COOKING for a partner or your family is one thing.

But if you have almost 100 expectant diners all waiting to be served it is something different altogether.

So I spent an afternoon with Spirit Restaurant in Victoria Park to see how the team cope with the pressures of being one of Warrington’s best rated places to eat on TripAdvisor.

Led by head chef Richard Barlow, who used to work at London's iconic Oxo Tower, the kitchen team of five can cook for up to 90 people at a time.

“Because the food is cooked fresh to order you just can’t do more than that,” said proprietor Parag Bhatnagar, who designed the restaurant himself.

“We keep our cool by staggering our bookings. It’s like working an equation because we have a set number we can do per half hour.

“So what you do is allow a dip and a catch up and so on.

“That allows for the flow of the restaurant because the minute the kitchen gets backed up it’s mayhem back there.”

I was invited into the kitchen to try my hand at preparing Madeleine cake for baking in the oven and caramelising sugar for crème brûlée using a blow torch.

The trick with the blow torch was to keep it steady while rotating the dish in your hand and being careful not to allow hot sugar to trickle onto your hand.

With a lot of concentration I managed not to burn myself or make a complete disaster.

But I was working at a snail’s pace and it made me realise how easy it would be to panic if new orders were coming in thick and fast.

On top of that, the menu is changed monthly by head chef Richard.

Parag, aged 38, from Manchester, added: “It’s to do with seasonality and it also keeps creativity in the kitchen.

“In some chain restaurants chefs are told what to make and you don’t do anything else so it ends up becoming a production line as opposed to being creative cooking.”

Spirit was originally known as Old Warps lodge and the Grade II listed building dates back to the 16th century.

The Georgian house became a 'temporary' maternity home in 1917 and remained so until 1982.

Spirit then opened its doors on December 4, 2008, after a £200,000 investment in transforming the building.

It was a bit of a bumpy start though as Parag’s son Kishan, now aged five, was born three months before the restaurant’s launch.

“I don’t think I slept properly for eight months,” said Parag.

“That put pressure on because the restaurant wasn’t supposed to open then.

“It was supposed to be beforehand but you get caught up in red tape and you’re stuck then.

“We also opened in the recession which wasn’t the greatest start in the world.

“But it all came together really. The idea for the restaurant came from eating out ourselves and wanting to have a different experience from what we were already receiving.

“We always want to strive to do the best we can.”