by Dr. Iain
Corness
There
is a man in Jomtien who owns an ex-German Embassy Mercedes, complete with
standard carriers on each mudguard, who knew Donald and Ivana Trump, and
who once owned seven restaurants in Germany. So what is he doing here? He
owns Baan Chaiyapruk. It is a restaurant! His name is Peter Schroth.
Peter was born in Southern Germany, the son of a
restaurateur. “I am the fourth generation in hotels and restaurants,”
he said. To further emphasize this, his parents were both in the business,
and so also are his two sisters. It certainly seems to be in the blood.
While he was growing up, he was expected to work in the
family restaurant. “Staff is very expensive in Germany,” said Peter,
“so the family has to be responsible for everything. But I didn’t like
working in the kitchen. I liked the restaurant. I never understood how
people could like to work in the smell and the heat.”
As they say, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of
the kitchen, and Peter did just that, going into hotel business school in
his native Heidelberg. “I never thought of anything else. All my school
friends were going into popular things like mechanics, but not for me.”
Three years later, he emerged from hotel school to be
met with his call-up papers for the German Army. He may not have thought
about the army, but they had not forgotten about him! “I was really
lucky. I was made the head waiter in the officer’s club!” So 15 months
later he left his army uniform and national service, without ever having
fired a shot, or thrown a knife or fork, in anger.
It was then 1982 and he joined the cruise liner company
Cunard, of the QE II fame. However, he was not about to set sail on the
world’s oceans, as Cunard also owns and runs hotels, and leases staff to
other hotel groups, a fact that not too many people know outside the
trade. In fact, at one stage it was the largest private hotel chain in the
world.
He began as an assistant food and beverage manager and
was sent to different hotels throughout the globe as part of a nucleus of
six personnel whose function it was to bring the new hotels up to Cunard
standards. This took between four months and two years in some instances.
He worked initially mostly in Central America including Guatemala, Belize
(which Peter described as very tiny and very expensive), and then five
Caribbean islands. He was also sent to Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kuala
Lumpur.
One of the places listed in his resume was Atlantic
City, where he worked for two years for the famous multi-millionaire
Donald Trump. Peter was one of the 6,000 employees in the Trump’s hotel,
and had met both Donald and (now ex-wife) Ivana. “They are both very
nice people,” said Peter, putting a human side on the couple that the
rest of us only know through gossip magazines. It was also here that Peter
met his wife, with them now being together for 21 years. She was the
executive chef in charge of the Asian kitchens in the New York Hilton, a
one hour’s drive from Atlantic City, a place that Peter describes as
“very boring’. He used to stay in a small guest house when visiting
New York, but ate at the Hilton for the bargain breakfast there, and they
fell in love over an omelette.
This five star lifestyle sounded fairly idyllic to me,
but it was not as glossy as the postcards from these places. “I had
lived around the world and I knew many people - but I had no real friends.
It’s nice staying in a five star hotel, but you don’t have anything of
your own. No stereo, furniture or that kind of thing.” The peripatetic
life was obviously shortly coming to an end.
It was now 1996 and Cunard was offering Peter the
choice of several countries in Eastern Europe. “I had enjoyed many
countries, but not Eastern Europe!” There was another choice open to
him. That of leaving Cunard, which he took as a better option, even after
14 years with the one company.
He returned “home” to Heidelberg, and with his wife
opened a Thai garden restaurant there, creating small Thai ‘salas’
over the tables. This went very well, and he then opened up a further six
Asian restaurants in Germany, covering Chinese and Japanese as well as
Thai.
On paper, this was the start of a successful restaurant
chain, but there was another factor to be considered. Peter had become a
father. “In this business in Europe you have to work 14-15 hours a day,
so we decided to come and live in Thailand, where we could look after our
daughter.”
In 1999, they sold out most of their restaurants in
Germany, leaving a couple for Peter’s parents to manage. “They were
retired, but they were bored,” said Peter. They came to Thailand and
looked all over the Kingdom as to where they would settle. They decided on
Pattaya. “This is the best place to live for a long time. There is a
kind of international flair here.”
So Jomtien was chosen as their residence, and for their
Baan Chaiyapruk Restaurant, Peter having taken it over 12 months ago.
There in the gardens close by the sea, they can watch their daughter grow
up in a stable atmosphere.
That stable atmosphere also finally allows Peter to
indulge himself in hobbies, something he was never able to do before. He
has, however, only one hobby - old cars. He did have one once - in
Atlantic City - an old Buick that cost him $500 that had had only one
owner before Peter, but was just another thing left behind as he traveled
the world. Now he has an old Fiat as well the Benz, and tinkers away to
his heart’s content. Peter really is a contented man.
