Kenny Atkinson to increase capacity at House of Tides

The 50-cover restaurant, set within a Grade I listed 16th Century former merchant's house on Newcastle's quayside, is closed over the Easter holiday to enable building work to take place and ultimately allow the business to serve an extra 25 diners per service. 

Atkinson, who left Rockliffe Hall​ in 2013 to open his own venture​ early last year, said he needed to make better use of the building's space as there was now a month's wait for a table on a Friday or Saturday. 

"Newcastle is a Thursday, Friday and Saturday dining city - Tuesday and Wednesday is more corporate - and we need to take advantage of that," he said. 

"We’re at the point where we’re doing 75 covers on Friday and Saturday and we’re doing it really well. Myself and the guys say we could do another 10 or 15, so we're doing what we can to do that."

He added: "I’m a chef but I’m also a businessman now so I need to make sure we capitalise on the busy nights." 

Building work​

Building work within the building, whose lease Atkinson has just secured for another 20 years, will include relocating the first floor pastry bar to the third floor which will also house a private dining area. The area previously occupied by the pastry bar in the restaurant will see the addition of a 12-seater booth and tables. 

The top floor, previously used as an office, has also been converted into a walk-in wine cellar which Atkinson said had enabled the restaurant to increase its wine list. 

Adapt​

Other changes since launching the restaurant include simplifying the menu and opening at 5pm on a Saturday. 

Atkinson said: "Until now, I'd spent all my career running restaurants in hotels where you have a certain mentality of dining and now we’re operating a city centre restaurant where the mentality is very different. I’ve had to learn and adapt very quickly as have the staff who have come from hotels.

"We would get calls asking if we'd open at 5pm and I said 'no, we open at 7pm' because that's what I did in the hotel, but I started thinking, 'why don’t I open at five?'.

"We now do 30-covers from 5pm-7.30pm which is an extra £2,500 revenue for that night. 

"Here we also have to be faster. We had a vision where it would be relaxed fine dining, but we’ve had to strip it back a little bit and make the food a bit more rustic and relaxed, without losing the flavour.

"We were killing each other getting to the star level. Now the guys are happier and the food is coming quicker." 

Atkinson said he was also proud to have grown his staff numbers to 28, 16 of whom are full-time and improved the business's front-of-house service.