A night in our kitchen, from four in the afternoon to close

People often ask what time we start. The honest answer is that the day starts with somebody putting rice in water, and everything else follows from that.

Four o'clock

The rice goes into salted water to soak. Two of the team are on prep: onions, herbs, the day's stews. The stews are the long jobs and they cannot be hurried, so ghormeh sabzi and gheimeh go on early and sit quietly at the back of the stove for hours, which is where they get their depth.

Meanwhile the grill chef checks the skewers. Kebab is the opposite of a stew: it is all in the last four minutes, so everything has to be ready before a single one goes near the fire.

Half past five

Family meal. The whole team eats together, standing up, usually in about eleven minutes. It is not a ceremony. It is the last quiet thing that happens before service.

Six

The charcoal goes on. Good kebab needs coals that have burned down past the flame to a steady grey heat, and that takes the best part of an hour, so it has to be lit before anybody is hungry. The first bookings arrive at half past six and the room fills from seven.

Seven to ten

This is the part that looks like chaos from outside and is actually a rhythm. Orders come in on the kitchen screen, split themselves between the grill, the stews and the bar, and each section calls back when its part is ready. Nobody shouts unless something is wrong.

A good service is quiet. When the kitchen gets loud, something has already gone wrong somewhere upstream.

The hardest thing is not the cooking. It is timing four tables of different sizes so that everything for one table lands together, hot, with the rice at its best. Rice waits for nobody.

Ten to close

The pace drops. The grill comes down, the stews get topped up for tomorrow, and the cleaning starts at the far end and works back towards the door. The last thing anybody does is set the rice to soak for the next day.

What we would want you to know

• Tell us if you are in a hurry. We can send the kebab first and the rest behind it, and nobody minds.
• Tell us about allergies when you book. Not when the food arrives. It gives us time to cook around it properly rather than picking things off.
• The note box on the order really is read. It prints in the kitchen with the ticket.

Come in on a Friday around eight and put your head round the corner on the way to the table. Somebody will wave.