Running a restaurant

If there's one thing I learnt from my recent foray into farming, it's that converting the mud-streaked raw materials of the countryside into mouthwatering ingredients is challenging work. Worse still, it's also thankless – it didn't seem to matter how well I watered my carrots, how diligently I fed my pigs, or how skillfully I stole cow after cow from nearby villages, I never once received a word of praise or encouragement.

But deep-seated bitterness always gets my creative juices flowing, so I quickly hatched a new idea. Why not skip the hard graft of rearing animals and growing crops and instead just serve up extravagantly expensive meals for an adoring public? In other words: why not open a restaurant instead?

I set to work immediately. Step one would be to create a showstopping dining room, a space so awe-inspiring that wealthy foodies would travel from miles around. As luck would have it, I knew just the spot to construct such a marvel. 

The site in question is a scenic ocean overhang at the edge of a bustling village. I can see it now: villagers squealing with delight as I serve up culinary wonders against a backdrop that showcases the majesty of nature. They burst into spontaneous applause as I enter the dining room at the end of a long service. A once-sceptical food critic places a crown on my head as a single tear rolls down his cheek. "I was wrong to doubt you," he says. "You are truly the chosen one". 

My restaurant begins to take shape. And all it took was cutting down a village's ancient and beloved forest!

Architecturally, I decide that my restaurant should convey sophistication, refinement, and exquisite taste above all else. I install glass walls on all sides so that diners can admire the beautiful views while they eat, but finalizing a design for the kitchen proves more difficult. I'll need multiple furnaces and smokers in order to keep up with the orders that will doubtless be flooding in, and all that hardware takes up a lot of space. I eventually decide to excavate the basement and set up my cooking appliances there. Sure, it's a sad and windowless space, but on the plus side it means that diners won't have to see the cheap slop I plan to use as the basis of every one of their meals.

Hiss all you like, I won't be serving your steak well-done!

With the kitchen up and running, it's almost time to throw open the doors of my restaurant to the besotted masses. The last thing to do is perhaps the most important of all, and that's to give the establishment a name. I make a list of potential options, each more swanky and sophisticated than the last:

• Feasto Debonair
• Mister Velvet
• France
• The House Of All The Hams
• Food™
• Credenza

Eventually I realize that there isn't actually much space above the door for signage, so I settle on "UG", which I read is a fully acceptable two-letter words in the game Scrabble. If that doesn't scream taste and refinement, I don't know what does. 

Whenever somebody calls and asks for an opening night reservation, I scoff and tell them we're fully booked before slamming down the phone. It may not be true, but it certainly seems to help build buzz in the village.

At long last, opening night is at hand! I unlock the doors to greet the thronging crowds outside and discover that the hubristically large queueing area I'd set aside sits tragically empty. A lone villager strays close enough for me to justifiably believe he's waiting for a table, so I barge them into the dining room with the grace and savoir faire of the very finest maître d'. Now to get cooking.

It's at this point that I realize I don't have any food whatsoever in the building. I'm a mature enough person to admit that this is an oversight on my part, but not so mature that I don't spend five full minutes indulging in a furious meltdown before making any real attempt to rectify the problem.

I check my inventory in the desperate hope that I might have missed a Michelin-star-worthy assortment of ingredients. It turns out I have precisely one edible item to hand: a reeking slab of rotten flesh. Can I serve my one and only customer a piece of zombie meat? I ponder the moral quandary for some time, before taking a deep breath and walking upstairs to find that it's the middle of the night and the dining room is empty.

The stench of failure. And rotten meat well-done steaks.

As I lock the doors and snuff out the lights, I ponder the lesson of my latest spectacular failure. Was it foolhardy to think I could build a world-famous restaurant in two days? Was it a mistake to refuse to write a business plan, and to mock the person that suggested it by repeating everything they said in a boring drone-y voice until they sighed and walked away? And was it perhaps wrong to deliberately bulldoze several villager homes during UG's construction phase, even though I could have built on an equally scenic spot just moments away? 

No, the real lesson is that I didn't believe in myself enough. It's time to embark on another barnstorming business extravaganza – this time I just _know_ it's going to be a success!