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Good restaurant guide
The owner of such successful restaurants as Bibendum and Quaglino's reveals which factors separate the also-ran from the toast of the town.
What makes a good restaurant? Well, it doesn't get any better than when you want to return for lunch the very next day, having only just finished dinner. It happened to us once. It was at a wonderful restaurant called Girardet, near Lausanne in Switzerland; our meal and service were so perfect that we just wanted more of it.
The single most important thing that makes a good restaurant is excellent food, made from
top-quality ingredients, simply cooked and appropriate in both price and style to the
demographics of the restaurant's locale (so, don't put an expensive and classy French restaurant in Enfield or a pie and mash shop in Mayfair).
The second most crucial aspect is service. Staff should greet you and serve you efficiently, with a gentle but professional smile, but not try to impose themselves on you. They should be seen when you want to see them and only be
heard when they reply to something you ask. Staff make a huge difference to your enjoyment of a meal and are vital to the success or failure of a restaurant. A discretionary service charge or tip, which should always go directly to the staff, is a good way of recognising their role. If the service was lousy, don't pay it. This can have a profound effect on improving the service next time around, as colleagues will criticise a waiter or chef who has let the team down, financially and professionally.
The atmosphere and design of a restaurant are also important, although I have to say I've often had enjoyable meals with good food and service in pretty dire interiors. Nevertheless, if you design a comfortable and unpretentious place that works well for staff and diners alike, then the chance of enjoying your meal is that much greater. Simple things make all the difference: comfortable banquettes and chairs that are the right height; a good quality of mellow light, which can be varied as day turns to night and changes as the night goes on; the right balance of sound (you want diners to be able to hear what their friends say; you don't want to engender the terrible hushed reverence of a Lady Chapel); and, in particular, good-quality materials, which gain a patina of usage, and a design that's not 'here today, gone tomorrow'. Trendy, cutting-edge restaurants that are packed with the fashionista when they open rarely last long as the pack ruthlessly moves on to the next overhyped destination.
There is also a strange thing you'll notice when you go into a well-run, successful restaurant. We call it the buzz. It's the sound that happy diners make when they're enjoying their food and wine, the service, and the company of their friends. If
a restaurant has this, you'll know even before you sit down that you're going to enjoy yourself.
Of course, there is one rather sad by-product of success: when you can't get a table when you want one, or have to book a month in advance. This often has the bizarre effect of making people keener to visit. Certainly, a busy restaurant is more attractive than an empty one and, strangely, the staff are more efficient; it keeps them on their toes, I suppose, and they also earn more tips.
The practice of turning tables in busy restaurants is very unpopular but I believe it has a role to play. Obviously, you must tell your customers when they book that you may ask for the table back after a certain time, and you should always settle them down in the bar with a drink if you do so. Explain that you have people waiting who have booked for a certain time and you have a commitment to them. Such are the costs of running a restaurant that turning tables can be the difference between a successful restaurant and one that goes belly up.
Finally, a restaurant, like any other business, has to demonstrate value for money. It is vital for a restaurateur to know who his competitors are, and to see that his prices bear comparison. If they don't, he'll not be in business for long, or if he tries to be too competitive, he is likely to go bust unless he has something really unique to offer.
The factors that make a bad restaurant (of which there are so many) are, generally, the reverse of the foregoing, though there is one particular category of restaurants that I hate. I call them 'pretentious restaurants'. These are places where the staff are either snooty and offhand or obsequious, the menu is written in an obscure franglais, is far
too long, and always seems to feature truffles (usually fake), lobster (usually Canadian) and foie gras (usually out of a jar).
The food itself is presented with masses of arty swirls,
fiddles and froths and tastes of very little. In fact, it often adds up to not much more than
overpresented cocktail canapés and certainly doesn't satisfy
anybody with a reasonable appetite. The place is usually overdecorated in a semi-traditional, blingish sort of way and has a fair proportion of Eurotrash throwing their money around and looking for the most expensive wine on a list that resembles a huge, leather-bound family bible.
There is also a certain ghastly hush that falls over the place as people talk in whispers, as if the food was an offering to some deity. The huge bill at the end of the ritual equates to trying to bribe your way into the Kingdom of Heaven. You feel that the chef, the manager and their customers are spending far too much time gazing at the stars that they believe, quite wrongly in my opinion, are the ultimate accolade of a good restaurant.
What do you think makes a good or a bad restaurant? Email food@jbcp.co.uk.
Girardet is at 1 rue d'Yverdon, Crissier, Switzerland. Tel 011 41 21 634 0506.