‘It was about three o’clock, we had one table left in the restaurant – they had just ordered desserts I think. One of the chefs came up and told me there was a problem in the kitchen – I went down and there was a bit of water on the floor. I was like, 'just mop it up!' He pointed to the drain outside, and the water was gushing out – it was nearly knee-high off the floor.
‘We started trying to catch the water in bins, running upstairs to pour it out into the street in front. In hindsight I think we were just pouring it back into the same drains, so it was just coming back in. Katie was already on the phone to plumbers but no one would come out. We phoned Thames Water, who said that someone was on their way. After about forty-five minutes, the water was up to our waists in the kitchen, so we started to evacuate things that we could save. Fifteen minutes later, we killed all the switches and the fire brigade showed up, and told us not to go back downstairs. All the fridges were underwater. The ovens were underwater. Yeah. It was pretty devastating.’
Sitting in the dining room at Lorne today, you wouldn’t know the restaurant had suffered so much in the last six months. Pete Hall and Katie Exton – a former chef and sommelier at The Square and The River Café respectively – opened Lorne in early 2017 and were flying high until a sudden flash flood derailed their restaurant in May the next year. ‘It was surreal,’ says Pete. ‘We all stayed until about 2am scooping all the water out, then we mopped the floors, sanitised everything – we thought we could be back open by the end of the week!’ In the end, Lorne stayed shut for the next three-and-a-half months. Thames Water rolled into town and condemned the whole kitchen, and the staff had to chuck everything – fridges, cookers and all – straight in the skip.
The team were, understandably, gutted – in just a few hours, years of hard work had gone up in smoke. This could have killed a lesser restaurant, but Pete and Katie are made of sterner stuff, and they had been smart with their money. A lot of the damage was covered by insurance, as was the loss of earnings, which meant that Lorne managed to keep all its staff during the closure. ‘They loved it,’ he laughs. ‘The hottest summer on record and the World Cup was on!’ They were still hit with a considerable bill for repairs though. ‘They said we should have insured the walls and ceilings,’ says Pete with a roll of the eyes. ‘Fortunately the business had been doing well, so we managed to just about cover it.’