It is October 2003. You are a restaurant on St James' in London. You were once a cigar bar called Che, but you have been reinvented and are now called Shumi. You are painfully edgy and effortlessly cool. You have been decorated by the same team that did Nobu, your chef is from Sartoria, your bar manager is from Hakkasan. You have acres of net curtains, dark wood tables and lights which look giant pain-killers. You are covered in tiles and have a small central kitchen in the restaurant. Unfortunately the rest of the kitchen is two floors and one lift away. Jamie Barber and Geoffrey Moore (son of Roger) own you and are so extraordinarily well-connected that the guest list to your two, yes two, launch parties features some of the most famous people of the last century - Sean Connery, Micheal Caine and David Frost sip Shumi bellinis at the first one, Bill Wyman and Jimmy Choo nibble zucchini carpaccio at the second. You are all over the papers.

It is November 2003 and you serve Japanese-Italian food: lots of little dishes designed to share - like fried quails eggs with Alba truffles or salmon tartare with caviar.

You are not cheap. You are so cutting-edge that cutlery is eschewed in favour of chopsticks. Your guests include George Clooney, Cat Deeley, Rebecca Loos and Natalie Portman. The critics have a mixed response: Jan Moir wrote, 'Arne Jacobsen egg chairs, check. Minimalist interior, check. two birds called Tamara, check. One Cat Deeley, check. The restaurant presented Cat Deeley with flowers and a main course of crispy lobster lasagne magically arrived at her table. At 10.45 our main courses showed no sign of arriving. So we left.' Fay Maschler wrote, 'What has been created at Shumi, presumably wittingly, is a menu for our times if you are willing to accept that our times are represented by well-dressed socialites on the Atkins diet who never listened when Mummy told them not to play with their food and are not listening still.' Jay Rayner was even less happy, 'Ah, Shumi, how do I hate thee? I hate the battered old escalators. I hate the nasty decor and I hate the asphyxiating prices. But most of all I hate the concept.'

It is February 2004. The tabloids are reporting that you have been host to Sven-Goran Eriksson and Nancy Dell Olio on Valentine's Day.

It is May 2005 and you are temporarily closing, apparently for a redesign. You have lost just over £1.5 million in the 18 months since your grand opening, although Barber points out, 'Those losses represent start-up costs for Shumi. It's not as if we were losing that much money once trading started.' Barber also admits that customers found your menu over-priced and decor 'cold'. Plans are afoot to redesign you, but since you are Grade-II listed, your most fundamental problems (that frequently broken lift and creaking ancient escalator) cannot be remedied. Your Japanese-Italian food has fallen out of favour. A besuited diner in the restaurant at Brooks private members club, which overlooks you, is heard to say, 'Good Lord. There's a man in there eating spaghetti with a stick.'

It is November 2005. You have reportedly been taken over by restaurateur Alan Yau, who will transform you into a 100-seater Japanese restaurant. The redesign will cost £5 million, including a new upstairs kitchen of which Yau says, rather pointedly, 'Our priority is the food, and this will give us more kitchen space.' You will be reborn.