Meet Timotay Rollakin: Wonder Palate
The World’s Youngest Sommelier
The first thing Timotay Rollakin asked us was whether we’d had a nice morning.
Not whether we’d found the restaurant easily, found a good parking spot or whether we’d like some water, tea or coffee. Simply whether we’d had a nice morning.
We told him we had. He smiled.
“Brilliant,” he said, “I like it when mornings work out well.”
He seemed genuinely pleased for us.
I should clarify that Timotay Rollakin is just nine years old.
He is also Play Ground Restaurant’s resident sommelier and Head of Wine Education.
It seems unbelievable, never-the-less, those two facts somehow become less surprising the longer you spend with him.
Play Ground itself is difficult to explain
Children run the dining room and the kitchen.
Adults own and manage the restaurant and, legally, have to serve the alcohol, although RidicuConcepts insist they do so while pretending to be children “to preserve the atmosphere.”
Nobody seems entirely certain whether this is a licensing requirement or simply company policy. Nobody asks.
It works though.
Our first waiter, Martin, welcomed us warmly, welcomed us warmly, forgot what he was about to say, asked if we liked sausages, spilled some water, apologized, then asked again whether we liked sausages.
Charlotte, who had recently turned eleven, appeared to be running the restaurant with little more than a clipboard and quiet confidence.
From somewhere behind the carousel cocktail bar came the unmistakable sound of metal striking the floor. KER-CLANG.
“Gaaaaarrrrry,” sighed Charlotte.
“Yep.”
“The shaker.”
“I know.”
A long pause... “I’ve found most of it Charlotte.”
Somehow, Timotay just belongs at Play Ground.
Every Tuesday afternoon he teaches his Juice Box Master Class in the Treehouse Classroom. The average age of today’s students is fifty-three.
The waiting list is currently somewhere between six and eight months, depending on who you ask.
Finding the classroom isn’t difficult, for you can simply follow the sound of adults saying things like, “Ooooooo...” and “...that’s definitely mango!”
The room itself looks exactly as you might imagine.
Tiny wooden chairs, finger paintings and alphabet posters.
Thirty-six students are already seated when we arrive.
Sommelier Masters. Winemakers. Importers. Collectors. Retailers.
A Michelin-starred chef. All enthusiasts rather than merely spectators.
In front of them are 4 glasses of juice.
At precisely two o’clock, the classroom door opens and Timotay Rollakin walks in carrying a wooden tray.
On it sit four little glasses of juice, a clipboard, a packet of crayons
...and Steggy the Stegosaurus.
He places Steggy carefully onto the teacher’s chair.
“You stay there.”
“Hello everybody!”
He welcomes and captures the room.
“Today…we’re playing Juice Box Master Class. We all have got four juices.”
He points at the little glasses one by one.
“One is pear.”
“One is apple.”
“One is pineapple.”
“And one is mango.”
“But…” I made a boo-boo. “I’ve forgotten which is which.”
The room bursts into laughter.
“So...” he grins, “...we’ll have to work it out together.”
The room is quiet.
One participant closes her eyes.
Another smiles
A brave lady speaks.
“I think this one’s pear.”
“What made you think that?”
“Well, it smells like pears.”
Timotay nods, “That’s usually a really good clue.”
More laughter fills the room.
“But...” he asks, “...who’s got a pear memory?”
“My grandfather had a pear tree.”
Timotay writes - Grandad.
Another. “My mum used to put sliced pears in my lunchbox.”
Lunchbox.
A chef smiles. “Poached pears.”
Christmas. Timotay writes each one slowly.
We glance around the room.
After the class, we find some time to talk.
“So,” he says, “shall we have our chat?”
We follow him downstairs.
Play Ground looks different from the street. Less like a restaurant.
More like somewhere children accidentally built a fine dining establishment.
The lunchtime sun catches the brass letters above the entrance as families drift in and out.
Two chefs are discussing béarnaise sauce while taking turns on the swings.
A businessman carrying a briefcase is trying to convince another businessman carrying a briefcase that the slide is a more efficient route back to the dining room with a briefcase.
“They do that every Tuesday,” chirps Timotay.
He leads us to a small wooden bench beneath the front window.
Steggy is placed carefully between us.
“There, you go Steggy…I put him here so that he can listen.”
Later, we would learn that Steggy is a nanny-cam.
Timotay turns to us. “Right then. What would you like to know?”
“Everything.” we reply. He considers this very seriously.
“That’s quite a lot.”
“It is.”
Another pause.
“I suppose we’d better start at the beginning.”
How it all began
Like most great stories, Timotay’s begins with somebody rather ordinary.
Or rather, with somebody rather ordinary.
Steggy wasn’t the first dinosaur. There had been another…Kevin.
Timotay remembers Kevin as greener.
Slightly scruffier.
Kevin disappeared one afternoon somewhere beneath his parents’ dining table and, according to Timotay, while crawling underneath the table in search of his missing dinosaur, he found something else instead.
An old bottle. Dusty. Heavy. Almost treasure-like.
Being nine, he did what most curious children eventually do.
He picked it up and smelled it.
Years later, Timotay still struggles to explain exactly what he found in that bottle. It wasn’t cherries, cedar or violets.
“It smelled like somewhere,” he says.
He couldn’t identify it.
He simply wanted to know where “somewhere” was.
That curiosity spread rapidly and soon everything became interesting.
Mud.
Garden sheds.
Freshly cut grass.
Rain.
Tennis balls.
His mother was understanding.
Up to a point.
Julius, a friend of the family, however, understood immediately.
Julius
Julius Enchanteur was not simply a family friend. He was a Sommelier Master.
Timotay remembers him differently.
He walked slowly.
Listened carefully.
Usually, he had juice boxes.
Curiously, Julius didn’t begin by teaching Timotay about wine.
In fact, Timotay insists Julius hardly taught him anything at all.
He asked questions.
What does it remind you of?
Who does it make you think about?
Have you smelled that before?
Are you sure?
The last question, apparently, came up quite a lot.
Julius almost never supplied answers. Instead, he quietly protected Timotay’s curiosity. Years later, he still remembers one sentence more clearly than almost anything else Julius ever said.
“If I tell you what it smells like... you’ll remember what I think it smells like.”
Julius taught memories before tasting notes.
That, perhaps, explains the Juice Box Master Class.
When Timotay asks adults for a pear memory, he isn’t really interested in pears. He is interested in the people who introduced them to pears.
The memory is the lesson, and the juice box is the doorway.
Watching Timotay work, it becomes obvious that he isn’t really teaching people to identify flavors.
He is teaching them to notice things. Not just aromas, but people.
He notices nervous guests.
Lonely guests.
Guests pretending to know more than they do.
Perhaps that is why the restaurant works.
When a gentleman admits he has forgotten what he actually enjoys drinking, Timotay doesn’t recommend a bottle. He asks what his Grannie used to cook.
For somebody quietly famous for his extraordinary nose, Timotay spends remarkably little time talking about smells.
The biggest surprise has nothing to do with wine. Or juice. Or memory.
It is hospitality.
By the time we left Play Ground, we realized we had never actually asked Timotay what made a good sommelier.
We didn’t need to.
We’d spent the afternoon watching one.
