FoodSheikh

I’ve been thinking about opening a small boutique bookshop. Stationery, a bit of coffee, somewhere people can come and find themselves for an hour.

The feedback has been kind. Lovely idea, everyone says. Won’t make any money, everyone also says.

The two sentences arrive together, as if the second cancels the first. It struck me how strange that is. That the barometer of whether something is worth doing is whether it will make money.

Not whether it will be loved, used, needed, missed if it disappeared. Just the bottom line. What if it washed its own face? What if the staff were paid, the rent was covered, the lights stayed on, and the point was simply to give the neighbourhood somewhere quiet to sit with a book. Is that not a successful business.

Or have we agreed, somewhere along the way, that breaking even is a kind of failure.

The customer is always right. Except, increasingly, in restaurant ‘concepts’. Restaurants have rules now. Not health and safety rules, but aesthetic ones.

The flat white that can’t be hotter because 65 degrees is the optimal tasting temperature. Same with the hand roll place that won’t cut their hand rolls in half for you. We hope you understand. House policy. It’s the concept.

And look, I respect the craft. I wouldn’t tell a tailor how to cut a suit. But I’d want to choose the colour.

I always wonder where the line is - there is clearly a line, I get that, I can’t be asking a chef to deep-fry the tiramisu. But by the same notion, surely there is some flexibility.

At what point does dedication to the concept becoming annoying to the guest?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that conviction is admirable and rigidity less so.