West Sussex restaurant features on Come Dine with Me: The Professionals

Watch West Sussex restaurant features on Come Dine with Me: The Professionals - SussexWorld on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00 Come Dive With Me was a great experience. It was so much fun, we didn't realise how fun it would be.

00:05 It wasn't serious, it was just a really good laugh and to win it was amazing, wasn't it?

00:11 Yeah, it was incredible. Going through the whole process, we didn't really know what to expect

00:15 because we've never done anything like that before. But the producers, the directors,

00:21 the cameramen... Yeah, they were so good.

00:23 They were so, so good and really friendly and kept us grounded and calm all the way through it.

00:29 But yeah, winning it, I think winning it brought some realisation to the two of us that

00:37 actually we know what we're doing.

00:38 Because before we started, we were like, "Yeah, we'll win it, it'll be fine. We know what we're

00:44 doing." And then as we actually started doing it, I was like, "We're not going to win. Oh my God,

00:48 this is terrible. Is it too simple? Is it do this, that and the other?" And then when we won,

00:53 then the director said to me, he was like, "See?" And I was like, "Oh, thanks." So yeah,

00:58 it was really good. I always wanted a tea shop, like sandwich cake shop and that is how Ami started.

01:04 And then it just evolved and Spike, our head chef, came on board and he'd been cooking since he was

01:11 speaking really. So he was self-taught and then he taught me the more sort of cheffy dishes and

01:18 it just evolved into Ami as it is now. It's kind of weird when people are coming

01:23 in going, "Oh my God, I saw you on TV the other day." And it's like, "Oh, okay." To us, we're not

01:29 famous or anything like that. We're just normal people. But yeah, people coming in asking for

01:37 selfies and autographs and all of that, it's a little bit... It's weird, yeah. Because like I

01:45 said, it was just one of those things that was just going to be fun for us.

01:49 The reaction's been great though. Everyone's been really supportive and we've had new people and

01:54 then we've had people that haven't been for a while and then almost remembered that we were here

01:58 and came back. So it's really nice to have support from the locals. The last two weekends have just

02:03 suddenly gone mad, which is why we did it. We're not right in the town centre, so we still need

02:13 people to know that we're here. And so now they do. And that's it. We're a small independent

02:18 business that supports other small independent businesses. And that's why we just wanted some

02:24 exposure and you can't get better exposure than being on TV, can you? I think that the industry

02:30 hasn't recovered fully from COVID and especially independent ones, it's still tough. So anything

02:36 that we can do to bring people to the town and people to hear is great.