Tom Norrington Davies long before the stress of opening the new place. Photograph: Martin Godwin.
I had big plans for this, my first blog post. Most of those plans involved dashing it off with one hand and a goldfish bowl of wine in the other, just in time to fall asleep on the sofa in front of "the wire" on SFX.
Despite it being the best tv show I've seen in years, I fall asleep in front of everything, in these heady first weeks of opening our new restaurant, Great Queen Street.
However, it is now 6.30 the following morning and I lost my night off to a no-show on the rota.
Someone I tried out last week decided not to come in for their first official shift. And notified me that they took a job elsewhere by text message. Is it totally ancient of me to be outraged by this?
The guy had a posh cv typed up but he clearly has no manners. This is a rather polite version of what I was grumbling to myself as I removed his name from the rota.
The Rota. Ha! A rota, just like most things in a new restaurant, is a triumph of optimism over reality.
To say we are understaffed is to put it unspeakably mildly. In the past four weeks just about everyone has found us - except for that unknown brilliantly talented lunatic who wants to work him or herself into a slightly manic trance alongside the rest of us.
If you're that brilliantly talented person and you are reading this, by the way, while we are slightly manic at the moment, we're awfully nice to work with. You can tell because we are all still speaking to each other after four weeks which should have sent us stir crazy.
Like I say, everyone else has found us.
The customers have, that's for sure, despite the fact that we still don't have a sign. One of them, emboldened by a few Txacolis, offered to do one for us the other night. I can't remember where I put his number.
And, of course the critics have found us.
You really wonder how Fay Maschler managed to appear on the second night. I have a theory that she has tapped into the mainframe of some kitchen supplier or other. She follows new ovens into buildings and gives the staff five minutes to fire them up.
I'm not complaining. She sat and ate our nervous cooking in a big, empty room, and, one week later in the evening standard, was lovely about us. The room hasn't been empty since.
Being discovered early is terrifying. The kitchen and I barely know each other but we are suddenly doing a lot of entertaining together.
The four of us fell in love with number 32 Great Queen Street the minute we saw it. A big long room with a very well appointed bar. The West End is a funny area to try and meet up with friends. All the good joints are rammed, all the time, and there are too many bad places to mention.
So here was a site that we already wished existed. It took us a coincidental 32 days to give it a lick of paint, a proper kitchen and a name (but no sign!). It had taken rather longer to figure out what the menu should look like, but it almost writes itself now.
We are buying as much as possible direct from small farms. Our main man, Tom Jones (no, not that one) of Broadfield near Hereford, gives us half a cow and a couple of sheep every week. Plus the best eggs ever. If you are heading our way soon, we'll be serving whatever bit of the cow and the sheep we have got round to that day.
It feels like a natural way to cook. It certainly beats buying piles of imported rib eye. And the flavour of anything Tom has reared is amazing. Our other suppliers of meat and fish are great, too. And you couldn't want for a better time to open, veg wise, than during the asparagus glut.
All we need now is to lose the raw fear that all of us get the minute the doors open.
Its funny, I've been cooking for nearly two decades but I feel like a first timer, who barely knows what they're doing. Anthony Bourdain would call it an adrenalin rush. I think it feels like school play stage fright.
Weirdly, some of the critics have said we have confidence in spades. At least two - including the Observer's (and this blog's) Jay Rayner - seemed to think the lack of sign was deliberate. Perhaps we shouldn't put one up!
So, forgive this manic first entry. I'll get me some staff (offers welcome!) and then I'll be back with more ... once my hands stop shaking ...
