It's 8.45 a.m. and the executive chef of the Merrion Hotel, Ed Cooney, has been in the kitchens since 7.30 a.m., despatching breakfasts alongside breakfast chef Michael Moran. "Seven thirty," I say admiringly, until Ed gives me a rather pitying look and informs me that Michael arrives at 4 a.m. and this morning sent out his first plate of eggs and bacon at 5.15.
As a five-star hotel, the Merrion has a 24-hour kitchen, which means that at any hour of the day or night a guest can demand poached quail's eggs and a packet of cheese and onion crisps and Ed and his team will do their best to provide it. Like midwives, they just can't be sure when they might have a delivery.
It's 9 a.m. and Ed leaves Michael to finish the breakfasts, heading into the Cellar Bar for the divisional operations meeting with other department heads. As we arrive, the names of all the guests are being read out - while some may like to think of a top-class hotel as a curiously anonymous place where nobody knows your business, the story is completely different behind the scenes.
After the meeting Ed picks up the guest profile list which notes any preferences, problems or foibles. There is the gentleman whose socks have gone missing, an entry which ends with the curious if impressive statement: "New York are aware of the situation". Then there is the wedding night, the honeymooners and the 83rd birthday in room 183 - Ed carefully notes it all down.
"If there are any celebrities coming in, I phone other top hotels and find out if they have any preferences. Say, for example, we have David Bowie coming in - I ring the Dorchester and hear that maybe he likes green apples. We'd have them waiting in his room - a personal touch."
Like Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit, all that can be seen of Ed is his back as he heads off into the below-stairs labyrinth of corridors. At any one time there may be food orders going out to the Mornington Brasserie, the Cellar Bar, the drawing rooms, the private dining rooms, the staff restaurant, Dukes, or to room service, and Ed likes to keep an eye on them all.
"I have a route", he grins. First up is Dukes, where Kathleen Moran, Michael's wife, is clearing up after the breakfast rush. "There's a very unusual management policy here," explains Ed. "The staff restaurant is taken very seriously indeed - in some hotels you wouldn't make your dog eat in them." There are no problems here, so it's on to the receiving area where all the food arrives. "I don't go to the markets," says Ed. "The scale of the operation is such that, if I wanted to do that, I'd end up in an asylum." Instead, Liam is waiting, ready to receive the food, weigh it and check it for freshness. BACK through the swing doors at full tilt and it's time for the kitchen briefing. Five chefs cram into Ed's tiny office to run through the day's specials, the running time for that day's private lunch for 14, the progress report on the broken freezer and the menus for the days ahead. Nothing escapes Ed's notice and no question is too small - is somebody on top of the turnip situation as he thought they might be two or three short? Was somebody looking into the cornfed chicken and would whoever had the nicest writing please do the specials on the kitchen noticeboard?
Unlike the myths of thrown saucepans and hysterics, Ed Cooney gets on well with his staff - they address him as "Chef" and seem to co-operate out of respect rather than fear. But heaven help you if you decide to adopt the designer stubble look: "If they're not clean-shaven I go mad. I insist that they're neat because it's a sign of professionalism."
After the kitchen briefing, it's on to the weekly private dining meeting to discuss the groups coming in during the next week - on the day I'm in, there's only one lunch but there can be up to six functions at any one time. Private dining is something Ed is particularly proud of - "it's been hugely successful since the day we opened. I don't know what everybody was doing before that, but there was definitely a niche."
It's now 10.30 a.m. and I haven't set foot in the kitchens yet, but rather observed a level of organisation that could have masterminded a small war or a multinational corporation. We take a look into room service where someone constantly mans the phones - "If we have it we do it and it's very unusual for us to be caught out". I leave Ed to some paperwork and re-join him as the lunch rush starts to take off.
He is on his route again, taking a look into the kitchens where Michael is preparing brioche for the next day's French toast, before walking through the bar where Paula is working beside a portable oven and a vast chilled unit - she will turn over 60 or 70 lunches before 2.30 p.m. I spy a large roast of beef and get the chance to find out something I have always wanted to know - how can you have a roast on the menu given that everybody wants their meat done a different way? "We cook it rare and, if somebody wants it well done, we can pop it on a pan on the stove. If it's rare we can change it, but if it's well-done we can't do it the other way."
Upstairs in the Pembroke Room, an impromptu kitchen has been set up, complete with an Alto-shaam oven, two hot plates and a fleet of gadgets and implements. The group of 14 private diners are late going in for their lunch and then news comes out that they want to be done by 2 p.m. in order to get to the hotel's Tethra Spa.
It's action stations as seven plates are laid out and Gareth Mullins, a first commis chef, gets to work laying out aubergine charlottes. Ed starts dousing them in hollandaise sauce which he then glazes with a blow torch.
Four staff nearby wait for the word from Ed, who sends them off with the words "Away" before muttering to Gareth that the next seven need to be out twice as quickly. Except that this time there is trouble getting the mounds of charlotte out of their clingfilm-covered moulds - then the gas in the blow torch runs out. Gareth fumbles with the matches and curses under his breath. Ed starts to hum. The seven plates go out.
Ed sticks around to finish off the craben-crusted salmon with saffron-turned potatoes and dispenses some words of wisdom about his more high-profile guests. "Who have we had in, Gareth? Well, last week there was REM and the Corrs and Robbie Williams. I don't tend to worry about them - what most people tend to forget is that these people stay in five-star hotels all the time. They're used to it." No wacky celebrity demands spring to Ed's mind except the fact that Robbie Williams is a demon for the tomato ketchup. "He goes mad if he doesn't have it, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, if he's happy, I'm happy."
Leaving the private lunch group well on course to make the spa by 2 a.m., Ed heads down to the kitchen. There he takes up position at the pass - the final stage before the food goes out to the restaurant, bar or room service. "I always like to be there for the service." If not, the chefs consult the SOP (standard of presentation), a photographic record of what the dish should look like. "It gives consistency. Some of the chefs like to do things their own way. They're welcome to give their ideas when we're making up a dish but then it should be consistent."
Down in the kitchen, orders are mounting and the docket from table six has disappeared. The chef de partie, Thomas Fialon, is at a vast range with eight saucepans on the go. Ed starts calling for dishes, tweaking the presentation and at times sending something straight back where it came from. In the background, Dermot Brennan, a first commis, is furiously turning vegetables and a troupe of plongeurs are feeding the endless conveyor belt of dirty dishes. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the rush is over, and Ed is off to room service: "What's that?" he asks curiously of a dish of cheese and dry bread. "Bresaola without the bresaola," points out the girl in charge of delivering it upstairs. "They pay for it, they get it," shrugs Ed.
AFTER lunch it's time for paperwork again, this time ordering food. While the thought of correctly estimating the right number of steaks, rashers, red snapper and orange juice for a hotel of over 200 guests would floor most of us, Ed is unfazed. "It's just something you get to know. For example we always use about 30 chicken crowns every day, I know we need six to eight cases of eggs a week and we get through 10 five-litre containers of orange juice a day."
I'm knocking off at this point, as exhausted as if I had cooked every one of those eggs myself. Ed is half way through his day. "Last orders in the restaurant are at 10 p.m. but my last train is at 10.05 - it's a good discipline for me to be on it." The other chefs will all be gone by 11 p.m., while the night chef arrives at 10.30 p.m. and works through the night until 7 a.m.
"It's the variety that I like, having all the different levels of cuisine on the go at the same time," Ed muses. "To be honest, I could run a restaurant but I don't know if it would work the other way round. You can get by running a restaurant by being a pure cook, but invariably in an operation like this there's a lot of organisation. And you have to be a bit more polite - if I threw somebody out of the restaurant I'd lose my job."
I leave him shooting the breeze with pastry chef Paul Kelly: "It's great, never-ending, isn't that right, Paul?" "Always on the go, Chef, 24 hours a day." "Seven days a week." They both grin.