FOOD MATTERS
Plenty to celebrate at The Chancel Wine Bar and Bistro Jamie and Paula MacLeod Johnstone at The Chancel
Jamie and Paula MacLeod-Johnstone sit at one of the tables in their city centre Chancel Wine Bar and Bistro and discuss the moment that the business – and their lives – took an unexpected turn.
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It’s exactly five years since they opened The Chancel in St Andrew Street and of all the memories they’ve banked since July 2011, the story of the lobster request is probably the one they share the most. Jamie takes it from the start: “I walked past this building one day, it had been empty for 18 months, and I thought it could be a really nice 11am to 6pm place, perfect for a daytime wine bar and café,” explained Jamie. “So we got it and opened it up as a café and bistro, just offering light snacks and tapas. “But we’d only been open a matter of days when a gentleman enquired if we’d be able to do an evening meal of lobster for his 43rd wedding anniversary. It happened to fall on a Wednesday. We thought it’d be a bit odd for this couple to be sitting here all on their own so we put a blackboard up in the bar to say we’d be doing a surf and turf night with lobster and chateaubriand. Within three days it was sold out and we thought ‘right then, we’d better do food in the evening as well’. “We very quickly had to put on an à la carte menu so by the end of that July we were doing food day and evening, which we hadn’t envisaged in our plans at all.” The original team of three has since grown to 10 –“the Chancel family,” as Paula calls them, and together they’re raising a glass to five successful years. Almost from Day 1 The Chancel has been in the Top 10 of Plymouth
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Tel. 01752 228513
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The Plymouth Magazine July 2016
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