Chris and Carol West.

RESTAURATEURS CHRIS and CAROL WEST have owned the Plantation for 13 years. In April this year the opened the Frog and Onion with Jean Paul Gagnin, and took over the White Horse. Chris is 47, Carol, 45. CHRIS: We first met in 1966, when we were doing a water ski show for Bill Williams. There were two night ski shows in the world then and one of them was at Castle Harbour, every Friday. I think I might have met Carol once or twice before that, but that was when we really started dating. We dated a couple of years, then we got married in 1968. Carol was working with Pan Am back then, and I was in commercial diving.

A few years later we met and became friends with a restaurateur from San Francisco. We talked about the restaurant business a lot and he told me I could never run a restaurant without experience. So I looked around and found the Plantation Club, which was what it was called then. We made an offer and we bought it. That was in 1979. That's the kind of person I am. If someone tells me I can't do something I have to prove them wrong.

Carol stayed in the airline business. She would come home and do the accounts for the restaurant. I think she came in full time about 1985. A year or so ago, the West End Development Company asked us to put in a bid for a new pub business up in Dockyard. We weren't really interested because the Plantation is such a handful on its own. We decided to go for it as a long term prospect.

But it's done far better than we ever expected.

With the White Horse, we heard the manager was leaving and I suggested to Carol that we write a letter to ask what was happening and say we'd be interested in doing something with the place. I don't think we knew what when we wrote. Then we got a call from the owner when we were away skiing and he said let's talk. So now we own the business and all the furnishings and fittings.

Our regular routine is, Carol is at White Horse, and I'm between the Frog and Onion and the Plantation. When we do see each other, it's usually when she leaves the White Horse and comes to the Plantation in the evening. And we try to take a couple of months off in the winter to go skiing. It gets to be a very stressful business to be in because you have to please everyone.

I think what makes our restaurants work, or what makes the Plantation work, is that from the beginning we tried to run it like our house. It doesn't work with everyone. I give people a hard time, I like to tease people. People can go anywhere and get a good maitre d', but they can't go everywhere and have fun while they're dining. CAROL: Christopher is really the ideas person, and I'm the person who has to make the ideas work. He's much more creative than I am. He's certainly willing to take chances. Many of our business ventures have been entered into seemingly foolishly. Going into the restaurant business with out any experience would seem pretty foolish ... and taking on two new restaurants while the economy is so uncertain would to most people seem foolish. But we've been very, very fortunate. One might say that we're dumb and lucky. Luck might have something to do with it, but hard work has certainly sustained us. And we've had a very good staff.

Chris and I try not to overlap. We do end up bumping heads occasionally, but I think we've pretty well settled into our own routines. We have our own little roles when we're on the floor performing. He tells all the bad jokes, and I handle all the complaints.

At the Plantation, I don't think we would have survived if we were not there all the time. Also we're both Bermudian, and there aren't a lot of Bermudians who own restaurants. I think that makes a difference to people. People expect us to be there. We're trying not to build a glass house around us. We have to have a night off, we're open seven nights a week. I think people feel more comfortable when we're there. We did build the Plantation around us. I think to some extent we were selling ourselves, whether that's right or wrong.

Our winter ski trip is very important to us. We have to disappear ... cut off and shut down. It rejuvenates us. We have a very long season in Bermuda, it's ten months compared to five or six in places like Europe.

Chris is much more relaxed than I am. One of the nicest things about him is that he's not worried about what other people think. I don't mean that in a negative way - he does care, he's sensitive, but it's not a consideration in who he's dealing with or what he's doing.

I'm much more concerned that way, and I think that helps stabilise things.Sometimes his attitude gets him in terrible trouble, but we usually laugh about it afterwards. We have a lot of fun together. We enjoy each other's company.

Carol and Chris West: "We have a lot of fun together. We enjoy each other's company.

RG MAGAZINE MARCH 1993