Nasty Moments: 4

When I bought it, my Marylebone restaurant was one of the only two Kosher Chinese restaurants in London (which possibly was why it was for sale). The first time my little band of shareholders convened for me to show them our exciting new premises, we found the locks changed and a sign on the front door announcing that the lease had been forfeit. As we had just paid £160,000 for it we were rather alarmed; although we weren’t quite sure what forfeit meant we knew it sounded sinister. We were aware the restaurant business was risky, but we thought this was taking risky a bit far. Panic meetings with our solicitors ending with our taking the landlord to the High Court to obtain an injunction to allow us to resume possession; this, it turned out later, had been his subtle way of bringing us to the table to negotiate a new lease at a higher rent. An unsuccessful tactic, as it happened, but one which brought to light the shortcomings of our solicitors and wasted lots of time and money in deciding whether to sue them or not. We didn’t, taking silk’s advice that our chances were 50:50. Nerves were pretty well racked, though.