'He saved my baby, now I'm serving him tea and toast'

A Birmingham restaurant owner has described the moment he realised a customer sitting at one of his tables was the doctor who helped save his daughter's life.

Kray Treadwell and his partner Sacha Townsend were working at their restaurant, 670 Grams, when they noticed a familiar face among a table of three diners.

They could not quite place the man.

Richard Mupenamunda, who was celebrating his wife's birthday, had never been there before. In fact, he did not even know where he was going until his son brought him there as a surprise.

"As Richard and his wife walked in, I said to Richard, 'have you been before?' Treadwell said.

"And I obviously couldn't put my finger on it [as] it was seven years ago and there were many different doctors and nurses at the time as well.

"So all night it was flickering through my mind."

Throughout the evening, the couple kept trying to work out where they knew him from.

Then a dish called Tea and Toast was served - also linked to their baby's arrival.

"We have a dish on the menu which is a pre-dessert and it's inspired by tea and toast, and the reason for that is when mum and baby are safe the mum gets treated to tea and toast and apparently it's the best tea and toast ever because of what's happened.

"So we try and savour that moment in the restaurant," Treadwell explained.

The couple's daughter was born at just 23 weeks and weighed 670g - the figure which gave the restaurant its name.

After hearing the story behind the dish, the diner revealed he had worked as a paediatrician at Heartlands Hospital.

That was when the pieces fell into place.

He was Dr Richard Mupenamunda - the doctor who had helped care for their daughter while she was on the neonatal ward.

"A member of staff took it [the dish] to Richard and his family... and they said, 'he's a pediatric on table one'.

"And then Sasha said, 'oh my god, it's Dr Richard' and everything just clicked together in that moment."

For Mupenamunda, the evening had begun simply as a birthday meal with his family.

He had not known the restaurant's history or that its name was connected to a baby he had treated years earlier.

"I had no idea because you see so many parents coming through the unit and then they said, Birmingham. It was Heartlands Hospital, my hospital," the doctor said.

"It was quite an amazing revelation."

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