For those of us for whom food is a way of life, rather than simply something you need to fuel yourself, a common dream is quitting the rat race and opening your own restaurant. 

Because we have enjoyed so many good times in such establishments, we fondly imagine that actually running one would be an extension of a good night out: chatting with regular customers over a glass of wine, basking in the reflected glory of the top-notch chef beavering away in the kitchen, and at the end of each evening, banking the profits from all those bulging bills.

If you are even considering doing this, my advice is: don’t. 

Running a restaurant involves considerable hard work, very long hours, much stress, and very little glamour.

Above all, it means accepting you will never be rich.  There is an old joke in the hospitality trade: How do you get to have a million pounds?  Start with two million and open a restaurant. 

There is more than a grain of truth in this, particularly in the aftermath of last month’s Budget, which as well as lumping ever more costs on the hospitality industry in the form of increased national insurance contributions and a generous hike in the minimum wage, also announced a more than doubling of the business rates that such businesses pay, albeit accompanied by a vague promise of reform in two years’ time.

Few would argue that those at the lowest end of the wage scale deserve to be paid more. 

The cost of living crisis has eroded their ability to live any kind of decent life, and it is right that those on the most modest pay should receive the biggest increase. 

But will our already hard-pressed restaurants be able to absorb that extra cost, especially as the very same cost of living crisis is also impacting on their customers, severely restricting their ability to pass on those extra costs in the form of increased menu prices?

Industry body UK Hospitality has said this week that restaurants would have to raise prices by 8% just to cover the extra cost of employing staff announced by the Chancellor in the Budget. 

Figures from Barclays show that financial constraints are preventing people from eating out: flatlining restaurant spending has been accompanied by a 10% increase in digital streaming subscriptions, suggesting that many are staying at home with Netflix and a take-away.

The big chains are not immune from this, of course.  But these are the operations which have the deepest pockets, and they are invariably run by accountants who are more interested in profits than providing decent food. 

And even though they are busy hiking their prices (market insight specialist Lumina Intelligence reports that average prices at Bill’s went up by 26% in less than a year, for example), they are finding life very tough.

If the chains are struggling, think how tough it must be for independent restaurateurs, who generally don’t have the same access to finance to tide them through tough times. 

In Norfolk, as in most places, it is the independent operators who offer the most interesting dining experiences, who give us variety and innovation in a sea of corporate chain blandness, who champion ingredients produced locally – and who, incidentally, are pretty much always the ones who win the plaudits and awards.

I am always astonished when you hear people complain about the cost of restaurant food, often comparing the price of a dish with what it would cost to buy the ingredients at the supermarket. 

This misses the point of what eating out is: apart from having someone cook and serve your food to you, you are paying for the whole experience, and that is so much more than what is on your plate.

Few of us realise just how horrendous the overheads of running a restaurant really are. 

On top of the rapidly rising cost of employing staff, rents are still sky-high, business rates will shoot up in April, duty on wine is about to increase exponentially (again), and energy prices remain eye-watering.

Then there is equipment to be bought and maintained, insurance paid for, cleaners hired, tablecloths and napkins laundered, marketing costs to be covered – all this before they have even bought the ingredients which will end up on the plate.

This week is Norfolk Restaurant Week, which is about celebrating the diversity and quality of eating establishments in our county. 

It is a great opportunity to get out there and show your support for our hard-pressed independent restaurateurs, and to ensure that the future of eating out in our county is not left to faceless chains that care little about the dining experience, and even less about serving us local ingredients.