Eating on One’s Own Doorstep

I may be wrong, but one of the attractions, to the uninformed, of owning a restaurant must be the idea of eating in one’s own place, being fussed over by one’s staff as the restaurant fills up with people buying bottles of Montrachet ’79 and Lafite ’82, airkissing Joan Collins/Lord Bragg/Johnny Depp/Tara Palmer Tomkinson, and thinking complacently of those extra zeros appearing on your bank statement. A number of things could be further from the truth than this, but the restaurant owner soon realizes he is at the mercy of forces which gnaw at the edge of this rosy vision. Gradually the knowledge will grow that he is in the inescapable grip of the repetitive, twice-daily imperatives that compel restaurants to try to greet, seat, feed and water their customers with skill, charm and efficiency, and which will, as sure as eggplant is aubergine, turn him into a victim of obsessive-compulsive disorder.