One grill, eighteen seats, and no investor

The plan was a wine bar that did a bit of food. Within a month it was obvious that the grill was the reason people came back, so we took out four tables to make the kitchen bigger and stopped pretending otherwise.

What changed

In 2019 we took the wall down between the kitchen and the room. It cost more than we had and it is the best money we have ever spent. You can see every plate leave, which means we cannot send one out we are not happy with, which is the entire point.

We went from eighteen covers to thirty-four, added the back room, and stopped taking bookings for parties larger than eight in the main room because it changed the sound of the place.

How we buy

Almost everything comes from within four hours of here. We pay the growers what they ask rather than what we would like, which is why the menu is short and why it changes when they tell us it is going to.

The beef is aged forty days in a fridge you can see from the bar. The fish comes up from the coast twice a week. The bread is made here every morning by somebody who started as a dishwasher.

Who is here

Fourteen of us, ten of whom have been here more than three years. We close on Mondays so that everybody gets two consecutive days off, we pay above the going rate, and the service charge goes to the people who earned it.