Sir Terence Conran has all the secret ingredients for the perfect, buzzing restaurant. Now if only he could enjoy a cigar in one…

I love going to restaurants, cafés and brasseries and usually enjoy the experience, even if it’s bad, since I learn from it. I love starting my own restaurants and don’t want to make other people’s mistakes.

Looking for the right site is fundamentally important when establishing a new restaurant. Ideally, I’m looking for a place that can get a good lunch and evening trade or, if that’s not possible, a reasonable lunch and a terrific evening. I’m also looking for a building with character that is convertible into a restaurant – and that is not easy. Councils, reasonably, do not want to give planning permission to properties in densely populated residential areas as the coming and going of deliveries, rubbish collection and customers can disturb a peaceful neighbourhood. Equally, converting the building so you can receive deliveries and get rid of large quantities of rubbish, some of it smelly, is not at all easy.

Then you come to the problems of extraction of heat from the stoves and ovens, and the cooking smell that goes with it, plus the air conditioning, which is important to most restaurants (there are miles of essential trunking and the plant has to sit on the building’s roof). Then there’s the number of lavatories required, including one for the disabled, if you are going to stand a chance of acquiring a liquor licence. Plus disabled access for customers. All this has to be considered and costed.

These are most of the tiresome negatives that have to be resolved before you have fun deciding what type of restaurant it will be, the type of food you’ll serve and what sort of price range. This may be determined by a chef – or cook, as I prefer to call them – whom you may have already selected, and the sort of food that is their specialty. Again, the neighbourhood is relevant as you have to consider what sort of food the locals will like and what sort of price range will appeal to them both at lunch and dinner.

I always think you have to consider your menu before you design the restaurant and, most certainly, the kitchen. Ideally, your cook should be involved in the (very expensive) project of designing the kitchen and the washing-up and storage areas because, if they don’t work well, he/she has always got somebody else to blame for second-rate food. It is always the kitchen’s fault.

The restaurant, or front of house, as restaurateurs call it, also has to work efficiently, getting your food in front of you whilst it is still hot and well arranged is a considerable logistical task. Sauce slopped over the rim of the plate will not do, and if the customer is not comfortably warm and well lit, sloppy service can ruin your evening, however good the food and wine. The design of the space from the waiter’s point of view is vitally important so that they can serve the food and collect the dishes efficiently. The sommelier also needs space to uncork, decant and keep white wine and water on ice, as well as space for a supply of different shapes of wine glasses.

Then there is the customer comfort – and this is where ergonomics come in. So many restaurants are designed and decorated by people who know nothing about dimensions and who tend to get the height of the chair, banquette and table wrong.

Well, at last I’m settled into my restaurant seat. I’m pleasantly warm and I even see a wood fire at one end of the restaurant, which is very comforting. I hope they use it as a rotisserie. I look at the menu and it’s a reasonable size, plenty to choose from. I am always cautious about menus with an enormous number of choices as I know it can’t all be fresh or freshly prepared. I was given some langoustines that had been frozen the other day and they were like cold, watery cotton wool – what a waste!

I like a decent number of first courses so I can choose two if I’m not feeling very hungry. Le Café Anglais in Queensway, London, has done a particularly fine job with its list of hors d’oeuvre.

I do like to see the ballet of my food being prepared: the flash of flame as my steak goes on the grill or the turning of lines of little birds rotating and cooking gently against the soft wall of flames on the rotisserie. The white clothes of the kitchen staff bent over their benches hard at work chopping, slicing, stirring, makes a happy background to my meal, and I also think that if I were a cook, I’d really like to see my customers and see them receiving my work with pleasure. I don’t want to listen to an angry opera from the kitchen.

All this activity with a space full of people enjoying their food and wine gives a comfortable buzz to a restaurant, which is indicative of success. To me, one of the great sadnesses of restaurants the world over is that I can no longer enjoy a Havana cigar with a glass of eau de vie unless the restaurant has an outdoor terrace or a rooftop. Certainly, smoking a cigar at the end of a good meal is, or used to be, one of the world’s greatest pleasures. You can always stay at home, but there is something magical and sociable about restaurants, their staff and their surroundings that even the best staff at home with a very fine cook cannot replicate.

Long live restaurants, the cigars and great wine lists. Down with the M&S £10-for-two-dinner offers – you still have to do the washing-up! And where is the maître d’, the smiling chef – and that buzz?

- Terence Conran is a restaurateur and iconic designer

• Killing time in Kitzbuhel
• A Pocket Full

Tags: cigars, dining, restaurant

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