People
Rodney Franklin
My catering experience started in the 1950s with my mother teaching me to make the perfect pink gin...
In the 60s catering for the schools rugby 7-a-sides at Rosslyn Park.
In the 70s as a cook on a farm in Victoria with 40,000 sheep, feeding 10 shearers 4 times a day, learning 101 different things to do with mutton, starting at short notice when the regular cook wound up in jail in New South Wales.
In the 80s with Diana running the Secret Garden restaurant in Camberwell.
In the 90s with Tim and Felicity opening Franklins in Lordship Lane.
Along the way I was an antiques dealer in Camberwell for 20 years specializing in French mirrors, beds and English farmhouse chairs.
Tim Sheehan
My grandfather was a butcher in Sunbury on Thames in the 40s so I must have absorbed some of his ideals about British cuts of meat and how to prepare them from tales my Mother tells me of pre and post war London. And my Grandmother was a baker ………(no candlestick makers in the family that I’m aware of)
A potted history-
1970s Darlington - bands and youthful things like that
1980s and 90s London - working in bars and restaurants - Peppermint Park Covent Garden, The Pheasantry Kings Road, 7 Down Street Hotel Mayfair, Zanzibar Covent Garden and Freds Club Soho.
1990s - Took over the kitchen in the Secret Garden under Franklins antique shop in Camberwell where I turned my love of cooking into making a living instead of just a pastime. When the shop closed the Secret Garden had to close too. I then worked at the French House Dining room in Soho with some incredibly good cooks.
In 1999 my wife Felicity and I got together with Rod and set up Franklins in East Dulwich.