The Lightship New Manager

Maria Wilkinson is back as the new operations manager of The Creek and The Lightship by popular demand at Haslar Marina.

Transcript

00:00Here's Maria Wilkinson and tell me where we are and a little bit about your history here.

00:05Well I'm back on the Light Ship which is my favourite venue of all time.

00:09I've been in the industry 30 years now and this is the most amazing venue I think of the South Coast.

00:20I've come back after a three-year break, been in Lanzarote, not actually got the weather here

00:26but we've got everything else so happy to be back.

00:30So tell me why you're back and a little bit about the revamp and basically now what the Light Ship offers.

00:38Okay I'm back by popular demand actually. The bath holders wanted to be back and they all shouted for me

00:45and I'm back so we now have turned it into basically more fish, affordable for everybody and families

00:54so we're looking to create a nice ambience here so people can come just have a drink

01:00and they can bring their doggies, they can bring their children, they can bring their families

01:04and have a nice meal at a good price.

01:08Tell me what's the most popular dishes at the minute.

01:11Our fish curry, that's going down really well. We've got a nice Indian chef in the kitchen

01:17who lives in Kerala, or based in Kerala where he was and he's brought that influence back here, beautiful.

01:26And the other two chefs, one's an ex-lux fine chef so she's come in with some great ideas

01:34and the fish platters, nice crab. We've got a very local fisherman here who's allowed to sell fish to me,

01:42three hours old, bang, straight on the cooker, fresh bath. Wonderful.

01:49So I understand you're also running the creek as well.

01:53Okay so I'm running the creek, that's mainly sort of traditional classical food down there,

01:59we're doing breakfast, lunch and dinner, so you can get sort of a three course meal down there

02:04and here's going to be a little bit more easy eating.

02:06So tell me what your plans are for the future.

02:11Well the future is we'd like to do a lot of music here, so we're going to do Sunday afternoons,

02:15it's going to be jazz. I've got an idea to do opera and dinner, so that's going to be coming out next month.

02:23So there's going to be a lot of live music on the ship and also weddings.

02:28Weddings are going to be a big, big thing for us.

02:31So we've got our first wedding in September and obviously we're coming in after now,

02:37so we're booking the weddings in for next year.

02:39This is where Lou comes in, she's going to do all the nice flowers and cakes

02:44and it's going to be beautiful weddings at the sea.

02:47And we'll see you next time.