An ambitious, tenacious business friend of mine messaged me recently.

“My head chef is pregnant, but she’s coming back in a few months.”

I said, “What, full time?”

“Yeah I think so.”

I said, “Brace yourself. She’s not coming back the same.”

At the time I think I meant it slightly as a warning.

Not that she wouldn’t be as good at her job, or that she’d suddenly lose her ambition, but that I didn’t think he should expect the exact same person to walk back into his kitchen after having their first baby and simply pick up where she left off.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realised that I don’t really see that as a warning at all.

Why would she come back the same?

I know my experience is my own and I’m conscious of not speaking on behalf of every woman here, but having had one child and now having gone through another pregnancy while working in a kitchen and running a physical business, I find some of our expectations around women having babies really strange.

We are obsessed with getting “back”. Back to work, back into your clothes, back to your old self, back to normal.

I’m not sure I ever went back.

I recently came across the word matrescence, which describes the transition a woman goes through when she becomes a mother. I’d never heard of it before having a baby, despite there being an enormous amount of language around pregnancy and birth.

I find that interesting because having a baby is clearly not just a physical event that happens and then finishes. Your entire relationship with yourself changes. Your priorities might move around. The way you see your partner can and will change. Your relationship with work can change. Suddenly you are responsible for someone in a way you have never been responsible for another person before.

Yet so much of the language afterwards is about recovery, as though the aim is to restore you to your previous settings.

A very well-known chef who I’m fond of told me proudly, his daughter returned to her full-time head chef job two weeks after having a baby. Another very well-known female chef-owner told me “One week. I gave myself one week.”

Sorry but are we OK?

Maybe they were completely OK. Maybe getting back into the kitchen was exactly what they needed. I don’t know their circumstances and I don’t think there is a correct amount of time somebody should want to be away from work. But I do think it says something about hospitality that these stories are so often told as impressive ones.

We love endurance in kitchens.

I understand that because I am exactly like that. I get enormous satisfaction from being physically capable, sometimes to a fault. I like carrying something heavy. I like being quick and efficient. There is a pleasure in knowing your body can get you through a busy day and do what you need it to do without much thought. I find it invigorating.

I also hate feeling like anyone needs to make an allowance for me.

This is why I found parts of pregnancy surprisingly confronting.

There comes a point where your mind is completely willing and your body just says absolutely not.

And in a kitchen that is particularly noticeable because your body is your actual equipment. Cooking is physical work. You are on your feet for hours, reaching down into fridges and lifting things onto benches. You work in the heat. You squeeze yourself into tiny spaces to get to a plug socket or pick up a dropped spoon without really thinking about it.

Then pregnancy starts changing the rules.

Suddenly you do have to think about getting down onto the floor because getting back up again is a different story, the knees! The bump, the acid reflux. The stockpot you would have picked up without thinking suddenly feels like something you probably shouldn’t be carrying. You get out of breath more easily, you need to pee all the time. Your balance changes. Sometimes there is literally another human being tucking their feet up under your ribs.

I found this really frustrating.

I didn’t want someone else carrying things for me. I didn’t particularly want a chair. I didn’t want to become the person Mattie kept checking on because I knew exactly what I was doing and mentally I felt completely capable of doing it.

The problem was that my body had another job.

I think that is the bit we massively underestimate.

We say pregnancy is miraculous so often that the word has almost become meaningless, but when you properly think about what the female body is doing it is completely mad. There is another human being being assembled inside you, literal limbs and organs being built while you are carrying on with your existing life.

You still go to work. You answer emails. You do the nursery drop off if you already have a child. You think about what everyone is having for dinner. Nothing else really stops while your body is quietly getting on with this enormous piece of work.

For quite a lot of pregnancy nobody can even see it.

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You can make this with frozen cherries, and it will still be delicious, but I’d really try to use fresh cherries while they’re around. Their season disappears far too quickly, and frozen cherries tend to leach out quite a bit more liquid as they defrost. Fresh cherries give you that gorgeous juicy filling without quite so much excess moisture, so make the most of them before they disappear.

Cherry Pie

Makes 1 x 8 inch pie x 2inch height

Ingredients:

Pastry

225g strong white flour

175g unsalted butter, cold, cubed

15g caster sugar

5g fine salt

70ml ice cold water

2tbsp milk, for brushing

1tbsp demerrera sugar for sprinkling

Cherries

500g pitted cherries

180g golden caster sugar

¼ tsp almond extract/Disaronno (optional)

50g cornflour (this is the same as corn starch)

Make the pastry:

1. In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the flour, salt and sugar together

2. Add in the butter and mix until the butter had formed breadcrumbs, you still want to be able to see some chunks of butter

3. Add in the water in one go and mix quickly to form a dough

4. Tip the dough out onto your work surface and bring together with your hands

5. Wrap tightly in cling film and place in the fridge to firm up, about 4 hours

Make the filling

1. Pit the cherries and place them in a large bowl (the amount of cherries post pitting should be 500g)

2. Coat the cherries in the sugar, almond extract/Disaronno (if using) and the cornflour

3. Set aside whilst you prepare the pie case. There may be some juice that leaches out from the cherries but don’t worry too much that’s what the cornflour will help with.

Prepare and bake

1. Gently knead the cold dough a bit, cut ⅓ off and keep aside for the top. Roll out to 4mm, grease an 8 inch pie case or closed bottom cake tin.

2. Line the tin with the pastry, leaving a bit of an overhang. Keep the scraps if you have any and add this to the ⅓ for the top. Put the lined tin in the fridge whilst you prepare the top.

3. Roll the rest of the pastry to 4mm and cut a lattice or leave whole, put in the fridge to chill for 15 mins on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

4. Once the case and top are cold, add the cherry mixture and top with the lid. Pinch the edge of the pie and the top together to seal. If the top is being left whole pierce a hole in the top. Return to the fridge

5. Heat the oven to 200 degrees fan/ 220 oven. Put a heavy baking tray in the oven to heat up, it works best on the very bottom shelf of the oven.

6. Brush the top of the pie with milk and sprinkle the sugar on the top

7. Bake for 1 hour and 15 mins until golden brown.

8. Allow to cool slightly before serving with ice cream, custard, cream or in Jeremy Lee style - ALL THREE.

Notes:

The cherries will leach out a bit of liquid once they’ve been tossed in the sugar and cornflour but this is a good thing, it makes it nice and juicy. The cornflour will also mingle and do it’s thing in the oven and turn that juice into a thick sauce.

You can use frozen cherries for this recipe, however it is essential that they are fully defrosted before using. Once they are fully defrosted, strain off the excess liquid (reduce it down with some sugar for a cordial!) and then toss in sugar and cornflour.

Taste the cherries before using them! I always think this is important. If the cherries are super sweet -like you can’t believe how sweet they are- then take 25g of sugar out of the recipe and then taste them again once you’ve coated them. Then you can judge whether it needs that extra 25g of sugar.

Also please do bear in mind that the pastry is not sweet, it’s buttery, flaky, a touch salty and carries that filling. Therefore a contrast in the salty/buttery and sweet cherry is a thing of beauty.

Before I get into the questions, I should say this, from the FOH team at Gina: ‘Naveen is the best.’ He was one of the main people who trained me when I started at Gina because he genuinely knows the restaurant inside out.

Alongside running the bar, he helps oversee front of house, runs food from the kitchen when needed and spends Mondays tackling the admin jobs that keep everything ticking over behind the scenes. In short, he’s exactly the kind of person you want in the team.

So, here are 10 questions for our Nav and 10 very good answers.

Q1: Everyone seems to have a different story about how they ended up in hospitality. What was your path?

Naveen: Back in India, I worked as an automobile sales representative for a company selling motorbikes. It gave me a lot of experience talking to customers, so I already knew I enjoyed that side of things.

When I moved to the UK for school, I needed to find some part-time work. I’d heard hospitality was a good place to start, so I applied to be a food runner and got the job.

Q2: Bartending at The Savoy is no small feat. How did you land that job?

Naveen: This is actually a pretty cool story. I started as a food runner at the American Bar and immediately connected with the customers.

They moved me over to work as a waiter with the events team, and the next thing I knew I was serving Lady Gaga at the Critics Choice Awards. It was incredible.

Q3: Okay, that is incredible. Were there many events like that?

Naveen: Nothing quite like that, but the level of service there was something else.

I have high standards for myself and for my team now, and that definitely comes from working at the American Bar.

Between serving drinks, we would do a floor run on a set timer. We had to top up drinks, check in with guests and take any orders, all while getting back behind the bar in under two and a half minutes.

It was pretty intense

.

Q4: Let’s switch gears and talk about Gina. How did you end up here?

Naveen: I think my story says something nice about hospitality.

I had my trial shift at Gina on 30 August 2025, so I’m coming up to a year now. My bar manager at The Savoy told me about a new restaurant in Chingford that was hiring food runners.

I didn’t really want to go back into that role, but he encouraged me to apply and at least have a conversation with the team. They called me in, heard about my experience and offered me a job behind the bar instead.

Q5: You’ve obviously decided to stay in hospitality for now. What do you enjoy most about bartending?

Naveen: It’s the conversations with customers.

You’re serving drinks while hearing random stories about food, travel, different cultures and people’s lives. I find it really interesting.

Getting paid to learn about people while making them happy, what’s not to enjoy?

Q6: I’m surprised you didn’t mention creating drinks. I feel like you’re a bit of a mad scientist behind the bar. You’ve come up with quite a few of Gina’s house cocktails. Which is your favourite?

Naveen: It’s a tough question, but I’ve really enjoyed making our milk punches - first the Pear Punch and now the Elderflower Punch.

People don’t always realise they’re made using milk, or what that actually does. When you clarify the drink, the milk solids are strained out and it softens some of the bitterness and harshness from the alcohol. It sounds strange, but it creates a really smooth, soft drink. If you’ve tried one of our punches, you already know how good they are.

Q7: I can confirm they’re very good. We’ve also recently revamped our wine list. What would you pair with our steak, fish and vegetarian dishes?

Naveen: I think most of our customers already know the steaks are delicious. There’s a reason we have an entire night dedicated to them every week.

For the 800g wing rib, I’d definitely recommend the Rioja. It works really well with aged beef.

The fish on the menu changes, but our cod dish has been really popular. For that, I’d go with the Gavi.

Our current vegetarian dish is the Tomato Vol-au-Vent, which is really creamy. I’d pair that with one of our rosés, preferably the Provence.

Q8: What’s something you think people should know about working behind a bar?

Naveen: Every bar works differently, and bartending involves a lot of multitasking.

At Gina, it’s usually just me or Anisha behind the bar, so we’re always trying to get drinks out as quickly as possible without compromising on quality.

And one golden rule: never put a glass directly into the ice well or ice machine. Always use the scoop. Trust me, you are not ready for the mess a broken glass can cause in the middle of a busy service. Thank me later.

Q9: It’s hard not to talk about the heat at the moment. What’s the best drink at Gina when it’s pushing 28 degrees outside?

Naveen: Easy. Stick to the classics.

We serve our beer in frosted glasses, so that’s a very good place to start. If you want a cocktail, I’d go for a Moscow Mule or our summer special, the Watermelon Paloma.

Q10: Finally, let’s give some attention to the no- and low-alcohol options. We have quite a few. What would you recommend?

Naveen: It’s really important to have good drinks for people who don’t drink alcohol, and I’m proud of what we offer.

Alongside things like fresh lemonade and limeade, coffee, Lucky Saint, apple juice and orange juice, we have a couple of proper non-alcoholic cocktails too. We’re also always happy to make something bespoke using whatever ingredients we have behind the bar.

There’s the Watermelon Fizz, which I know had a whole newsletter dedicated to it.

Then there’s the Hibiscus and Grapefruit Soda, which has become a bit of a Gina classic designed by Missy & Cameron of Malik Acid. We make a syrup using dried hibiscus and rose water, top it with grapefruit soda and finish it with a wedge of lime.

And there you have it.

Next time you’re at Gina, show our bartenders some love and say hello to Naveen. Order a cocktail, a glass of wine or even an ice-cold Coca-Cola and know that there’s a lot more happening behind that bar than you might think.

Cheers to Nav and to everyone keeping the drinks flowing.

Anna

I absolutely think the industry needs to do better, but some of the conversation can become a bit simplistic. Telling restaurants that they should offer six months full pay, perfect flexibility and better support sounds great, but if you actually run a small hospitality business you know that sometimes the structure simply is not there to support it.

So I wanted to look at what maternity actually looks like now, what other industries are able to offer, and why hospitality is so different.

In the UK, if you qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), you can receive it for up to 39 weeks.

Qualifying is not automatic. You need to have been continuously employed by the same employer for at least 26 weeks by the end of the 15th week before your baby is due. You also need to be earning at least £129 a week on average, give your employer the correct notice and provide proof of the pregnancy.

That continuous employment point is particularly interesting in hospitality, where people move jobs relatively often. If you change restaurants at the wrong point in your pregnancy, you may not qualify for SMP from your new employer at all, although you may instead be eligible for Maternity Allowance.

If you do qualify, for the first six weeks you receive 90% of your average weekly earnings. For the following 33 weeks it drops to £194.32 a week, or 90% of your average earnings if that is lower.

That £194.32 works out at roughly £842 a month. You can take up to 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave, but the final 13 weeks are unpaid.

There is, however, a slightly strange complication for some hospitality workers, which is tronc.

SMP is based on the earnings on which Class 1 National Insurance is due. In many restaurants, part of someone’s overall package is paid through an independently run tronc service and those payments may not attract National Insurance. If that is how the tronc is structured, that part of someone’s income is not included when their SMP is calculated.

So imagine someone is described as earning £48,000 a year, but their package is £30,000 base salary plus around £18,000 in tronc.

If that tronc is not subject to Class 1 National Insurance, their first six weeks of SMP would be calculated from the £30,000 base rather than the £48,000 they have actually been accustomed to living on. Ninety per cent of £30,000 works out at roughly £519 a week. If the full £48,000 counted, it would be around £831.

That is a significant difference.

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Coming from Chicago, I consider myself a steak person. The city is known for its steakhouses and excellent beef, and I grew up loving all of it.

So I was slightly surprised to realise that the Yellow Chicken at Gina might now be my favourite meat dish on the menu.

Last week, I was talking to a guest about it and we both landed on the same word: succulent. She wanted to know exactly how the chefs make the chicken so juicy and tender.

The answer is less complicated than you might think. It all comes down to the dry brine. Here is how the kitchen makes our Yellow Chicken with Scottish Girolles, Sweetcorn and Persillade.

Yellow Chicken, Scottish Girolles, Sweetcorn and Persillade

Serves 2

Ingredients

For the chicken:

• 2 skin-on chicken supremes, around 180–220g each

• Fine rock salt, equal to 3% of the chicken’s weight

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil

• 20g unsalted butter

• 2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed

• 2 sprigs of thyme

For the sweetcorn and girolles:

• 2 sweetcorn cobs, kernels removed

• ½ small white onion, finely diced

• 150g Scottish girolles, cleaned

• 20g unsalted butter

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil

• 150ml reduced chicken stock

• 100g crème fraîche

• Juice of ½ lemon

• Sea salt

For the persillade:

• 15g flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

• 1 small shallot, very finely diced

• Finely grated zest of ½ lemon

• A pinch of sea salt

1. Brine the chicken

Weigh the chicken supremes, then season them with fine rock salt equal to 3% of their total weight.

Leave them to cure for 40 minutes, then rinse thoroughly under cold running water and pat dry.

Place the chicken uncovered on a wire rack in the fridge for 12–24 hours. This gives the seasoning time to work its way into the meat while drying the skin, which helps it become beautifully crisp during cooking.

2. Make the sweetcorn base

Gently cook the diced onion in the butter until completely soft, without allowing it to colour.

Add the sweetcorn kernels and cook for another two to three minutes.

Pour in the reduced chicken stock and simmer gently until the corn is tender and sitting in a light, glossy sauce. The liquid should reduce slightly, but you want to keep enough of it to form the base of the finished dish.

Set aside until needed.

3. Make the persillade

Mix the finely chopped parsley with the diced shallot, lemon zest and a pinch of sea salt.

Keep it to one side until you are ready to serve. Adding it at the very end keeps it fresh and gives the finished dish a little extra texture.

4. Cook the chicken

Place the chicken skin-side down in a cold, heavy frying pan with the neutral oil, then set the pan over a medium heat.

Starting in a cold pan allows the fat beneath the skin to render slowly and helps stop the skin from shrinking when it hits the heat.

Cook until the skin is evenly golden and crisp.

Add the butter, garlic and thyme, then baste the chicken continuously until it is deeply coloured.

Transfer the pan to a 160°C fan oven for around five to six minutes, or until the thickest part of the breast reaches 65°C.

Leave the chicken to rest for five to eight minutes before serving.

5. Cook the girolles

Heat a sauté pan over a high heat and add the neutral oil.

Cook the girolles until they begin to colour, then add the butter and continue cooking until golden.

Add the girolles into the prepared sweetcorn along with all of its cooking liquor.

Add the crème fraîche and simmer gently until the sauce lightly coats the mushrooms and sweetcorn.

Finish with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and season with sea salt as needed.

6. Serve

Spoon the creamy sweetcorn and Scottish girolles into the centre of two warm plates, creating a generous bed for the chicken.

Place a rested chicken supreme on top, keeping the crisp skin facing upwards.

Spoon a little of the creamy sauce around the chicken, taking care not to cover the skin, then sprinkle the persillade over the top.

Serve immediately.

You can give the recipe a go at home, or come into Gina and let the kitchen do it for you.

I’ll be taking a break from serving next week to sit on the other side of the restaurant with a few friends visiting from Chicago. I already have a long list of dishes I want them to try, and the chicken is firmly on it.

Should you spot me eating instead of working, come and tell me what you think of it.

Cheers,

Anna

As someone who never wanted children, this is not something I had ever properly considered.

I was so unaware of what it meant to raise a child, or of the physical and mental toll of having a baby, that it genuinely did not enter my mind until it happened to me and I found myself in the middle of it.

My experience of babies and children had always been limited. I remember the owner of a restaurant I worked at going off to have a baby and thinking, OK, bye, see you later, here’s a Cowshed mum & baby gift set. I did not understand that the woman standing in front of me would be different from the woman who returned after having her baby. I am going to write more about that later in this series.

Before Gina, I also ran an online platform and business called Countertalk alongside my kitchen and pastry work. One of the women on the team had twins. Shortly after she returned to work, we needed to arrange a meeting and I casually said, “Just bring them with you.”

I did not consider for a second that she might be incredibly stressed, exhausted or trying to hold together several competing parts of her life. Now looking back I ask her frequently how on earth she did it.

Working for parents who needed to prioritise getting back for bedtime is not something I remember considering, I thought ‘ah bedtime? That sounds like nice fun.’ Not understanding that it meant a tiring few hours of play, organisation and probably reasoning with a splashy high alert baby or toddler after a full day of work.

I simply did not understand.

Deciding to open a restaurant when my first son was one was an unexpected push. Strangely, I found the planning and the build relatively manageable. It was the opening, and everything that followed, that I found really difficult.

I was not prepared for it, and I could not be as present as I wanted to be anywhere.

I was torn between trying to be a good mother, trying to become a pastry chef again and attempting to control the marketing and operations of a new business into which we had poured our life savings.

I did not feel good at any of it. I felt thinly stretched and inadequate.

At work, my brain was probably functioning at around 30 per cent of its usual speed. I felt discombobulated and unable to access the version of myself I knew existed. I could still do things, but everything took longer. Decisions felt harder. I was constantly losing my train of thought.

During our first year of opening, it took me until around March to properly get my groove back in the kitchen.

That was frustrating because I had only really started to feel like myself again in December. At the beginning of the year, my pastry-chef brain switched back on. I had ideas again. I felt sharp. I felt capable. I felt on fire.

And then I knew: oh f***, I am pregnant again.

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Working at Gina certainly satisfies my appetite for trying delicious food, and I’ve brought her here on more than one occasion. An unexpected perk of the job, though, is getting brilliant date-night recommendations from the rest of the team.

Our chefs know London’s food scene as well as anyone, and the front-of-house team have proved themselves to have excellent taste too. So, whether you’re planning a first date or a long-overdue night out with your partner, here are Team Gina’s favourite places to go.

40 Maltby Street

This one definitely deserves the top spot.

The popular Bermondsey wine bar was one of the first places Rav and I spoke about when I started at Gina. I went on a date there not long after moving to London and immediately fell in love with the atmosphere, the food and the extensive natural wine list.

When I asked the Gina team for their favourite date spots, 40 Maltby Street came up no fewer than four times.

Bianca’s

After speaking to the kitchen team, Bianca’s seems to be the kind of place you return to again and again.

The cooking is inventive, the room feels relaxed and its neighbourhood atmosphere makes it an ideal place to sit and properly talk. It works just as well for a first meeting with someone from the apps as it does for an easy night out with someone you’ve known for years.

SOMA Soho

This recommendation comes from our general manager, Tom - better known as TJ - and our bar manager, Naveen. With that endorsement, a cocktail bar had to make the list.

The space is cosy and intimate, and the drinks are on another level. TJ had a banana-infused rum cocktail there last winter and hasn’t stopped talking about it since.

SOMA has another location, but the Soho bar puts you right in the middle of the action, with plenty of nearby options should you decide to keep the night going.

Trinity

Trinity might feel like a bit of a journey for our North London neighbours, tucked away as it is in the heart of Clapham, but it is worth the trip.

London has no shortage of Michelin-starred restaurants, but Trinity stands out for another reason too: it has now been open for 20 years.

We have just celebrated Gina’s first birthday - something we are very proud of - so two decades in today’s hospitality industry feels like an extraordinary achievement. That alone makes it worth visiting, although the food is reason enough.

Forza Wine

We have two South East Londoners on the team, myself included, so it only felt right to feature somewhere we might choose when staying closer to home.

Peckham has become a brilliant place for chefs and restaurateurs to experiment without the costs of central London. Forza Wine is a perfect example.

Expect natural wine, inventive cocktails and a rooftop view that makes the whole evening feel a little more special. It is the sort of place where you can settle in, order another glass and lose track of time.

I’m not sure about you, but writing this list has already got me planning my next date night.

Anyone up for a double date?

I genuinely thought running a restaurant would be more straightforward than it is. I knew there would be problems, obviously, but I thought that with enough systems, organisation and clear communication, you could create a machine that more or less flowed.

You cannot.

That is what makes restaurants so interesting and also so damn difficult to get right.

Staff are walking variables. Your strongest person can have an off day. They can be sick, distracted or carrying something personal that they cannot leave at the door. They might dislike somebody they work with. They might have messed up their plans, promised a friend they would go to a party and suddenly decide they need to call in sick.

Then you have the supply chain keeping the restaurant functioning: waste collection, cleaners, maintenance, laundry and suppliers. Suppliers are the big one. When a delivery does not arrive, or turns up without something as basic as chips, it can upset a surprising number of people.

And then there are the customers. More on them shortly.

We had a turbulent Friday night last week and it jolted me.

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Italian peaches are properly abundant at the moment, and the fruit this year has tasted incredible. It’s the kind of summer where you should be eating as much of them as possible, while it’s here.

At Gina, we’ve been using peaches in our cobbler, which has quickly become one of our best-selling puddings. Warm fruit, soft topping, plenty of cream - it’s hard to go wrong.

For this recipe, I wanted to share something just as useful but a little more showy: a peach and ricotta upside-down cake. It’s genuinely beautiful and it’s the sort of cake that is very handy to have in your back pocket. The peaches soften and caramelise into the brown sugar as it bakes, while the ricotta keeps the cake soft and tender underneath.

It’s simple enough to make without too much fuss, but looks like you’ve made a real effort. Exactly the sort of recipe I think is worth keeping. The trick is to not overmix the batter once the ricotta is in and to keep an eye on the bake. Always test this one with a skewer to ensure it’s evenly baked throughout.

Makes 1 x 8 inch cake

We used this tin from PME.

Ingredients:

5 ripe peaches

2 tbsp light brown sugar

140g unsalted butter at room temp

+ extra for buttering

220g caster sugar

3 eggs

165g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

250g ricotta

1 x orange zest

1 tbsp amaretto/almond essence (optional)

To finish

2 tbsp golden syrup/honey

1 x handful of roasted flaked almonds (optional)

Icing sugar to dust

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 160 fan/180 oven

• Grease and line a cake tin on the bottom and sides with parchment paper

• Cut the peaches in half, remove the stones, mix with the light brown sugar, set aside

• In a separate bowl beat the butter, sugar, orange zest and salt together until pale and fluffy (add the amaretto/almond essence if using)

• Add in the eggs, mixing well in between each addition

• In another bowl stir together the plain flour and baking powder

• Add the flour mixture into the cake batter, mix well

• Fold in the ricotta

• Arrange the peach halves in the bottom of the tin making sure the halves (exposed side) are facing down and are flat

• Dollop the cake batter on top and bake for 1 hour - 1 hour 15 minutes, or until when a skewer is inserted into the very middle of the cake, it comes out clean. This is very important!

• Allow to cool for 20 minutes before flipping out onto a plate and drizzling with golden syrup, sprinkling over the almonds and dusting some icing sugar!

Notes:

Serve with clotted cream, pouring cream, custard or on it's own

This cake will keep for 3 days stored at room temperature in an airtight container.

Enjoy, from the team at Gina.

If you’re looking for a place to eat Peaches, you can find them on our summer dessert menu in the form of Peach Cobbler. Enjoy this and other dishes at Gina this weekend. Book a table here

As much as I had planned the life out of it, nothing really teaches you like doing the thing.

You can have the spreadsheets, the packaging, the costings, the prep lists, the photos, the team briefings, the very confident idea in your head of how it is all going to go. But the real version only appears once people start arriving, the trays start emptying, the kitchen starts heating up and someone is asking where the next batch of cookies is.

So, this is the slightly less polished, week-by-week version of how the bakery pop-ups actually went.

The short version is: we got better every week.

The longer version is: we were naive, then extremely hot, then more organised, then humbled, then slightly delirious, swollen, then quite proud by the end.

Week one: cute idea, immediate panic

Week one was naive.

We had two people front of house, me and three chefs in the kitchen, and what felt like a decent amount of baked goods ready to go.

It was not a decent amount of baked goods ready to go.

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The menu changes regularly, but a handful of dishes have become firm favourites. Some have barely left the menu since we opened, while others have disappeared briefly before being brought back after enough people asked where they’d gone. The monkfish salad, I’m looking at you.

We recently looked at the numbers to find out which dishes have been ordered the most. The number one spot will surprise absolutely nobody, but a few of the others definitely surprised me.

For the purposes of this highly scientific ranking, I’ve included starters, mains, cocktails and puddings.

Starting at number seven…

7. Salt Marsh Leg of Lamb

We’ve served a few versions of this dish, but the centrepiece is always the same: tender, juicy lamb from Swaledale Butchers, cooked until perfectly pink and well-seared on the outside.

I’d order it with a glass of our Côtes du Rhône from Domaine de l’Amandine, a family-run producer in the Rhône Valley.

6. Shetland Cod, Grilled Italian Flat Beans and Almond Beurre Blanc

This dish has only been on the menu for a few months, but it has already made its way into the top seven.

The cod is gently steamed, then served with grilled flat beans and an almond beurre blanc. It is absolutely a sauce that requires a spoon, or at the very least a good bit of bread to mop up what’s left.

5. The Spicy Margarita

The first drink on the list, and easily the cocktail people return to most often.

It’s also rare to see somebody order just one. The heat comes from our house-made chilli tincture, made using dried chillies and Ancho Reyes, and it has just enough spice without overpowering the drink.

4. Warm Salad of Monkfish, Bacon and Oakleaf

This was one of the original dishes on the menu when Gina opened. It disappeared for a while as the seasons changed, but people kept asking when it was coming back.

As soon as the weather turned warmer, it returned. Monkfish, salty bacon and soft oakleaf lettuce might sound simple, but together they really work. It has firmly earned its fan-favourite status.

3. Piedmontese Peppers and Buffalo Mozzarella

This was the biggest surprise for me.

It hasn’t been on the menu for very long, but it has already taken the number three spot. It is essentially a collection of very good ingredients that don’t need much interference: sweet peppers from northern Italy, creamy buffalo mozzarella, slow-roasted tomatoes and anchovy.

Simple, salty, sweet and very difficult not to order when you see it on somebody else’s table

2. Beef Tartare

I knew this one would make the list.

Our beef tartare has become a Gina staple. Instead of using egg yolk as the binding element, the kitchen makes an anchoïade with anchovies, capers, garlic and olive oil.

It gives the aged Highland beef a salty, savoury richness and is probably one of the dishes I recommend most often to people who can’t decide what to order.

1. Ravi’s Chocolate Cake

How could it be anything else?

People travel from down the road and from across the country to try this cake. It is our most-ordered dish month after month, regardless of what else is on the menu.

The cake is light, soft and deeply chocolatey, served with warm Original Beans 70% dark chocolate sauce, home made salted milk ice cream and fresh cream to pour over the top.

Well done, Rav.

So there you have it: one cocktail, a few starters, a couple of mains and one completely unsurprising pudding.

Every dish on the menu is made with the same care, but the numbers don’t lie. Whether you’re coming to Gina for the first time or have already worked your way through most of the menu, these seven are a very good place to start.

Anna.

P.s. Try one of the top seven dishes by booking online here

Anna joined our front-of-house team from the US and is someone who really loves hospitality for what it is. She loves going out to eat, finding new and interesting places around London and talking about food and drink. Her brother also happens to run one of the most acclaimed wine bars in the US, so it clearly runs in the family. Most mornings, she walks around the restaurant breaking up an orange and handing each of us a segment, which probably tells you quite a lot about her.

So, alongside my longer pieces - the rest of the pop-up series, longer form recipes, insights into running a business and a family, maternity and hospitality, and everything else I currently have half-written, Anna is going to be bringing you a free weekly newsletter from inside Gina.

She’ll be asking the team where they actually eat and drink in London, sharing the staff-food recipes we repeatedly beg one another to make, and giving you a closer look at what it is like to work in hospitality in London in 2026.

It feels like a really natural extension of what we already do here, and I’m excited to see what Anna makes of it. Over to her.

What is a salad without a good drink next to it?

Last week, Rav shared her recipe for the perfect Greek salad for hot weather, so this week I’m taking care of the refreshments.

I have loved watermelon juice for as long as I can remember, although as a child “watermelon juice” mostly meant whatever ended up running down my arms and onto my clothes after eating a slice outside. At university, I distinctly remember asking my friends why nobody sold it as an actual drink. This felt, to me, like a major gap in the market.

Thankfully, the bar team at Gina have now resolved an issue I have apparently been carrying with me for years.

They have come up with not one, but two watermelon drinks for this seemingly endless summer.

First up is the Watermelon Fizz: homemade watermelon cordial, cucumber and soda water. It is cold, refreshing and alcohol-free, making it ideal for anyone avoiding booze, pregnant restaurant owners in their third trimester, for instance.

• 50ml of watermelon cordial into a highball glass with ice

• Top up with soda water and mix well

• Garnish with fresh cucumber ribbon

For the cordial:

1. Get a fresh watermelon (I recommend a large one from your local international Green Grocer) and slice it without seeds

2. Juice the watermelon in a blender

3. Strain it through a cloth

4. Add equal parts of sugar to the juice for a 1:1 ratio

5. Add 20g citric acid to 1000ml juice (you can buy citric acid pretty easily in the shops)

6. Add 10g malic acid (not 100% essential but a worthwhile ingredient to have if you like making drinks, buy it online)

7. Mix well until sugar and acid become diluted

Next up we’re serving an incredible Watermelon Paloma. This is turning out to be one of those cocktails customers order once and then end up getting about three more (not that I blame them).

• 90ml of Watermelon Paloma batch mix served in highball glass with ice

• Top up with soda and mix well

• Garnish with lime

Watermelon Paloma batch mix:

1. 600ml of watermelon cordial

2. 600ml of your favourite tequila

3. 300ml of lime acids

Lime acids:

1. 1000ml still water

2. 10g of citric acid

3. 5g of malic acid

4. Pinch of salt and sugar

5. Mix well until acids are diluted

That’s all from me for this week. I’ll be back next time with more from inside Gina- where we’re eating, what we’re drinking, and whatever the team has decided everyone else needs to know about.

Until then, make the watermelon drinks, keep them very cold, and please pace yourselves with the Paloma.

Anna

In the first one I talked through all of the pre-planning that had to happen before we even got to the point of selling anything. Packaging, costing, recipe testing, till buttons, photography, team chats, all of the glamorous stuff.

This part is about what happened once the pop-ups actually started.

And my God, keeping the admin of this thing going was absolutely relentless. I can tell you that for free.

After mammoth weeks of plotting the pop-ups, physically executing them, running the restaurant and juggling childcare, by Saturday afternoon I was well and truly fried. Not just tired. Fried. There was this huge decompression after each one, but at the exact same time my brain was already trying to work out what needed to happen for the following week.

I’d be driving to pick my son up from my mum’s thinking about mango deliveries, till buttons, how many cookies we sold, whether we had enough boxes, what needed to go on Instagram, who was prepping what, whether the menu was too big, whether the queue had worked, whether I spoke to someone for long enough, whether I’d ordered enough butter, whether I had in fact completely lost my mind.

It was frantic to say the least.

Maybe younger me would have had more energy for this. Maybe pre-child me or pre-restaurant me would have been a bit more nimble with it all. But new me went in the only way I know how, which is 200% and then some, except this time I had the added pressure of running a business, raising a child and, tiny little detail, being heavily pregnant.

Which, in all honesty, in order to do this thing, I completely disregarded.

This week I’m going to run through what it actually took to keep each pop-up going. The weekly planning, the spreadsheets, the emails, the ordering, the team communication and the general chaos of trying to make it look fun and effortless from the outside while quietly battling the admin beast in the background.

The first thing I’ll say is this: don’t focus on making your admin perfect.

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Before we even popped a table out onto the terrace and started selling slices of cake, an enormous amount of admin had to happen.

Pop-ups always look quite fun and spontaneous from the outside. A table, a queue, some nice packaging, a few trays of baked goods, a bit of chaos, sell out, go home. But behind the scenes, there is so much plotting involved. I’ve done loads of them, i’ve pulled all nighters for the majority so it felt like an easier task to run one in the same space as the restaurant. Logistics, staffing, marketing, communications, pricing, packaging, storage, production planning, recipe testing, ordering, costing, and then, of course, the physical reality of actually doing the thing.

So, in part one of this pop-up series, I thought I’d take you through all of the small but important tasks that had to happen before we went gung-ho on our month-long bakery series at Gina.

In the next part, I’ll talk through the week-by-week prep and how we actually structured the bake.

And after that, I’ll run you through what we learned, what worked and what didn’t

I think that’s the bit people are always curious about.

Starting with the idea

The idea had been bubbling away for a while.

As many of you know, I had originally wanted to open a bakery next door to Gina. That plan didn’t work out for lots of reasons, mainly money, building issues, power supply and the small matter of needing about £250k upfront, but the idea never really went away.

I still wanted to test what a bakery of my own could feel like. I wanted to know what people would buy, whether they liked the things I enjoyed baking, what would work in our space, what would be too labour-heavy, what would travel well, what would sell quickly, and whether there was actually a proper appetite for this kind of thing from us.

The benefit this time was that, unlike other pop-ups I’ve done in the past, I wasn’t having to pop up somewhere else. We had our own space. We had our kitchen. We had our terrace. We had our team. We had our fridges, ovens, storage areas and till system. That took away a huge amount of the usual logistical faff.

I didn’t need to do a whole load of extra health and safety paperwork. I didn’t need to plan parking or delivery routes to another site. I didn’t need to pull in a million favours or transport trays of fragile things across London in a taxi while holding my breath.

That said, it still needed proper planning.

I knew that doing four Saturdays in a row would be a substantial amount of work, but I also felt like it would be worth it. One-off pop-ups are great, but they can also be strangely deflating. You put all this effort in, get yourself into a complete state, do the thing, and then bang, it’s over.

Doing four in a row gave us a chance to learn each week. We could tweak the menu, understand the flow, get better at production, adjust quantities, speed up service, improve the set-up and build a bit of momentum.

It did feel slightly like planning a giant wedding with multiple parties attached to it, but that’s hospitality for you.

The timeline

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If you’ve been to Greece or Cyprus before, I’m sure you’ll know exactly what I mean. There’s something about the combination of ripe tomatoes, cucumber, salty feta, olives, oregano and really good olive oil that just makes sense. No fuss, no faff, just very good ingredients doing what they’re supposed to do.

Greek salad, also known as horiatiki, translates to village salad. In other words, it’s a simple dish made with good-quality produce, where the ingredients are allowed to speak for themselves.

At Gina, we’ve been serving this on Sundays alongside our slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, tzatziki and roast potatoes. It’s generous, fresh, a bit salty, a bit sharp, and perfect for piling onto a plate next to something rich and slow-cooked.

It’s also very easy to make at home. Have it as a light lunch, serve it with grilled meat or fish, or make a big bowl for the table and let everyone help themselves.

Greek Salad Recipe

Ingredients

4 vine tomatoes or 20 cherry tomatoes
½ red onion, thinly sliced
1 cucumber, deseeded and chopped into 2cm pieces
1 garlic clove, crushed
10 Kalamata olives
100g feta, roughly broken up
100ml olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper

Method

1. Place all the ingredients apart from the feta into a mixing bowl. Toss everything together and taste for seasoning.

2. Crumble the feta over the top and serve.

A little tip: this is one of those dishes that really depends on the quality of the ingredients, so use the best tomatoes and olive oil you can get your hands on. It makes all the difference. Lucky for us, tomatoes are in season and really abundant in most green grocers & supermarkets at the moment - there is nothing better than a ripe sweet in season tomato.

If cooking isn’t your bag right now, or you are in the mood for our take on a long summer roast, find your next table here

See you soon,

Gina Team

We’re throwing a big party to celebrate one whole year of Gina and we’d love you to come.

One year of business, learning, graft, gratitude, chaos, good food, lovely customers and many, many feelings. So we thought: what better excuse to get everyone together, have a drink, listen to good music and throw a proper party?

We’ll be at 40ft Brewery, our favourite DJ, Mister S, will be playing old school bangers - R&B, garage, funky house and the kind of music that makes a dancefloor feel like a dancefloor.

There’ll be drinks, soft serve from our friends at Happy Endings, birthday cake on us, ACME Tacos staying open for a bit, and a few fun bits throughout the evening.

It’s very relaxed. Very merry. Dancing encouraged.

Tickets are £10, which gets you entry and a drink. We’ve put a small ticket price on it so we can keep track of numbers and make sure people who book actually come because we really want this to feel full and fun.

This is a party for people who like to have a good time, listen to good music and throw some shapes on the dancefloor.

Please reserve your places as soon as you can, because tickets will go out on socials next week! Find the link here

Come celebrate with us.

Big love,
Rav & Mattie x

We’re throwing a party to celebrate one whole year of Gina, and we’d really love you to come.

Our paid subscribers have been such a big part of this first year - showing up, reading along, coming to events, cheering us on and making this whole thing feel a bit less mad. So we wanted to say thank you properly.

You’re invited to our first birthday party, with a +1 on us.

We’ll be at 40FT Brewery for a very relaxed, very merry evening of music, drinks, soft serve, birthday cake, dancing and a few fun bits throughout the night.

Our favourite DJ, Mister S, will be playing old school bangers - R&B, garage, funky house and the kind of music that makes a dancefloor feel like a dancefloor.

It’s really just a very good excuse to get everyone together, have a drink, listen to good music and celebrate a year of Gina with the people who helped us get here.

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As many of you know, that was actually the goal at the start of the year. We were seriously looking at the site next door to Gina and trying to work out whether we could turn it into a bakery.

At our subscriber evening a few weeks ago, I broke down the numbers and explained why, sadly, it wasn’t going to be possible. In a nutshell, we worked out that we would need around £250k upfront to get it off the ground. The fit-out costs were significant, the power supply in the building wasn’t strong enough to run multiple ovens and fridges, and then, very conveniently, the rent seemed to start creeping up once things got serious.

But the numbers were only part of it.

The dialogue around the site was also slightly bizarre, I’ll be honest.

The landlord was a regular in our restaurant. He would message us last minute asking to accommodate his table, which we would. We would send extras, chat to him, laugh at his jokes. So when the conversation started around the site next door, it felt like there was already a relationship there.

We went to visit him in Upminster, where he owns a big pub, and I remember having a strange feeling almost straight away.

He spoke continuously about his endeavours and himself.

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These are the cookies I shared back in lockdown, and I still get stopped by people who tell me they make them all the time, or that this was the recipe that finally taught them how to bake good cookies at home. Which is one of the nicest things to hear.

We’ve been making them in proper numbers at Gina - 180+ a Saturday, 270 this week and we’ve got through an absolutely silly amount of Original Beans chocolate (We use the 70% Cru Virunga in ours along with Maldon Salt). And somehow, somehow, none of us are sick of them yet.

So here they are, in one easy place. Big chunks of dark chocolate, deep brown sugar, crisp edges, soft middles, we upped the chocolate quantity for the pop up by another 500g per batch, you are also welcome to go wild and up yours too. Make the dough, chill it properly, bake from cold, and please do not skip the resting!

Chocolate chip cookies

Makes: 14 cookies at approx 60g each
Time: 20 minutes prep, overnight resting, 12–14 minutes baking
Equipment: Stand mixer or mixing bowl, wooden spoon, baking trays, parchment paper

Ingredients

140g butter, softened
140g dark brown sugar
110g caster sugar
1 egg
3g baking powder
4g bicarbonate of soda
3g Maldon salt
250g plain flour
180g dark chocolate, chopped into large chunks

Method

Make the dough

Cream the butter, dark brown sugar and caster sugar together until pale and combined. Don’t overdo it here, you don’t want the butter and sugar to be super light and fluffy. Over-beating at this stage can make the cookies puff up and then deflate in the oven.

You can use a stand mixer or a bowl and wooden spoon. Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Add the egg to the butter and sugar mixture and beat together quickly. Add the dry ingredients and mix until the dough just comes together.

Add the chopped chocolate and mix until evenly distributed.

Portion and chill

Ball the dough up immediately into 60g balls and place them on a tray lined with parchment paper.

If you want to keep them for later, freeze the dough balls on the tray, then transfer them to an airtight container once solid.

If you want to bake them the next day, ball them up in the same way and place them in the fridge.

Always rest your cookie dough overnight before baking. I know this is annoying, but you will get a completely different cookie if you try to bake them on the same day without enough chilling time.

Bake

The next day, preheat the oven to 160°C fan.

Space the dough balls out on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 12 minutes if cooking from the fridge, or 14 minutes if cooking from the freezer.

Take the tray out of the oven and allow the cookies to rest on the tray. They will continue to cook slightly as they cool.

Once cooled, eat them.

Note

If your oven isn’t as powerful, add an extra minute to the bake time.

You want the middle to be ever so slightly under-set when the cookies come out of the oven. That’s what gives them the best texture once cooled.

Storage

The dough balls last in the fridge for 2 days or in the freezer for 2 weeks.

Once baked, the cookies will keep for 5 days at room temperature.

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If you’re queuing up this Saturday for our 3rd bakery pop up at Gina with Le Choux, I have some snacks to keep you going including my iced chocolate milk & chouquettes.

Thanks for all of your support so far, we have been blown away by it. Our last one will be on the 27th of June, and yes we will have a large stock of chocolate chip cookies!

It’s been a whole year since we opened Gina.

A year feels like enough time to look back at some of our decisions with a little more perspective. So I thought I’d share some before-and-afters, what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d do differently if we were starting again tomorrow.

Do you remember the beginning?

Oh the pipe dream. The blind optimism. The confidence that comes from not knowing what you don’t know yet (when your brain just tells you it will all be fine). People often ask me if opening a restaurant was everything I’d imagined it would be.

The answer is both yes and absolutely not.

It’s so much bigger, way way way harder and more consuming than I could ever have comprehended before doing it. Even though i’ve been on the other side as an employee of various openings, it is not a patch on owning and running one yourself.

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