It's a love-hate thing, having a restaurant. There are great times to be had when it's full of friends, noise and happiness, and then there are the times when it's not.

I closed my last restaurant at the end of the eighties and haven't had one since. It was called Armstrong's Barn and nestled in a valley in Annamoe, in one of the prettier parts of Wicklow. Over the years it picked up awards from all the major food guides - although I suspect that the 'cuisine grand-mere' that we served has now become deeply unfashionable in the age of jus and coulis.

Occasionally I ask myself, 'are there withdrawal symptoms?' The room that I'm sitting in writing was the old restaurant kitchen, so there is at least an excuse for these musings. And yes, there are times when I reminisce wistfully; I had some good times here. Another question raises its head from time to time: 'would I do it again?'

To be pedantic, this is not the same question as 'would I like having a restaurant?' The fact remains that I've been there and have seen the highs and the lows, which puts me in a different position from someone who has never tried it. One of the commonest conversations that I had in the decade that I ran Armstrong's Barn was the one that begins 'Oh, we've always wanted to have a restaurant; it's our dream. I mean, we do lots of entertaining and it must be wonderful to paid for doing what you like.' Ring any bells with you?

The truth is that there will be nights when your friends will come and it will be not unlike having them to your home, except that before they leave they'll pay for the meal. If it were like that all the time I could see the attraction. But it's not. There are nights when you stare at the quarellsome table of eight and wish you'd never been born, or in moments of greater clarity of thought, that they'd never been born.

What it comes down to is this: never lose sight of the fact that when someone is paying you for a slice of bread that gives them the right to complain if it's not to their liking. I have met people over the years who believe that it also gives them the right to verbally assault you and generally disrupt the even tenor of the dining-room. How you choose to deal with this will ultimately decide what kind of restaurant you will be running. The only way you can have a restaurant and not put up with this kind of thing is to own a large, amorphous eating-house where no one expects to meet the owner. But if, on the other hand, it's a small, intimate bijou of a restaurant, then you'll be expected to be there all the time - and you'll have to deal with the complaints.

Some complaints are obviously going to be of the legitimate variety. Things do go wrong from time to time in even the most carefully managed kitchen. This kind of complaint is easy to deal with: a genuine apology, the cost of the dish written off, maybe even the whole bill. What's harder to deal with is the complaint that is made because the diner is an unhappy person and you happen to be the nearest human being to complain to. After a while of owning your dream restaurant you'll get to recognise the sysmtoms: the husband and wife who arrive barely speaking to one another because they've fought all the way in the car. Now either he or she is going to complain about everything over the course of the evening, not because there's something wrong, but simply out of discontentment. Psychologists call this 'displacement behaviour' - that is you become the object of their aggression because they won't fight with one another in public.

I used to try to deal with this the Avis way, by trying harder. Trust me, this is a mistake. It's an unwinnable game that you're being drawn into, and one in which you don't make the rules. The right riposte to this gambit is to say 'I'm sorry, I'm not enjoying your company, I want you to go now. There is no charge for what you've had so far. Goodnight.' It took me a long time to learn this, but it works a treat. You feel much better when the awkward sods have left, and anyone overhearing the exchange will really behave themselves for fear of suffering the same fate. It worked particularly well in Annamoe when the nearest alternative restaurant was a good half-hour's drive away.

Anyone who's spent even five minutes in the retail trade can confirm that there's nowt so queer as folk. In the spring of 1978 when I'd just opened the restaurant and was trying very hard to build up a good reputation I got a table for two late one evening. I remembered them for years afterwards because they nearly made me cry tears of rage and frustration. Nothing I could do would please them. I went to bed that night an unhappy man with a large dinge in my self-confidence. Imagine my surprise, when, unannounced, the same couple arrived nearly eight years later at my door. I remembered them well; but they clearly had no recollection of their previous visit.

You may know that southern Italians, like me, have this thing called 'la vendetta', or getting your own back. From the moment of their arrival I was brusque - verging on the rude - unhelpful and very snotty. I sneered at his choice of wine, suggested she may do better using the correct cutlery; in short made myself thoroughly obnoxious and loved every moment of it. When they left I took their money with a self-satisfied grin. Two days later walking in Bray I met the female half of this couple who came bounding up to me smiling and kissed me on both cheeks. 'That,' she told me, 'was the best night we've had dining out for years.' Go figure.

If owning a restaurant still seems an attractive idea, remember this too. You may manage to arrange it so that it's like having friends to dinner every night, but you'll never be able to go to dinner at anyone else's house - you'll be working. Say goodbye to a social life. Even old friends will give up inviting you to things after a long run of refusals.

Of course there are pluses. If you run a good restaurant then you can eat and drink well daily. Ten years of it did my figure and liver no good at all, but it was fun. I met charming and delightful people over the years, some of whom I am still pleased to call friends. It's the nice people who more than anything else make up the good part of being a restaurateur. There is, too, something almost noble in a calling that allows you to take in the tired and hungry and literally restore them to a sense of well-being.

Which is, of course, exactly what a good restaurateur should strive to do. The whole experience of dining out is not only about good food - that should be a given - it's about making people feel at ease. In a perfect world nothing should interfere with this; not bad food, not an uncomfortable ambience, not bad service, not unruly people at the next table. When all these elements combine as they should, then the meal becomes a pleasure not just for those who eat it, but for those who serve it. Unfortunately it's a harmony that's achievable no more than 90% of the time, if you're lucky.

It's just possible that I could still do the deed and open another restaurant, if only to indulge in one last act of vendetta. Many years ago I was driving to England from Italy with my father when we stopped for the night in Switzerland near Lucerne. As we walked the streets of the insanely tidy little Swiss town, a sign on a cafe door caught my eye. 'No dogs, no Italians.' It might just be worth the effort if only to place a sign on the door: 'No Swiss.'