A guide in hand
I live in Hammersmith and am up by about 7am. Some days I work from home. Otherwise, I'll take the Tube to the office, which is beside Embankment Tube station. It's a great location because of its easy access to several lines. I'm normally in between 8am and 9am. But two mornings a week I take my 15-month-old son Tim to nursery.
As soon as I get to work I go through the post and the e-mails. This business has always been interactive and we give a lot of attention to those "reporters" who take part in our surveys.
We have a variable annual cycle linked to when we publish, so that dictates what I'm doing and where. The office is unrecognisable from one end of the year to the other. At certain times I'll focus on marketing and promotion. At other times my brother Richard and I will be running around London and the UK (for our national guide) visiting restaurants.
We have visited and eaten at every restaurant in our guides and we do it anonymously at our own expense. During our first six months we ate in 600 restaurants at a cost of £18,000. People think we have a Champagne-and-caviare lifestyle, but of course it's not like that. There's not that much money in guidebooks.
At lunch, If I have time, I'll go out and review somewhere. Otherwise, it'll be a sandwich at about noon. During quiet times of the year Richard and I will eat out up to seven times a week. My worst restaurant experience was at Le Palais du Jardin, where I deducted the service from the bill.
We select restaurants for inclusion in the guide based on customer feedback. We are a truly independent guide. I think it's shocking that the AA restaurant guide doesn't mention that many of those included have paid to have photographs published.
At some points in the year I might spend the afternoon analysing the figures and results of the surveys. Sometimes half the comments favour a venue for the same reasons that the other half hate it. Then we'll give our personal input.
But we've found over more than nine editions that certain patterns of comment emerge about the same restaurants. We revisit restaurants only when the chef or owner or style of venue changes. Our guiding maxim is to be fair, although, if necessary, we will be harsh.
Most chefs accept the guide's findings, but we do get some "green-ink" letters. Some don't take criticism so well. Nico Ladenis has sent us an abusive fax and banned us from Chez Nico.
My day finishes between 7pm and 8pm and, if I'm going out to eat, we'll get a babysitter. I eat out a lot on my own, otherwise with my wife or friends. I aim to get to the gym three times a week but that doesn't always happen. I'm normally in bed by 11.30pm - a lot earlier since the baby arrived.
