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We spoke to Kevin Gonçalves, Head Chef at Reading Room in Brighton, about growing up in restaurants and working his way up the kitchen.
"My name is Kevin and I'm the head chef at Reading Room in Brighton.
Back in Portugal, my father had several restaurants as well. So, I have always lived in this industry. So when I came to UK, I was so shy, my English wasn't that great. So I started as a kitchen board, a six-month later I was a chef. And I never would back.
So Brighton introduced me to new ingredients, new recipes. And that is what fascinates me, what I started to like as a chef.
We go out together a lot of times, you know, it's not only the Reading Room, it's after the reading room as well. We spend so many hours here at work, so we see these people a lot of time, you know, so we treat as a family.
So the community here is very local and welcoming and we see a lot of regular guests here which create a nice afternoon.
"I'm Sebastian Jones. I'm one of the co-owners for Reading Room Brighton.
Hospitality's always been a big part of my life and my upbringing, and it's always been a part of my family. So, from the youngest I could walk, I was at the back of the restaurant watching my dad be the hospitable host and look after guests and run restaurants. I run the buzz and the hustle and everything.
And one thing that always stuck with me was those moments of connection over food and drink.
We've got our first year under our belt from being opening, it's been a fantastic year. And this year we're kind of opening our doors, so to say, and we're doing a lot of collaborations. And we're inviting local chefs, aspiring chefs, people all over Brighton to share the space with us.
'Because it's a beautiful venue, steeped in history and there's nowhere like this you can replicate the kind of experience that we're able to give along with weddings.
We want to be more than just a cafe and a restaurant offering, we also want to be a collaborative community space that we give back to the community and share this space after they've given us so much last year.
So we're not there to serve you, we're there to create an experience for you and that's what I want this place to do and that's what I want my friends to do, a family, community-led group in place. You know when you go to your friend's house, that kind of vibe, you forget that you're actually in a restaurant, you know. And then once we've achieved that, all the customers are essentially our friends."
"So my name's Karl Jones, and along with my two sons, I own Reading Room.
We make all our food in-house. Our chefs are incredibly skilled. They change most of the menus every day, cakes are different every day.
We try to be nice to our customers. We try to be even nicer to our dog customers. We have a lot of those. We get quite a lot of tourists in the summer.
Yeah, as I said, we've got a nice vibe, nice people. It's a really wonderful neighbourhood. And even some of the older characters are fun.
Post-COVID, we had 24 hours to put in our proposal. There were 1,200 applications. And by the following Friday, we found out it was us.
And the reason it was us, we didn't want to change anything about the building. There was no floor, no plumbing, no power. There was still no gas, and there never will be gas.
Day four, we had to rip out the heavy oak and steal the bespoke kitchen that we built because we realised that the footfall was going to be on such a scale that that the kitchen couldn't cope. That was the kind of moment to confirm stuff.
The benefit for us with Woods is they always seem to have everything we're looking for, more than anything. We can always order what we need. There always seems to be a choice and an array of quality products.
So our Head Chef loves them and can't do without them. So that's a happy life for me."
