Robert Baker, one of the owners of Cafe Aroma in Eastbourne Old Town, will be turning 90 years of age on March 18 2025

SussexWorld

Robert Baker, one of the owners of Cafe Aroma in Eastbourne Old Town, will be turning 90 years of age on March 18 2025.

Transcript

00:00We opened this about 18 years ago now. Business has picked up tremendously.

00:06It was quite shabby and run down actually when we took it over.

00:10And we thought, well this place has got possibilities.

00:13Brian found it, but he found it via a friend of his that was a tutor at Eastbourne College.

00:20And I'd known Brian before then, and we were on Hastings Pier.

00:25And that went all pear-shaped. It went bankrupt.

00:29And we had to find somebody pretty quickly.

00:32And he approached this lady and she said,

00:36Oh no, I'm looking for somebody to take it on. I don't want it anymore.

00:40And we took it on.

00:42Well, quite frankly, I think people retire far too early.

00:46And this is what the problem is with a lot of people that possibly get dementia.

00:53They retire too early and they don't have a good diet.

00:59You'd be surprised how many people don't eat vegetables, don't eat meat,

01:05don't eat fish, don't like this, don't like that, don't like something else.

01:09Can't have milk. I think that's a mainstay.

01:13All my life I've had good quality food.

01:19Of course, I was born and bred in the Cotswolds.

01:24So that makes a huge difference, being born and bred in the country and eating proper country food.

01:30But there was none of this business straight from the freezer.

01:36Because it's all processed. Every bit of it's processed.

01:41I can't put my heart on my hand and say,

01:46I can go into a shop and buy a wholesome meal without cooking it myself.

01:52Because you can't.

01:54I run the financial side of it, or try to.

02:00And I can take orders and do the teas and coffees.

02:03I don't do any of the heavy cooking. I leave that to Brian, I have to.

02:06I used to be a photographer.

02:08In the 60s and early 70s, I had about 15 years of it, probably more than that.

02:13And I did a lot of the show business personalities of the day.

02:19Including, if you can call her a celebrity, I suppose she is in a roundabout way, Princess Margaret.

02:26Met a lot of the pop groups.

02:30Jimi Hendrix, The Searchers, The Who, Fifth Dimension, Canteet.

02:40There's a lot more, but I can't remember them all at hand.

02:45Some of them famous, some of them made it, some of them didn't make it.

02:51I just got tired of it, and I just wanted to have a change, have a change of profession.

02:59And find something else to do.

03:03And then I met Brian, and we got along very well together.

03:08And I found out he was a chef.

03:11But he wasn't very happy with his job, he was getting a bit tired of it.

03:17And this came along, and I said, well let's try one unit on Hastings Pier and see how we get on.

03:23And before the end of the term, we'd taken over the whole area of the octagonal room, which was at the end of the pier.

03:33And then things started to happen.

03:36We had theatrical nights, we had musical nights, didn't we Brian?

03:47And that type of thing.

03:49And then all of a sudden, we heard that the pier was under threat, and we had to get off.

03:55And that's how we arrived here.

03:58There's plenty for me to do, I can still continue here.

04:01I've got my garden, I'm very interested in antiques.

04:09I used to work at Sotheby's, so I got quite a lot of knowledge when I worked there.

04:13And that's about it really.

04:17And I think that's enough to be going on with.

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