Richard and Victoria Smith opened Smiths of Sheffield nine years ago, they knew exactly what they wanted: accolades.
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