Everything we learned the year we cooked only over wood

The idea came from frustration rather than principle. We had a grill we loved and a gas range we used because it was easier, and the food from the range was the food nobody talked about.

What it cost

Two months of service where the timings were wrong. Wood does not have a dial. The first six weeks we were sending mains twenty minutes apart on the same table and apologising for it nightly.

It also cost about four hours a day of somebody managing the fire. That is a whole person, and we had to find the money for them before we found out whether it would work.

What changed in the food

Everything tastes of the fire now, which sounds obvious and is the whole point. But the more interesting change was in the vegetables. Ember cooking does something to celeriac and beetroot that no oven does, and two of our three best-selling mains are now vegetables.

The other change was that we stopped being able to hide. There is no holding cabinet and no reheating. A plate is cooked when it is cooked, which means the room eats at the pace of the fire rather than the other way round.

What we would tell anybody thinking about it

Do not do it in November. Do it in the quietest month you have, staff it properly from day one, and tell your regulars what is happening so that the first bad night is something they are part of rather than something that happened to them.

And buy better wood than you think you need. We went through three suppliers before we found one who kilns properly, and the difference between seasoned oak and nearly-seasoned oak is the difference between smoke that flavours and smoke that ruins.