The Bank

The restaurant & setting. We are in Kolárovo, at The Bank restaurant, housed in a former bank building. That is where it gets its name: the bank operated here for over thirty years and, exactly twenty years before filming, it was even robbed. Martin meets the operations manager at the nearby water mill, a local landmark said to carry the longest covered wooden bridge in Europe. The place is pretty, cleanly furnished and upmarket, yet almost empty.

The people. The call came from Viktória Petešová, the twenty-eight-year-old operations manager who stayed on at the new owners' request and tries to push the place forward. The owner is Ladislav „Laco" Tóth, a builder and haulier who runs the restaurant as a side business and is cautious with money. The head chef is fifty-five-year-old Žolt Vereš, experienced but lacking confidence. The kitchen also has lunch-menu cooks Andrea Soboňová and Katarína „Katka" Borka, twenty-three-year-old Vivian Vargová and cook Peťo. The team has a big language barrier and mostly speaks Hungarian among themselves.

Why they called Martin. The main problem is waiting. The set lunch sometimes takes an hour, à la carte forty to fifty minutes, and guests walk out. Viktória admits that as a young woman the staff do not respect her, and she needs someone tougher and bigger than her to lay down the law.

The first visit. Martin sits down in the empty restaurant and orders across a menu with no identity: pulled meat, chicken in Arabic bread, poke and „pull pork", so as he says, we are going around the world via Hawaii. The ragú soup looks like „hospital soup". The sea bream takes thirty minutes because it is frozen and thawed in the microwave. The steak takes forty minutes in the end, though it is surprisingly cooked medium rare exactly as he wanted. The sea bream, however, is a disaster, dried out and tasteless: „A tortured sea bream. Thumbs down." Many ingredients are frozen, including the bread and even cooked pasta.

The diagnosis. After the first visit Martin sees the core problem clearly: leadership is missing. Žolt has no „drive", he is not a chef who sets direction, and owner Laco gave nobody any authority, so no one is a leader and everyone does their own thing. „Here the right hand does not know what the left is doing." In the fridge he finds open, unwrapped fish and meat, in the twenty-seven-thousand-euro freezer a mess, and Laco only finds it amusing. In his view it is Viktória who pours the most energy into the place.

The reset. Martin first cleans up the kitchen and sets up a system of boxes and labelling, because he cannot cook without order. He also tackles the endless rows over oil, salt and gastro trays: he teaches Laco and Žolt that autonomy goes hand in hand with responsibility and stock-taking. On a monitor he then shows them how a slow, disorganised kitchen really looks. To bind the team, he sends them on a teambuilding day where, led by host Lubo, they together build a working life-size Formula 1 car. To the restaurant he brings new gastro trays and a mixer from gastrokuchyne.sk.

New concept & menu. Martin keeps the brand but gives the place an identity through local ingredients. The new menu is built on fish from the region: beef slices with tapenade, carp fries, asparagus soup, sirloin with cauliflower purée, a salad with fennel and smoked trout, and grilled catfish. Alongside it, barman Luboš shows three simple Becherovka drinks. Laco resists, missing his „pepper stew" and the well-done steak for the local guest, but Martin insists the restaurant is upmarket, not a pub.

The big night. The test service stutters at first: Žolt panics under pressure, the potato purée is ruined with an immersion blender, and Katka bursts into tears in the kitchen. Martin calms her, takes over the purée himself, and the team finally gets going. Orders go out, the plates come back empty, and even sceptical Laco concedes: „I admit I was wrong." The guests leave happy and smiling.

One month later. A month later Martin returns straight into the kitchen. The team now communicates, they call each other even at weekends, Žolt is calmer, and Viktória has signed a material-responsibility agreement with him. The disappointment is that they still cook from the old menu, because the owners want to keep it, so the round-the-world dishes and the unlucky sea bream on the photo remain. Žolt, however, cooks him dishes he remembered from before, and the soup and the carp taste good to Martin.

Verdict: Martin awards 2 knives. The first knife for how the team moved forward and started working together, the second for the food he enjoyed on the return, thanks to Žolt. At the same time he reminds them that progress is visible but he would like to see more, and if things do not move, he will tear the sticker off their door.