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6. A trip to a Michelin star restaurant – published 06.02.2012

This posted on 6^th February 2012 and had been something that had been on my mind for a long while but it’s what has really driven our philosophy at the practice over time.

Sat Bains restaurant is about half a mile from my house, underneath the motor way bridge but it is an inspiration as to how you can build something that influences a much wider community and which stands by it’s principles. It’s as true today for us (even more true now I think) than it was in 2012.

At the turn of the year my wife and I were lucky enough to go to a local Michelin star restaurant (it infact has 2 stars – we didn’t know that at the time)

This was a gift given to us by a friend of mine who I had helped with some implant work in Scotland and we were able to go and stay over and really spoil ourselves. I have been to this place once before and was amazed that it is situated in Nottingham underneath the motorway bridge with a pylon in the back garden! When you drive up to somewhere like that you don’t really expect it to be one of the most fantastic places you have ever eaten at.

The place is Sat Bains Restaurant with rooms in Nottingham and it is a truly amazing experience all round. When we were checking out the next morning, we were chatting to one of the waiters who had served us the night before. It was then that he explained to us that Sat and his team had been awarded their 2^nd Michelin Star in November 2011. He talked us through the process of how people come to inspect the restaurant (a bit CQC-ish) and at the end of the inspection they hand over an envelope where everybody expected that they would be confirmed as still having their Michelin Star. It came as a huge surprise to them all, to find out that they had been upgraded to 2 Michelin stars and I’m sure quite a party was had after that!

My main point, however, is that the place that Sat Bains is situated is not the place you would expect one of the finest restaurants in the United Kingdom to be.

Every business, practice or institution is up against something that makes it imperfect. Either its location, internal anatomy or any number of other things.

Just because that thing isn’t ideal doesn’t mean everything else can’t be perfect and I guess what we do at our practice is to get the bits perfect that we can control.

I am talking about ‘Controlling the controllables’ as Sir Chris Hoy says when he is training for the Olympics.

Blog post number: 1504