History The life and times of Carlo Scorlon

Carlo has become pretty well known in catering circles around Chester and Liverpool over the last forty years or so, and has frequently worked in the position of Head Waiter at various establishments. He has of course seen dramatic changes in the style of catering in that time, and we suspect he secretly hankers after the days of high-church silver service where he could really show his skills filleting fish at the table, flambéing crepes and generally wafting gracefully around the floor. He has been with us at Glasfryn since we opened, and although he officially retired on Boxing Day 2002, he still does the occasional session with us and keeps us up to scratch. Funnily enough, he has never lost his broad Italian accent, which he uses to great effect in charming the ladies.

Carlo was born into a farming family in Aviano in northern Italy, some fifty kilometres from Venice. Times were very hard as his father had been killed on the Russian front during the war, and his mother had to bring up her three sons on her own with only a tiny war widow’s pension. He was thirteen when he had to leave school to seek work to help support the family, and his first job was as an apprentice to a shoemaker.

Shortly after, he left to find work in Venice, where he started in an ice cream parlour – so this year marks Carlo’s fiftieth year in the catering business. He soon graduated to a large hotel in Venice where he was properly trained, in a stern and unforgiving regime, as a commis waiter - for months and months he wasn’t even allowed near a table or a customer. Anyway, he ended up in Milan where he would work during the day and go to college in the evening to learn languages. By the time he was sixteen he was back for a stint at the Grand Hotel in Venice, before moving on to work in Rome.

After National Service in the Italian army, Carlo left Italy to find work in England, arriving in 1960 in Blackpool, where he went to work at the Norbrick Hydro. He worked in a variety of establishments in the North West, including the Grosvenor Arms, Aldford in 1969, when Ted Roberts had it in his heyday.

In 1974 Carlo went to work on cruise liners, having three tours of six months each, and in the process visiting Alaska, the Caribbean, Florida, South America, Mexico, the Pacific Islands and Australia.

On his return, and after another period at The Grosvenor Arms, Carlo bought a house in Gresford and married Angela in 1977. At the time he was working at The Pant Yr Ochain, again before we acquired it – at the time it was a restaurant with letting bedrooms. He moved to Mold in 1986, and has two grown-up sons, Tony and Peter.

For many years now, Carlo has hand-made beautiful wooden toys which are designed to come apart and which can only be re-assembled in one way. Each one takes some fifty hours to make, and he has a waiting list stretching away for years, which of course is a bit of a problem for toys designed for young children... so he’s determined to get a grip now he’s got a bit more time.

We don’t imagine he’ll ever leave of course, as service is in his blood and too many customers have become his friends - many of who have followed him from restaurant to restaurant as his career has progressed. We hereby promise to update this page when he hits seventy-five.