Imagine working for a record label situated 100 meters from the beach in the historic centre of a beautiful town in the North of Italy. Keep imagining – the sun shines everyday and the company policy is that everyone has a two hour lunch break everyday. So off you trot each day to the local trattoria to have spaghetti with clams or tagliatelle Alfreddo or a tricolore salad. Then you wander along the sea shore for half an hour to digest the delicious food and finish the lunch break with a really good expresso coffee in your favourite bar.

That was a job I had 15 years ago and I’d love to move this label to that location. But, as I can’t, I’ve done the next best thing. I’ve brought a little bit of Italian culture to Cambridge and I make an Italian meal for all the staff here everyday! We’re about ten miles from Cambridge in a small village and the only eateries are the pubs or the local Indian. We run the company from our sprawling house and the idea of everyone turning up for work with a manky sandwich didn’t appeal to the Italian in me so we’ve gone Italian!

So what happens inside the café? One office runs the publishing department (I’m in this office), one office runs the label, the studio manager runs the studio, the lovely Eileen our fantastic house keeper, runs all of us and at lunch time we all sit down around a big table in the kitchen and have lunch.

Except for special occasions – the bank managers coming to lunch, we’re entertaining the media, we’re entertaining artists – I have a general rule of a maximum of £10.00 per day to feed us all and a maximum of 30 minutes to cook. Then we take about 30 minutes to eat it and back to work.

It’s not just a great way of eating, the Café lunches are also very social occasion, very informative – in that we get to know what’s going on business wise and very often it’s hilarious. In the four years since we opened we’ve
had all sorts of weird and wonderful visitors to the café and I’m sure the reason we get people coming up from London to work here is the food. I should have kept this diary of what happens in the Café ages ago but better late than never.

So here goes, these pages will be a cross between anything funny or interesting that’s happened every week and also the recipes of our favourite meals.

Please feel free to take a look at any of our recipies or have a laugh at the expense of any of our staff:

Zenith People - a brief look into the day to day lives of all the mad bods who work here at Zenith.

Zenith Recipies - All you will ever need to impress the boyfriend/girlfiend/wife/husband/etc in the kitchen.

Zenith In Italy - Pictures and anecdotes from our trips to Northern Italy.