IT IS the standard checklist for any restaurateur opening a new business: tables? Check. Plates? Check. Cave where the kitchen should be? Check.
But that is the reality for builders at Reigate's new Giggling Squid restaurant, who discovered a 60 cubic metre cave just under the building's foundations last week.
As workmen tried to lower the basement floor to create a kitchen, they hit open air and unearthed the chasm, which may not have seen the light of day in almost 100 years.
"It may well have been a silver sand mine," said Giggling Squid owner Andy Laurillard.
"It was a bit of a shock; we knocked through the wall and underneath the foundations found this cave.
"It wasn't on any map, it's just been rediscovered. There are some dates on the wall and it seems the last time it was used was 1905."
The discovery has put the High Street restaurant's opening date back by about four weeks.
But Mr Laurillard – who owns four other branches of the Thai restaurant – has no plans to fill the cave in. Instead, he wants the discovery to add something different to his business.
"We are going to make it a feature," he told the Mirror.
"We will move the kitchen, light the cave up and put in a glass floor and wall. It is certainly an interesting find."
There is a large network of caves under Reigate town centre which date back hundreds of years, but experts believe this is a separate cavern.
Peter Burgess, of the Wealden Cave and Mine Society, said: "It is probably an isolated small cave.
"We will go and have a look when we can."
Currently accessed through a small hole in the basement wall, the cave drops away down a slope of mud and brick to the floor.
The walls are, in places, adorned with numbers and letters carved into the rock and there are at least three shelves fashioned out of the stone.
Site foreman John Taylor is overseeing the restaurant's rebuild.
He said: "It was quite exciting; we've found a little bit of history. We were digging away and suddenly the tools just went into infinity, we dug away and found the tunnel to the cave."
The Giggling Squid will open on the former site of Puccinos, which closed about four years ago. The outlet has been empty since.
Surveyors have said the cave poses no danger to the building and Mr Laurillard now hopes the restaurant will open in about four weeks' time.
