Commis Chef

We’re looking for a chef with a few years behind them who wants to cook properly, in a kitchen where the recipes actually mean something.

You’d work across both sides of the business, our Italian restaurant kitchen and our chippy, handling the bulk of the daily prep and holding a section through service. It’s hot and it’s busy, and it’s a smaller team than you might be used to, which means you’ll do a bit of everything and your work will be visible.

Prep
. The backbone of the job. Getting everything ready, to standard, before the doors open.

Service
. Holding your section across the restaurant kitchen and the chippy when it’s busy.

The hot plate
. Taking responsibility for it at peak, so every dish leaves at the right temperature.

Consistency
. Our recipes are family recipes and they’re made the same way every time. That’s the whole point of them, and it’s what people have come back sixty years for.

Cleaning down
. Your section during service and the kitchen after it. It’s part of every kitchen job in the country and we won’t pretend otherwise.

£12.71 an hour
. Around £380 a week at 30 hours.

Around 30 hours a week
, give or take a few hours depending on how we’re trading. Evenings and weekends, including Sundays. The hours are consistent and we’ll give you the rota in advance.

Tips
. The team run and share their own tips between them; the business isn’t involved. They’re consistently well above what’s typical for the area, and the team will tell you straight what that actually comes to when you meet them.

Free meals on shift
, 40% staff discount, workplace pension.

A few years in professional kitchens
. Enough that a busy Saturday doesn’t rattle you and you can be left on a section without supervision.

Competence across the board
. You can prep, you can hold a section, you can cook to a spec without cutting corners when it’s slammed.

Someone still learning
. The chefs we get on with best are the ones who ask why a dish is built the way it is, not just what to do next. If you’ve stopped being curious about food, this probably isn’t the kitchen for you.

Reliability
. Turning up, on time, ready to work, every shift. We can work with almost anything else. Not this.

Willingness to go where you’re needed
. Restaurant kitchen, chippy, prep, hot plate — wherever the night calls for. Small team, no passengers.

Staying calm when it’s busy
, and being easy to work alongside when everyone’s under pressure.

Italian experience is welcome but not necessary. Chippy experience likewise, we can teach that side.

We’ve been Arlecchino for sixty years this year, and the family has been feeding Greenock since 1921. We’re independent, family-run, and still on West Blackhall Street. Straightforward food done properly, Italian and chippy both, family recipes, no fuss, and generations of regulars who’d tell us quickly if that ever stopped being true.

An informal chat first, then a paid trial shift so you can see the kitchen and we can see how you cook in it.

Start date is flexible
. If you’re working somewhere at the moment, we’d expect you to give them proper notice.