The Aussie at the bar

I'm sure we've met before," grins Will Ricker, extending a hand, motorbike helmet in the other - we hadn't. Will Ricker owns four London restaurants - Cicada and the Great Eastern Dining Room in East London, E&O in Notting Hill, and Eight Over Eight on the King's Road, which opened last week.

I tell him two of his restaurants are regular haunts of mine, and that I didn't realise until recently that they were both owned by him. "People stop me in the street and tell me that," he says. "I get such a buzz out of it."

I'm in good company. Apparently a clutch of celebrities also love his restaurants, including Kylie, Gwyneth, Robbie and Nicole (E&O is supposedly Kidman's favourite London restaurant). But Melbourne-born Ricker is nonchalant about the celeb count in his restaurants. "I can't be bothered with all that - all these supermodels coming in here moaning about their flight from wherever - I mean, they've just flown first class, the poor loves!" No, he gets more turned on by the fact that his staff had to turn away 500 from E&O last Saturday night.

Anyway, Ricker is living a somewhat charmed life. His business is rumoured to be worth about £8m and he's obviously having a ball. Tanned, toned and a babe magnet (he's snapped with countless gorgeous women hanging off his arm), 40-year-old Ricker isn't about to settle down. "I'm having far too much fun," he beams.

So just how did this amiable Aussie end up in the London restaurant business? "I got off to a cracking start in life," he reveals. He was expelled from Melbourne Grammar at the age of 12 and walked away from his next school with no qualifications to his name. His lawyer father eventually got him a job in property. "Actually, it was rent collecting," admits Ricker, although he subsequently landed a job as a junior analyst with a property investment company.

After a couple of years he was earning good money, but then the stock market took a nose dive and it was time for a rethink. He arrived in London in 1989 at the age of 26 with Aus$3,000 (£1,223) in his pocket. He worked as a labourer on a building site, and behind the bar of his local, before sweet-talking a property developer into investing in his first venture, the conversion of a run-down block of flats into swanky apartments. The deal made enough to fund a new project, a restaurant in London's Soho (41 Beak Street).

But not even Ricker's schmoozing could get him out of trouble with this venture. The restaurant closed, taking lots of his cash with it. He isn't keen to talk about it; just mutters darkly: "There are two ways to learn this business - you either invest in it or work in it. I've learned never to have anyone between you and the till."

But Ricker bounced back much the wiser with Cicada, in up-and-coming Clerkenwell, although more down than up in 1996. "We were talking £60 a foot to buy in those days - now it's £30 a foot just to lease," he says.

He refers to Cicada as "the wife", feeding 1,000 people a week for about £30 a head in the 65-seat restaurant and bar. The Pan-Asian menu hasn't changed much since it opened, with dishes such as rock shrimp tempura, ponzu and spicy mayonnaise (£11.50) and chicken and snowpea dumplings (£6).

Apparently Ricker's interior design mates now privately snigger at Cicada's £225,000 interior, but to the rest of us it's just a buzzy, fun, open-plan bar and dining room. "That's what I try to do - buzzy, social environments. Local restaurants for local people with West End service at east London prices," he chimes.

Two years later he opened the Great Eastern Dining Room. A hop, skip and a jump away on Great Eastern Street ("fab food, good service, pleasant surroundings", cooed Time Out), it's a homage to minimalist chic (think concrete and chandeliers) and it cost Ricker £100,000 more to kit out than Cicada.

Ricker, you see, gets very closely involved with the design of his restaurants - with a little help from another Melbourne boy, designer Chris Connell. "In fact, I agonise over it," he admits.

So, tell us about the new place. "It's got the same layout as E&O, but the ceilings are higher and there will be more booths," he explains (he loves booths). And it's his most expensive makeover yet - costing £700,000. The site, on the King's Road, is a former pub, the Man and the Moon.

Eight Over Eight follows the same lines as its siblings on the Pan-Asian food front, including staples such as chilli salt squid ("a killer dish"). "But it'll be bigger and better," Ricker promises. "It's a bit like designing cars - this is the latest version with all the mistakes from the last model removed." Mistakes such as columns - he hates them. "I love big, open dining spaces," he says. "I've got three double-deckers' worth of steel supporting the ceiling in the new place."

In fact, Ricker believes that to be successful in the restaurant game you have to be a property developer too. "You have to be able to identify the good sites," he says. Ricker buys the whole building, developing the upper floors into residential apartments, which are later sold off, with the ground floor and basement retained for the restaurant business. The money he makes from each development is ploughed back into future developments, with a little help from the bank and a handful of unnamed backers.

There are five apartments above Eight Over Eight, for example, plus a new-build townhouse at the back of the plot. "We have a very long-term approach to this," he says. "Though to be successful in this business you also have to be a good employer," he adds. "It's almost like being a movie producer - finding the right chef, the right manager, etc. I've got some great people around me - like Marco here," he says, introducing his manager at E&O. "He's been with me for seven years now. We're pretty laid-back - we're not bean-counters, you know."

Things may change, however, as Ricker has just recruited a financial controller (whom he refers to as the company policeman), plus an operations director to keep an eye on all four restaurants. "We are starting to streamline things now," he admits.

So does this mean you're gearing up for further expansion? "Well, it will certainly free me up to look at new investment opportunities," Ricker reveals - but that's all he's prepared to say.

But whatever's in the pipeline, you can be sure it will be in London. "London is the best city in the world," he tells me. "What other culture drinks so much, smokes so much and has a bar culture like this? This is not just a Friday and Saturday night deal, it's a seven-day-a-week, two-shifts-a-day business."

Would he ever do something back home (his parents and two sisters still live there)? "Not a chance - this is home. Melbourne is so parochial. London has 10 high streets, Melbourne's got one. And it's a totally different country - we have a common language, but that's it."

I never get my promised cocktail. "He loves his cocktails," his PR agent had warned me earlier. Maybe he likes them too much? "Yeah, actually, I'm off the booze at the moment - I've got to focus on the new place," he says, strapping on his helmet (the bike's a 49cc Vespa,) before scooting down to the King's Road to check developments.

Ricker On…

Bars in restaurants: "You've got to get the bar right - and you have to have a certain size to get the atmosphere right."
Real estate: "I'm a big believer in real estate. It's all about the building and the location."
Being in control: "It's easy to make a mistake and expand too quickly."
Alan Yau: "He's a terrific guy and Hakkasan is a fantastic restaurant - he's an inspiration."
Critics: "You live by the sword and die by the sword - the customers vote with bums on seats."
Consistency: "It's very easy to stick your hand up and get a space. The hardest thing is consistency."

Ricker raves

Favourite city: London - I love the anonymity."
Favourite restaurants: Rahoul in New York, Brasserie Balzar in Paris, Hakkasan in London, Rigalo in Milan.
Hobbies: Travelling, reading, football (he has an Arsenal season ticket).
Worst moment: "Owning a nightclub that closed at 11pm."
Best moment: When people tell him their favourite restaurant is one of his.

The portfolio

• Eight over Eight
  392 King's Road, London SW3 5UZ
  Tel: 020 7349 9934
  Opened: June 2003
  Seats: 95
• Cicada 132-136 St John Street, London EC1
  Tel: 020 7405 1717
  Opened: 1996
  Seats: 65
• E&O 14 Blenheim Crescent, London W11
  Tel: 020 7229 5454
  Opened: 2001
  Seats: 85
• The Great Eastern Dining Room 54-56 Great Eastern Street, London EC2
  Tel: 020 7613 4545
  Opened: 1998
  Seats: 65