Returning, re-opening and hopefully remembering

There’s little one can say about the last 14 months that hasn’t already been said, or more one can try and convey that hasn’t already been more eloquently conveyed… This is very much a personal note on re-opening the restaurant and returning to restaurant life. As the 19th of May fast approaches and the gears change a whole raft of things play on the mind and a multitude of contrasting feelings clamour. A sense of trepidation and nervousness about how the world will feel and be and respond this side of things, rests just below the surface. It’s manifested in dreams about the restaurant being upside down, a collapsing staircase, a till I can’t read and wine bottles that refuse to open. There’s a genuine fear that I don’t actually know what I do any more or how to do it. I laugh when I catch myself thinking like that and the doubts give way to excitement and curiosity. More than anything else I am excited.

I truly love the sound and smell and sight and feel of this place when it is full of people eating and drinking and talking and laughing and enjoying themselves. We have all so missed doing what we do and so love doing. We have missed our lovely regulars and not so regulars. The conversations that we have with you all about a particular bottle of wine or the obscure ingredient that Sam has placed centre stage on the Set Menu. The nuts and bolts of running a restaurant that come together in those conversations and exchanges are the things that feel somehow indelible and un-waivered.

I look forward to the mornings unlocking the door to the restaurant, quiet and still, how it gradually comes to life throughout the day, the coffee machine warming the sound of deliveries arriving and the kitchen and the hum comes from downstairs and the smell of stock cooking. The lunch service that starts all at once and carries us straight into the dinner service without a moments’ pause and the adrenalin that runs and keeps us moving. How the evenings wind down and the tables empty, and the group of keen digestif drinkers around the bar who leave cheerful and swaying slightly. The chat at the end of the night about the night and the drink around the bar eating crisps from the Coop and the unwinding from the day.

All those things that happen day in day out and the rhythm of restaurant that happens with so much intention and purpose but yet feels like somehow its own entity at times. We can’t wait to get back, and have it come to life again.