Well, hasn’t that gone quick! This month marks our eighteen-month anniversary of opening and what an eighteen months it has been.

‘From the first idea, finding the venue, exploring my ideas around my vision for EDŌ to fitting the restaurant out and designing our menus and name and getting the team together, it’s been a hell of a ride. Starting out last September was just about trying to keep the whole show on the road, keep the team doing what they were supposed to be doing and all the while, for me, trying to learn on the job the business side of a restaurant. It has been a massive learning curve going from running a kitchen to actually running the whole shebang and being responsible for every single detail of EDŌ. You really have to live and breathe each and every aspect of the restaurant – the good bits, the bad bits, the things I enjoy doing and the things I don’t enjoy doing. It feels like I’m on a permanent rollercoaster ride!

‘Jay Rayner’s article in The Guardian in January 2018 really took things to another level for us. We saw a massive increase in bookings and it’s stayed busy ever since. His timing was perfect because we’d had a couple of months to get our feet under the table, had had our first Christmas and then – boom! – away we went. In the first few months I had deliberately tried to keep under the radar because I wanted to give the team a chance to get together and know what they were at

‘But it is a beautiful thing seeing your idea and dream come to fruition, though, and I feel really lucky that I’ve had the opportunity of opening EDŌ. What we need to focus on now as a team is moving up a step from the established base we now have – a good strong menu with a solid team of chefs and front of house, to diversifying and adding specials that the chefs can really get their teeth into. We have the favourites customers order time and time again, and as much as they enjoy eating them we enjoy cooking them, but as chefs we enjoy variety and spontaneity and being creative with different ingredients. For that reason, our specials menu gives us the chance to test ourselves and produce something different every day. That’s our idea of fun! ????

‘Ultimately our goal every day is just to create a good dining experience for our customers.’